The Beaux-Arts Apartments are a pair of apartment towers on 307 and 310 East 44th Street in the East Midtown and Turtle Bay neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by Raymond Hood and Kenneth Murchison, the Beaux-Arts Apartments were constructed between 1929 and 1930. The complex was originally designed with 640 apartments.
The Beaux-Arts Apartments consist of two towers on East 44th Street; number 307 is on the north sidewalk while number 310 is on the south sidewalk. The two towers are 16 stories and are faced with limestone at the base, dark brick between windows on the upper stories, and light brick between each story. The top four stories of both buildings contain numerous setbacks, which form terraces for the upper-story units. The interiors largely consist of studio apartments measuring on average; they are lit by large windows on the outside. The ground floor of the south building, number 310, contains a cafe.
The apartment complex was built just east of the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, which had moved to the area in 1928. Plans for the apartment complex were announced in February 1929, with the buildings being financed by stock issues rather than mortgage loans. The buildings opened to residents in January 1930 during the Great Depression. The Beaux-Arts Apartments avoided foreclosure due to their financing arrangement and were initially popular among businesswomen. The buildings were sold to the Brodsky Organization in 1973 and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the complex as a city landmark in 1988.
Site The Beaux-Arts Apartments are a pair of apartment towers on 307 and 310 East 44th Street, between Second Avenue and First Avenue, in the East Midtown and Turtle Bay neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. 307 East 44th Street is on the north side of the street, while 310 East 44th Street is on the south side. Number 307's rectangular land lot covers , with a frontage of along 44th Street and a depth of . Number 310's rectangular land lot covers , with a frontage of along 44th Street and a depth of . Number 310 is directly between Three United Nations Plaza to the east and the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design building at 304 East 44th Street to the west. Directly east of number 307 are One and Two United Nations Plaza (which contain the Millennium Hilton New York One UN Plaza hotel). The apartments are also near the Ford Foundation Building to the south, as well as the Church Center for the United Nations to the east.
In the early 20th century, a large portion of Turtle Bay's population was involved in the arts or architecture. Structures such as the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design and the residential Turtle Bay Gardens, Tudor City, and Beekman Tower were constructed for this community.; William Lescaze's renovation of an existing brownstone townhouse on 48th Street, and its subsequent conversion into the Lescaze House, inspired similar renovations to other structures in the neighborhood, such as 219 East 49th Street.
Architecture Both apartment blocks were designed by Raymond Hood and Kenneth Murchison as 17-story towers, though only 16 stories are visible from the street. The George A. Fuller Company was the general contractor for both structures. Both buildings contain steel-framed superstructures. The interiors of the apartment units were designed by multiple architects. The arrangement of the towers across each other was intended to make 44th Street appear as a courtyard.
Facade The facades of the buildings are nearly identical. The north building at 307 East 44th Street is eleven bays wide, while the south building at 310 East 44th Street is twelve bays wide. The massings of both buildings are designed similarly, and the apartment towers themselves are arranged symmetrically in a similar manner to Beaux-Arts structures.; The main sections are recessed behind their respective sidewalks, with plantings in front. On either end of both buildings are pavilions, which protrude to the sidewalk at their first thirteen stories. To comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution, both buildings contain setbacks on the 13th through 16th stories, similar to the Art Deco skyscrapers of New York City. The design of the neighboring 3 United Nations Plaza's facade was inspired by the Beaux-Arts Apartments.
Base On both apartment blocks, the 44th Street facade of the first two stories is clad with limestone,; interspersed with horizontal bands of chrome. The use of horizontal bands gave the facade an industrial appearance. The western ends of the buildings' ground stories are slightly beneath the sidewalk, and there are small planted areas behind iron railings. The planting beds in front of each building are deep. Ground-story studio apartments had their own private entrances directly to the street. At both buildings, ground-story doors and windows are covered by iron grilles, which are designed as grids of rhombuses, while the walls have triangular lighting fixtures. The only difference at ground level is that, in the south building, the ground story east of the entrance has a glass-and-aluminum wall enclosing a restaurant, rather than plantings. Directly east of the south building is a colonnade, which leads to an open-air courtyard separating the south building from Three United Nations Plaza.
The centers of either building have a double-height entrance pavilion that protrudes to the street, with angled bays containing casement windows on either side. The glass entrance doors and the central second-story window are both flanked by stepped jambs. A carved geometric frieze is above the second-floor opening of each pavilion. A metal railing, with chevron-shaped balusters, surrounds the balcony on top of each entrance pavilion.
