The Majestic (also known as the Majestic Apartments) is a cooperative apartment building at 115 Central Park West, between 71st and 72nd Streets, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It was constructed from 1930 to 1931 and was designed by the firm of Irwin S. Chanin in the Art Deco style. The Majestic is 30 stories tall, with twin towers rising from a 19-story base. 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 base surrounds an internal courtyard to the west, and two towers rise from the eastern portion of the base above that level. There are several cantilevered terraces with Art Deco balustrades. The first three stories are clad in cast stone, and the remainder of the facade is made of tan and brown brick with multi-paned windows. The floor slabs are cantilevered from a central core, permitting the inclusion of enclosed solariums at the northeast and southeast corners. There are vertical piers on several parts of the facade, contrasting with the horizontal solariums. When the building opened, it operated much like a short-term hotel with housekeeping and catering services. There were originally 235 apartments with two to eleven rooms, but several apartments have been split or combined over the years.
The Chanin brothers bought the site in April 1929 and constructed the building from November 1930 to May 1931. The building officially opened on October 1, 1931, and the Chanins lost the Majestic to foreclosure two years later. The New York Majestic Corporation took over the building in 1937 and operated it for twenty years, when the Majestic became a housing cooperative. The Majestic remained an upscale development after its conversion, and it has undergone several renovations throughout its history. The building's residents have included artistic personalities as well as criminals.
Site The Majestic is at 115 Central Park West on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The building occupies the western sidewalk of Central Park West (formerly Eighth Avenue) between 71st Street to the south and 72nd Street to the north. The Majestic occupies a nearly rectangular land lot with an area of . The land lot has a frontage of along Central Park West, on 72nd Street, and on 71st Street. Nearby places include the Dakota apartment building immediately to the north, the Olcott Hotel to the northwest, 101 Central Park West to the south, and Central Park to the east.
The Majestic 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.
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 these early apartment hotels was the original between 71st and 72nd Streets, which opened in 1894. The hotel was developed by millinery and real estate magnate Jacob Rothschild and had been designed by Alfred Zucker. The hotel was 12 stories tall with 600 rooms, and it contained amenities that were meant to rival those of the Dakota. The old Majestic had contained an Egyptian-style women's writing room, a ballroom, facilities for bowling and billiards, and a rooftop garden. The Majestic had been home to personalities such as Gustav Mahler and Edna Ferber. When the hotel was sold in 1929, the New York Herald Tribune described the old building as "one of the best known hotels west of Central Park". By the 1920s, high-rise apartment buildings were being developed on Central Park West in anticipation of the construction of the New York City Subway's Eighth Avenue Line.
Architecture
The building was designed and developed by Irwin Chanin, who worked with his firm's architectural director Jacques Delamarre. The futuristic sculptures on the building's facade are by Rene Chambellan. The building is variously cited as being 29, 30, 31, or 32 stories tall. According to Emporis, the building is tall.
The Majestic Apartments was Chanin's first Art Deco residential building; he also developed the Century several blocks south in the same style. Chanin had described the style as "experimental" in a 1985 interview with architectural historian Andrew Dolkart. The Majestic also incorporates elements of the International Style and the French Modern Classical style. The Century, 55 Central Park West, the Majestic, the El Dorado, 241 Central Park West, and the Ardsley constitute a major grouping of Art Deco buildings on Central Park West. In early promotional materials, the Chanin Organization described the Majestic as being a "Modern American" structure. The modernistic Art Deco design was intended to appeal to "new money" residents, as opposed to the classical designs of the Beresford and the San Remo, where many residents were of "old money" wealth.
Form On the Majestic's 19-story base, the massing fills its lot line on the north, east, and south, and there is an interior courtyard. The interior courtyard was designed as a "garden court" and contained foliage. There are setbacks starting at the 14th story, which contain terraces enclosed by metal railings. These setbacks were intended to emphasize the horizontal lines of the facade, and they also allowed the terraces to blend in with the massing. When the building opened, there was high demand for apartments with large terraces, particularly before air conditioning became popular.
Above the 19th story, two towers rise from the eastern portion of the base. Though the towers are designed to appear identical, the north tower is slightly wider than the south tower. The Majestic is one of four buildings on Central Park West with a twin-towered form; the others are the Century, the San Remo, and the El Dorado. By splitting the upper stories into twin towers, as opposed to a single bulky tower, the developers could increase the amount of space that was near a window.
The massing of the Majestic, and those of similar buildings, was shaped primarily by the Multiple Dwelling Act of 1929. Under this legislation, the "street walls" of apartment buildings could rise one and a half times the width of the adjacent street before they had to set back. On lots of more than , the street walls could rise three times the width of the adjacent street. In practice, this meant that buildings on Central Park West could rise 19 stories before setting back. The legislation also mandated courtyards in large apartment buildings.
Facade The lowest three stories contain a light-gray facade of cast stone, placed above a water table of polished rose-and-black granite. There are entrances facing all three streets, each of which contain polished granite frames. Some of the windows are separated vertically by piers, which contain notches above the 3rd story. On each elevation, the piers divide the facade into bays and rise through the upper sections of the facade. Each of the entrances is flanked by several piers.
Above the 3rd story, the facade is covered in yellowish brick. The corners of the building were outfitted with windows wrapping around the edge at a 90-degree angle, which Chanin referred to as solariums. Chanin wanted residents to be able to remove the glass panes during summer so they could use the corners as outdoor terraces. This was part of Chanin's effort to provide apartments with more "light and air". The corner windows are separated vertically from adjacent windows by striated brickwork panels. Some of the bays are separated vertically by the brick piers; the windows within these bays are separated horizontally by curved spandrel panels. The vertical piers were intended to provide a sharp contrast with the horizontal lines on the remainder of the facade. Many of the windows are divided into two or three panes, although the windows in the tower stories are single panes; each pane is also divided horizontally into three sections.
The tops of the towers are simpler than those at the Century. The east elevations of the towers are topped by square-headed abstract decorations. Conversely, the west elevations are topped by rounded stone decorations. In 2007, Christopher Gray of The New York Times described the rounded structures on the western portion of the roof as being akin to "a giant dynamo" from the film Metropolis.
Interior The Majestic is divided functionally into five sections, and staff must go outdoors to travel between each section. The building has 12 elevators. The first story has a main lobby and a restaurant, as well as private lobbies for the different sections of the building. In addition, the base contained a provision for an entrance to the 72nd Street station of the New York City Subway was placed at the building's base, although the entrance never opened. The lobby was designed in an Art Moderne style with white-metal walls and terrazzo floors. The New York Times wrote in 1966 that "even partisans agree [it] is something of a horror".
When the building opened, it operated like a short-term hotel with housekeeping and catering services. There was also an "emergency help and valet" service for residents. Most elevators were staffed by elevator operators.
Apartments , the New York City Department of City Planning cites the Majestic as having 238 residential apartments and 15 non-residential units. At first, there were 235 apartments in the building. Originally there were maisonette apartments, intended for physicians, on the first floor. On the lower stories, each apartment generally had three to fourteen rooms, arranged in either one-story simplexes or two-story duplexes. The apartments in the towers had either four, six, or ten rooms. Originally, all the tower units were supposed to have ten rooms, but some of the units were subdivided during construction to make them easier to sell during the Great Depression. After the building became a housing cooperative in the 1950s, apartments ranged from two to eleven rooms. A typical eight-room apartment had three bedrooms, two maids' rooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a foyer. The smallest suites had a single bedroom and a small dining alcove, while larger apartments had several bedrooms, a solarium, library, dining room, and servants' rooms. Chanin also included penthouse apartments and a solarium on the roof.