The Ungainly Duckling
That Alighted Along the Park
That Alighted Along the Park
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
Published: September 3, 2006
Published: September 3, 2006
THE BRAENDER, the lovably awkward 1903 apartment house at 102nd Street and Central Park West, is completely enshrouded now, its bulbous bays with intricate ornament barely visible through construction netting. Workers are cutting out joints, patching damaged stone and replacing brick.
The 10-story building - its 50 or so original apartments long ago carved into smaller units and its exterior an agglomeration of paint layers over graffiti - is slowly undergoing a rebirth.
The 10-story building - its 50 or so original apartments long ago carved into smaller units and its exterior an agglomeration of paint layers over graffiti - is slowly undergoing a rebirth.
Museum of the City of New York
ALL CURVES The Braender, at 102nd Street and Central Park West, as photographed about 1911, above.
Marko Georgiev for The New York Times
It is now covered in netting while workers cut out joints, patch damaged stone and replace brick.
It is now covered in netting while workers cut out joints, patch damaged stone and replace brick.
GROUNDED
Six-foot-wide terra-cotta griffins have been removed from the balconies for safety reasons. They probably weigh over half a ton.
Six-foot-wide terra-cotta griffins have been removed from the balconies for safety reasons. They probably weigh over half a ton.
Only a few rows of private houses ever went up on Central Park West. Instead, the Dakota, built in 1884, set the tone for the avenue. In 1899 alone, plans were filed for 18 multiple dwellings.
Critics of the time did not see this burst of construction as bringing out the noblest in design. Montgomery Schuyler, writing about Central Park West in The Architectural Record in 1902, said, “Architectural ideas are rare swimmers in this long expanse.
The Braender was constructed at 418 Central Park West by Philip Braender, a German-born builder who had arrived in the United States as a teenager in the mid-1860’s. Shortly after its completion, his apartment house was as tall as anything else on Central Park West, especially on its lonely upper reaches. The Braender’s apartments, typically 5 per floor, ranged from 5 to 12 rooms and rented for $70 to $580 a month.
The building’s architect, Frederick Browne, was still working in the “long hall” period of apartment design. On the sixth floor, one apartment had a corridor 60 feet long and 4 feet wide running from the front door to the parlor.
The exterior of the Braender - residents pronounce the name to rhyme with gander — is a complicated, even chaotic mix of French Renaissance, Spanish and Baroque styles, all in light-colored stone, brick and terra cotta.
A peculiar set of tile-roofed balconies at the ninth-floor level were long ago stripped of their red tiles and columns.
Judging by surviving interiors, it does not appear that the finishes were particularly lavish or unusual, although the bathrooms were done in marble. But the lobby was sumptuous, or at least showy.
The 17-foot-wide courtyard off Central Park West was ringed with box hedges and gravel paths, with a fountain set between stone benches.
An iron and glass marquee - this was before the canvas canopy - sheltered the main entrance, which led into a vestibule with a square-coffered ceiling.
This in turn led to the reception hall, paneled in highly figured white marble with gray-blue veining and set off by marble with swirls of gray and brown. This room also had a coffered ceiling, but in patterns of six-pointed stars.
In his 1902 article Mr. Schuyler reviewed with dismay several recently completed buildings quite similar to the Braender, where construction was just starting. Mr. Browne’s formula of the narrow light court leading from the street was a common one, but Mr. Schuyler found the device hopelessly awkward in proportion, especially because the court walls were left in plain brick, in a pretense of invisibility, creating “a very grim and gloomy slot,” he said.
But architectural critics have little traction in directing housing choices, and the 1910 census lists 17 Braender households supported by their “own income,” nothing as mundane as a job.
One tenant in the 1920’s was Winifred Sackville Stoner. She had a daughter of the same name who at age 10 could speak four languages, and Mrs. Stoner found this so impressive that she founded the League for Fostering Geniuses.
As for Mr. Braender, he was comparably successful in real estate, and in 1912 branched out with a company that produced Braender Bulldog automobile tires. It sponsored a car in the 1914 Indianapolis 500, but it didn’t finish. Mr. Braender left an estate worth $1 million when he died in 1916, according to an article in The Times two years later.
Upper Central Park West never caught on as an area for high-toned apartment houses, and the rapid evolution of apartment design meant that really well-to-do families moved on to newer buildings.
In the mid-1900’s most of the large apartments in the Braender were cut up into smaller ones, and by the 1980’s, when it was converted to condominiums, the building was in poor shape: its stone was battered and defaced, and the cornice and much its ornament had been removed. The vestibule had been stripped, the striking ceiling in the reception hall covered or removed.