Upper stories
On each of the buildings' upper stories, there are wide steel casement windows.; The buildings have a variety of window styles such as single, double, and triple two-part casements as well as corner windows. On both buildings, the triple casement windows are the most common. The end pavilions contain windows that wrap around the corners of the facade. These corner windows, which were included to show that the exterior walls are non-structural, were built with minimal vertical mullions to avoid obstructing views. According to Hood, the design of the windows "takes away from the waffle-like character of the usual factory design". There was 60 percent more glass than in comparable buildings, according to both architects. Chevron-shaped Art Deco-style railings, similar in design to those above the entrance pavilions, are used on some of the upper stories.;
The windows on each story are separated vertically by panels of alternating red and black brick. This created "stripes" similar to those used on the Daily News Building, which Hood had also designed. These stripes were placed between windows on the same floor, in a manner more akin to the International Style, rather than between windows in the same bay on different floors, as was typical of the Art Deco style. The spandrels between the windows on different stories are continuous horizontal bands of light-colored buff brick. Hood said the spandrels were intended to give the structures a horizontal emphasis, which fit the shapes of each building. The end pavilions are clad with light-colored brick similar to that used on the spandrels between different stories.
The designs of the main facades are continued on the western and eastern sides of both buildings. The buildings' western and eastern sides are exposed to varying extents, but all have dark brick stripes at their centers, behind which are stairwells.; Some portions of the south building's eastern side have a stucco wall rather than brick cladding; the stucco indicates the silhouette of a former four-story building to the east.
On the 13th through 16th stories of both buildings, there are setbacks facing 44th Street, which form terraces on each story. In either building, six of the bays contain setbacks of uniform depth on each story. The remaining bays (five in the north building and six in the south building) are set back in a different pattern. In each building, these consist of the center (one bay in the north, two in the south); the second-bay on either side of the center; and the outermost bays. The center and outermost bays of each building contain square profiles, while the second-from-center bays are angled. The center bay(s) have a setback only at the 16th story, and the other four bays have setbacks on each of the 14th through 16th stories. Mechanical brick penthouses are on the roofs of both buildings. The rear of the north building contains terraces with gradual setbacks, but the rear of the south building is not visible from the street. Murchison wrote that the setbacks were included to "add to the desirability of many apartments". Architectural writer Christopher Gray compared the massing of the upper stories to a jigsaw puzzle.
Interior
Lower stories
Initially, the lobbies of both buildings were decorated in a modern style, with side walls made of brown glass, interspersed with aluminum and brass trim. The lobbies were also decorated with strips of chrome, and the ceilings were adorned with silver leaf motifs. The modernist style was continued in the elevator cabs, which had glass-rod ceilings and lacquered aluminum walls. According to Murchison, the metal-paneled walls of the elevators were designed without mirrors "just to hide from yourself your own appearance when you come in at 4 A.M."
The ground story of number 310 had a small restaurant named Cafe Bonaparte, operated in part because most units did not have full-service kitchens.; Winold Reiss designed the cafe's rooms with yellow, green, and blue decorations. Cafe Bonaparte was intended to not only provide room service for residents but also serve as a social gathering place. The cafe was also decorated with fabric walls, fluted wainscoting, and a ceiling with zigzagging grilles. A similar ground-floor space in number 307 was originally outfitted with a room-service kitchen but no restaurant. Single-room maisonettes, behind the lobbies and restaurant spaces in either building, extended to the rear of the respective building.
Apartments The Beaux-Arts Apartments were arranged with 800 rooms between them, split into 640 residential units. The northern building (number 307) had 328 apartments and seven penthouse apartments, while the southern building (number 310) had 345 apartments and six penthouses. All units from the first to thirteenth stories of each building were arranged as single-room studio apartments. One- to three- bedroom apartments were arranged on and above the fourteenth floor of each building. In both buildings, the walls of even-numbered stories were plastered in white, while the walls of odd-numbered stories were plastered in rough brown. The pantries and bathrooms were plastered in white and the corridors were finished with a rough texture. Cork floors were installed in the studios and communal corridors to provide soundproofing; they were attached directly to the concrete slabs and thinner than wooden floors. The cork tiles were thick and were laid in a random pattern. The corridors are also outfitted with garbage chutes.