The West 76th Street Historic District is a historic district on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, US. It includes a series of rowhouses on 76th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, which were listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1980. The NRHP district overlaps with the Central Park West–76th Street Historic District, designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) in 1973.
The houses date from between 1887 and 1900. The buildings were designed in a variety of revivalist architectural styles, including the Romanesque, Renaissance, and Gothic revival styles. All of the houses are subject to various covenants, which restricted their height. The LPC district includes four additional buildings (44 West 77th Street, The Kenilworth, Church of the Divine Paternity, and New York Historical) which are not in the NRHP district, but are covered by other NRHP designations.
Description The West 76th Street Historic District consists of two overlapping designations on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, US. The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) designation encompasses 44 rowhouses on 76th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. It consists entirely of the properties at 15–51 West 76th Street to the north and 8–56 West 76th Street to the south. The rowhouses are designed in revivalist architectural styles, including the Romanesque, Renaissance, and Gothic revival styles, and are subject to height restrictions due to an 1890 covenant.
The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designation includes all the NRHP-designated rowhouses, along with additional buildings on the eastern and northern boundaries, giving the city district a "T" shape. The additional buildings (the New-York Historical Society, the Church of the Divine Paternity, and the Kenilworth) are situated on Central Park West, and are part of another NRHP district, the Central Park West Historic District. The northern edge of the city district also protrudes to encompass 44 West 77th Street; this building is its own distinct NRHP listing. The entire district is also part of a second city district, the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District. The historian Paul Goldberger wrote in 1976 that the block was "one of the city's finest". +Developers and architectsAddressNameLocationCompletedDeveloperArchitect8–10 West 76th StreetSouth side of 76th Street1900Cornelius LuysterJohn H. Duncan12–24 West 76th StreetSouth side of 76th Street1899–1900James CarlewCleverdon & Putzel15–25 West 76th StreetNorth side of 76th Street1893–1895Cornelius LuysterJohn H. Duncan26 West 76th StreetSouth side of 76th Street1898Herman GoldmanSchickel & Ditmars27–37 West 76th StreetNorth side of 76th Street1889Leonard Beeckman; Bernard S. LevyGeorge M. Walgrove28–38 West 76th StreetSouth side of 76th Street1891William C, G. Wilson; James TichborneG. A. Schillinger39–51 West 76th StreetNorth side of 76th Street1893Alfred G. NasonG. A. Schillinger40–56 West 76th StreetSouth side of 76th Street1889Leonard Beeckman; John C. UmberfieldGeorge M. Walgrove44 West 77th StreetStudio BuildingSouth side of 77th Street1909Walter RussellHarde & ShortChurch of the Divine PaternitySouthwest corner of 76th Street and Central Park West1898Church of the Divine Paternity congregationWilliam Appleton PotterThe KenilworthNorthwest corner of 76th Street and Central Park West1908Lenox Realty CompanyTownsend, Steinle, & HaskellNew York HistoricalWest side of Central Park West1908, 1938New York HistoricalYork & Sawyer; Walker & Gillette
South side of 76th Street
The houses on 76th Street are within both the city and NRHP designations. On the south side of the street, the district encompasses 25 houses. John H. Duncan designed the easternmost two houses on the south side of the street, at 8 and 10 West 76th Street. These houses are designed in the Beaux-Arts style and are each five stories tall. Numbers 8 and 10 have limestone facades with decorations such as protruding bays, rectangular panels, and wrought-iron doors and railings; both originally had mansard roofs, which remain only on number 8.
There are seven houses at 12–24 West 76th Street, designed by Cleverdon & Putzel. The stone-clad houses at number 12–16 are each five stories tall, and have rusticated ground stories shielded by porticos; the upper stories include concave curved bays, foliated spandrel panels, and sheet metal cornices. The houses at 18–24 West 76th Street are designed in a similar style to numbers 12–16. These houses are each five stories high, except number 24, which is four stories and has a higher basement to match the neighboring 26 West 76th Street. 26 West 76th Street, a four-story property designed by Schickel & Ditmars, was designed in isolation, unlike all the other houses on the street's southern sidewalk. This house has a rusticated ground story, an eared neo-Renaissance-style frame, and ironwork at the top.
