The Eldorado

The Eldorado at 300 Central Park West, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is the northernmost of four twin-towered luxury housing cooperatives[2] that face the west side of Central Park. The art deco style[3] apartment building fills the complete blockfront extending between West 90th and West 91st Streets and overlooks the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park.

For the mythical city of gold, see El Dorado.
The Eldorado
The Eldorado
Coordinates40°47′18.1″N 73°58′2.66″W
BuiltVarious
ArchitectEmery Roth
Architectural styleArt Deco
Part ofCentral Park West Historic District (ID82001189[1])
Added to NRHPNovember 9, 1982[1]

The Eldorado is located within the Upper West Side-Central Park West Historic District designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission,[4] and is a contributing property to the federally designated Central Park West Historic District.

History

The name is an inheritance from the former El Dorado, a luxury elevator eight-story apartment block of 1902 that formerly occupied the full block-front site.[5]

The stock market crash that followed the beginning of construction eventually overwhelmed its financing, and, by 1931, the building was in foreclosure, and the builder, Louis Klosk, a Bronx-based developer, lost it.[6] It nevertheless opened, reorganized under the Central Park Plaza Corporation. Early tenants included New York Senator Royal Copeland, the prominent rabbi of Reform Judaism Dr. Stephen S. Wise, and Barney Pressman, founder of Barneys New York, the retail clothing store.[7] More recent apartment owners have been Alec Baldwin,[8] Faye Dunaway, Moby, Garrison Keillor, Tuesday Weld, Bruce Willis, Ron Howard, and Michael J. Fox.[6] Author Sinclair Lewis chose a tower apartment in this building because it had views which encompassed all the bridges of the city at that time. The building was also the fictional address of Marjorie Morningstar, the heroine of Herman Wouk's 1955 novel.[9]

Architecture

The building has 30 floors. However, only the southernmost tower "top" is habitable, featuring a two-floor, dual-terraced penthouse. The other tower top houses a water tank, but the floors beneath are habitable. The Eldorado was constructed in 1929–1931 to the design of Margon & Holder, for the speculative builder Klosk. The painted metal finials of the towers are a design of Emery Roth, in association with Margon & Holder.[10] "The futuristic sculptural detailing of the El Dorado, as well as its geometric ornament and patterns and its contrasting materials and textures, make it one of the finest Art Deco structures in the city. The towers are terminated by ornamented setbacks with abstract geometric spires that have been compared to Flash Gordon finials," observes Steven Ruttenbaum.[11] Details are cast in imitation stone, and there are bronze panels of low relief. The symmetrical massing of the building, with its terraced setbacks, can be compared to the strikingly similar massing of Roth's classically detailed The Beresford, completed in 1929, months before design of The El Dorado began.

The Eldorado, seen across Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park, contributes to the much-photographed skyline of Central Park

See also

References
Notes
  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. That apartment house became a co-op in 1982.
  3. "The El Dorado marked a distinct stylistic shift in Roth's work toward a less plastic modeling of the mass and toward a Modernist sense of detail as applied to an essentially Classical composition," (Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins, New York 1930 Architecture and Urbanism Between The Two World Wars [1987], quoted by Carter B. Horsley, "The Upper West Side Book"..
  4. "NYCLPC Upper West Side – Central Park West Historic District Designation Report, volume 2"
  5. Gray, Christopher (December 9, 2001). "The Eldorado, at 90th Street; 1929 Art Deco Twin Towers on Central Park West". New York Times. Retrieved September 5, 2009.
  6. Gray 2001.
  7. Gray, New York Times, December 31, 2001.
  8. The RealEstalker: "Alec Baldwin seeks to sell two at The Eldorafo"26 August 2009
  9. Brockmann, Jorg et al. (2002). One Thousand New York Buildings, p. 354., p. 354, at Google Books
  10. Gray 2001
  11. Ruttenbaum, Mansions in the Clouds, the Skyscraper Palazzi of Emery Roth,:: (New York: Balsam Press), 1986.
Bibliography
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