The Beresford is a cooperative apartment building at 211 Central Park West, between 81st and 82nd Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It was constructed in 1929 and was designed by architect Emery Roth. The Beresford is 22 stories tall and is topped by octagonal towers on its northeast, southwest, and southeast corners. The building is a contributing property to the Central Park West Historic District, a National Register of Historic Places–listed district, and is a New York City designated landmark.
The building surrounds an internal courtyard to the west. The facade has two primary elevations, facing east toward Central Park and south toward the American Museum of Natural History. There are numerous setbacks on each elevation, which double as terraces. The first three stories are clad in rusticated blocks of limestone, with three main entrances at ground level. The remainder of the facade is made of light brick with terracotta ornamentation. Each of the towers is decorated with arches and finials and contains one penthouse apartment. The building has three terrazzo and marble lobbies with molded plaster ceilings. On the upper stories, many apartments are split across two levels and contain large rooms. There were originally 178 apartments, each with four to sixteen rooms, but several apartments have been split or combined over the years.
The Beresford replaced an 11-story apartment building with the same name, built in 1889 and 1892. The current apartment complex was built after a previous attempt to redevelop the site in the 1920s had failed. The building opened in September 1929 but soon went into receivership following the collapse of the Bank of United States, which held the mortgage. The Beresford was acquired in 1940 by an investment syndicate, which owned the building for the next two decades. The building was then converted to a housing cooperative in 1962. Over the years, its residents have included directors, actors, journalists, and executives.
Site The Beresford is at 211 Central Park West on the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The building occupies the western sidewalk of Central Park West (formerly Eighth Avenue) between 81st Street to the south and 82nd Street to the north. The Beresford is situated on an approximately square land lot with an area of . The land lot has a frontage of along Central Park West and on both of the side streets. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is immediately across 81st Street to the south. The Diana Ross Playground and the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond are directly to the east, inside Central Park. An entrance to the New York City Subway's 81st Street–Museum of Natural History station is directly outside the southeast corner of the building.
The Beresford is one of several apartment buildings on Central Park West that are primarily identified by an official name. Even though a street address was sufficient to identify these apartment buildings, this trend followed a British practice of giving names to buildings without addresses. By contrast, buildings on Fifth Avenue, along the eastern side of Central Park, are mainly known by their addresses. Christopher Gray of The New York Times described the Beresford as one of several apartment buildings in Manhattan that were named after 1920; according to Gray, such structures usually "were either truly grand or had hotel-like features". The Beresford's name is derived directly from a previous building on the site.
Previous structure The construction of Central Park in the 1860s spurred construction on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but similar development on the Upper West Side was slower to come. Major developments on the West Side were erected after the Ninth Avenue elevated line opened in 1879, providing direct access to Lower Manhattan. The first large apartment building in the area was the Dakota, which opened in 1884. The city installed power lines on Central Park West at the end of the 19th century, thus allowing the construction of multi-story apartment hotels with elevators.
Among the early apartment hotels was the original Hotel Beresford at 81st Street and Eighth Avenue. The structure was built by Alva Walker in two phases. Theodore E. Thomson designed the first section in 1889, a six-story building with 34 apartments. The initial structure also had a dining room on the top floor; wide hallways to each suite; and elevators. In 1892, Walker built a ten-story annex and moved the dining room to the top of that building. This addition had 64 apartments.
Architecture The present Beresford was designed by Emery Roth. It is one of five Roth apartment blocks on Central Park West; the others are the El Dorado, the San Remo, the Alden, and the Ardsley.Alpern, Andrew. Apartments for the Affluent: a Historical Survey of Buildings in New York. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. The Beresford was built by HRH Construction. Unlike other large buildings on Central Park West, which were typically attributed to a single developer, no one took credit for developing the Beresford specifically. The syndicate that developed the Beresford had also erected the San Remo, seven blocks south, shortly after the Beresford was completed.
Form and facade The building contains 22 stories, which surround an interior courtyard to the west, creating a U-shaped plan. There are setbacks at the 14th, 16th, 18th, and 20th stories, which were included to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. These setbacks are enclosed by iron railings and stone balustrades, creating private terraces for each tenant. When the building opened, its leasing agent described the terraces as being multicolored. Above the 20th story are small octagonal towers. The northwest corner was subjected to more stringent zoning laws, so the westernmost section contains setbacks beginning at the 9th story. When the building opened, there was high demand for apartments with large terraces, particularly before air conditioning became popular.