Only now is the condominium’s ownership doing the cleaning, facade repair and repointing that other West Side condos and co-ops pursued in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Even so, according to Dr. Herbert Perlman, the president of the board, one of the 88 apartments there sold recently for $1.3 million.
On the outside, graffiti and paint are being removed, and masonry problems and leaks being repaired as part of a $1 million project headed by Dr. Perlman’s wife, Judith.
She explained recently that a series of six-foot-wide terra-cotta griffins supporting the balconies had been removed for safety reasons and would be replicated in fiberglass or a similar material. The condo wants to sell the originals, although it hasn’t determined a price.
Meanwhile, two of the original griffins can be seen in the courtyard. Even though such terra cotta pieces are hollowed out in firing, each must weigh over 1,000 pounds.
Neighborhood:
Upper West Side
Zip: 10025
Location: SW cor. Central Park W. & W. 102nd St.
Description:
Built 1902
Conv 1986 to condo, 88 Apts
Amenities: doorman, no garage
Critics of the time did not see this burst of construction as bringing out the noblest in design. Montgomery Schuyler, writing about Central Park West in The Architectural Record in 1902, said, “Architectural ideas are rare swimmers in this long expanse.
The Braender was constructed at 418 Central Park West by Philip Braender, a German-born builder who had arrived in the United States as a teenager in the mid-1860’s. Shortly after its completion, his apartment house was as tall as anything else on Central Park West, especially on its lonely upper reaches. The Braender’s apartments, typically 5 per floor, ranged from 5 to 12 rooms and rented for $70 to $580 a month.
The building’s architect, Frederick Browne, was still working in the “long hall” period of apartment design. On the sixth floor, one apartment had a corridor 60 feet long and 4 feet wide running from the front door to the parlor.
The exterior of the Braender - residents pronounce the name to rhyme with gander — is a complicated, even chaotic mix of French Renaissance, Spanish and Baroque styles, all in light-colored stone, brick and terra cotta.
A peculiar set of tile-roofed balconies at the ninth-floor level were long ago stripped of their red tiles and columns.
Judging by surviving interiors, it does not appear that the finishes were particularly lavish or unusual, although the bathrooms were done in marble. But the lobby was sumptuous, or at least showy.
The 17-foot-wide courtyard off Central Park West was ringed with box hedges and gravel paths, with a fountain set between stone benches.
But architectural critics have little traction in directing housing choices, and the 1910 census lists 17 Braender households supported by their “own income,” nothing as mundane as a job.
One tenant in the 1920’s was Winifred Sackville Stoner. She had a daughter of the same name who at age 10 could speak four languages, and Mrs. Stoner found this so impressive that she founded the League for Fostering Geniuses.
As for Mr. Braender, he was comparably successful in real estate, and in 1912 branched out with a company that produced Braender Bulldog automobile tires. It sponsored a car in the 1914 Indianapolis 500, but it didn’t finish. Mr. Braender left an estate worth $1 million when he died in 1916, according to an article in The Times two years later.
Upper Central Park West never caught on as an area for high-toned apartment houses, and the rapid evolution of apartment design meant that really well-to-do families moved on to newer buildings.
In the mid-1900’s most of the large apartments in the Braender were cut up into smaller ones, and by the 1980’s, when it was converted to condominiums, the building was in poor shape: its stone was battered and defaced, and the cornice and much its ornament had been removed. The vestibule had been stripped, the striking ceiling in the reception hall covered or removed.
Only now is the condominium’s ownership doing the cleaning, facade repair and repointing that other West Side condos and co-ops pursued in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Even so, according to Dr. Herbert Perlman, the president of the board, one of the 88 apartments there sold recently for $1.3 million.
On the outside, graffiti and paint are being removed, and masonry problems and leaks being repaired as part of a $1 million project headed by Dr. Perlman’s wife, Judith.
She explained recently that a series of six-foot-wide terra-cotta griffins supporting the balconies had been removed for safety reasons and would be replicated in fiberglass or a similar material. The condo wants to sell the originals, although it hasn’t determined a price.
Meanwhile, two of the original griffins can be seen in the courtyard. Even though such terra cotta pieces are hollowed out in firing, each must weigh over 1,000 pounds.
Braender - 418 Central Park West
Neighborhood:
Upper West Side
Zip: 10025
Location: SW cor. Central Park W. & W. 102nd St.
Description:
Built 1902
Conv 1986 to condo, 88 Apts
Amenities: doorman, no garage
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