The lowest three stories of the facade are made of rusticated blocks of limestone, while the rest of the building is clad with beige brick. The facade's primary elevations face south toward 81st Street and east toward Central Park West. This design was intended to take advantage of the building's placement next to the AMNH and Central Park. The north elevation on 82nd Street is simpler in design than the primary elevations, while the west elevation is not decorated. The north, south, and east elevations contain terracotta ornamentation such as pilasters, broken pediments, balustrades, obelisks, and cartouches. There are also motifs such as angels, dolphins, and rams' heads. The corners of each elevation are articulated by vertical bands of brick quoins. There are horizontal band courses above the 9th, 12th, and 13th stories; each band course consists of two molded terracotta bands.
All three elevations are divided vertically into multiple bays, each containing one window per floor. Most of the building's windows are of a single design: two movable casements topped by a stationary transom. The south elevation is divided into 30 bays from east to west. They are arranged into groups of three, except for bays 1–4 and 29–30, which are paired. Bays 1–7 and 23–30 are "pavilions", which set back at the 16th story, while the center bays set back at the 14th, 18th, and 20th stories. The east elevation contains 29 bays from south to north, arranged in a 3-3-5-3-3-5-3-4 pattern. Bays 1–6 and 23–29 are "pavilions" with 16th-story setbacks, while the center bays set back at the 14th, 18th, and 20th stories. The north elevation is also divided into 29 bays, which are all arranged into groups of three, except for the westernmost pair of bays.
Entrances There are four entrances at the base: two on 81st Street and one each on Central Park West and 82nd Street. The main entrances are at 1 and 7 West 81st Street and 211 Central Park West; each leads to its own lobby. The entrance at 1 West 81st Street is within bays 5–7, while the entrance at 7 West 81st Street is within bays 23–25. The sidewalks in front of both doorways are covered by canopies, and there are planted areas on either side of each doorway. Both doorways contain a set of bronze-and-glass double doors, and there are bronze-and-glass lanterns on either side of each set of doors. Each of the doorways is surrounded by a limestone frame with pilasters on either side, which contain panels with reliefs of acanthus leaves. The entrances on 81st Street are topped by curved broken pediments, each with a central cartouche and a keystone. On the second story above each of the 81st Street entrances is a group of three windows. The central window of each group is placed within a frame and contains the head of a winged cherub on its lintel.
The Central Park West entrance is slightly off-center, spanning bays 14–15. It has a canopy, planted areas, bronze-and-glass double doors, and lanterns similar to those on 81st Street. The relief panels at this entrance also depict acanthus leaves, but the tops of these relief panels also contain motifs of winged angels playing horns. Above the Central Park West entrance is a broken lintel, which flanks a cartouche with festoons. On the second story is a window with a winged cherub's head on its lintel.
The 82nd Street entrance is simpler in design compared with the three other entrances, occupying bay 23. This entrance lacks a canopy and contains a bronze-and-glass single door. There are lanterns on either side of the doorway, as well as a cartouche atop the door frame. Above the door frame is a metal grille, which is flanked by garlands and scrolls and is topped by the head of a winged cherub.
There are also nine entrances to individual offices on the ground floor: two on Central Park West, three on 81st Street, and four on 82nd Street. Each doorway contains a single door, recessed within the rusticated limestone facade. The bronze-and-glass office doors are simple in design and are topped by a bronze-and-glass transom panel. On the far western end of the 81st and 82nd Street frontages, there is a short standalone wall of rusticated blocks, which contains a round archway topped by a keystone with a winged cherub's head. There is a metal service gate below each archway. The 81st Street gate contains a panel with the word "Service", and the panel above the gate is decorated with guttae.
Upper stories
At the fourth story on Central Park West, bays 12–17 contain a limestone balcony, which projects from the facade and is supported by eight modillions. Above the fourth story, there are four cartouches on the eastern elevation, four on the southern elevation, and two on the northern elevation. Between the two inner cartouches to the east is a plaque with the inscription "Erected 1929", which is framed by swags and scrolls.
At the 10th and 11th stories, each elevation contains several double-height window groupings, each three bays wide and surrounded by terracotta frames. In each grouping, the 10th-story windows contain false balustrades, while the spandrel panels between the 10th and 11th stories contain a cartouche, winged cherubs, and brackets. In the center bay of each grouping, there is a rosette above the 11th story. At the 14th and 15th stories, there are more double-height window groupings, each three bays wide. Each grouping is flanked by brick pilasters and is topped by a triangular broken pediment surrounding a central grille. There are rosettes on the spandrels between the 14th and 15th stories. The center bay of each grouping contains a projecting balcony at the 14th story; a curved broken pediment with a ram's head above the 14th story; and a cartouche above the 15th story.