G. A. Schillinger designed six brownstone houses at 28–38 West 76th Street, each four stories high. The houses mix elements of several architectural styles—including Neo-Grec-style pilasters, Renaissance-style window frames, and Romanesque-style round-arched windows—along with decorations such as pediments, stoops, and band courses. The westernmost nine houses on the south sidewalk, at 40–56 West 76th Street, were designed by George M. Walgrove, with varying design elements and a shared cornice. The buildings at number 40–56 contain a variety of bays, oriels, arches, and window frames, and some of them retain their original stoops. Number 56 has a bay that protrudes to the lot line, flush with the neighboring building to the west.
North side of 76th Street
The district encompasses 19 houses on the north side of the street. On the north side of 76th Street, Duncan designed another set of six houses at 15–25 West 76th Street, all of which are four stories with a raised basement. The houses at numbers 15–19 have brick and ashlar facing, with decorations such as cornices, stoops, and Ionic pilasters. Number 15 has an oriel bay, number 17 has a simpler curved bay, and number 19 has a window flanked by pilasters. The houses at numbers 21–25 have ashlar on the lower floors (painted in a limestone hue) and brick above, and they retain details such as stoops, elaborately molded doorways, and quoins separating each house.
West of Duncan's homes are six houses at 27–37 West 76th Street, which were designed by Walgrove. Each of these houses has rough-surfaced facades and square-headed windows in alternating styles, along with neo-Grec-style decorations. The buildings have alternating Queen Anne-style roofs and protruding cornices, and individual houses have other details not present in the others, such as a stoop outside number 31. The westernmost seven houses on the north sidewalk, at 39–51 West 76th Street, were all designed by Schillinger with neo-Grec and Romanesque decorations. Each of these houses are four stories high with rough-surfaced basements, brownstone above the basement; the lower floors feature curved or oriel bays, while there are square-headed windows at their upper floors. Some of the houses contain details not present in the others, including arched openings, stoops, and pediments.
Central Park West and 77th Street
The properties with frontages on Central Park West and 77th Street are only within the LPC district. The Central Park properties are within the NRHP-listed Central Park West Historic District, while 44 West 77th Street is its own listing. 44 West 77th Street was designed by Harde & Short for Walter Russell. Its exterior is inspired by French churches and Belgian government buildings, with a brick facade, limestone trim, and three protruding bays of windows. The original decorations include extensive tracery, arches, finials, trefoil or quatrefoil motifs, and crockets. The interior retains its original entrance vestibule and many of its apartment layouts, which include studios with -story ceilings.
The southernmost of the Central Park West properties is the Kenilworth at 75th Street, which has a facade of carved limestone and red brick walls, along with a mansard roof. It was designed by Townsend, Steinle, & Haskell. and is variously cited as being in the Second Empire or Beaux Arts styles. The Kenilworth has rusticated limestone decorations at its first two stories, above which is a brick facade with limestone trim. The entrance has columns and pilasters with bands.
The Church of the Divine Paternity is located just north of the Kenilworth, at the southwest corner of Central Park West and 76th Street. It carries the addresses 4 West 76th Street and 160 Central Park West. The church, a Gothic Revival building designed by William Appleton Potter, includes a four-section tower rising above it. The facade has a stained glass window similar to one in the Gloucester Cathedral, along with tracery, band courses, buttresses, and finials. The tower has drip moldings, pinnacles, and pointed arches. There is also a parish house just west of the church itself.
The New York Historical Society, occupying the entire western frontage of Central Park West between 76th and 77th streets, is designed in the neoclassical or Eclectic Roman style. The original section of the building was designed by York & Sawyer and completed in 1908. A pair of wings flanking it were completed by Walker & Gillette in 1938 in a very similar style to the original structure. The facade is made of Maine granite; the same material was used on an early-2020s annex. The first story is rusticated, while the upper stories have a colonnade of engaged columns that flank recessed windows.
History
Before European colonization of modern-day New York City, the site was inhabited by the Lenape people. After the British established the Province of New York, the area became part of the "Thousand Acre Tract", owned by several English and Dutch settlers, in 1667. The tract was later subdivided; by 1745, the area had become part of the farm of Teunis Somarindyck (also spelled Somerindyke), running between 73rd and 77th streets. The land was further subdivided and resold in the 19th century. 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. This was in part because of the West Side's steep topography and its dearth of attractions compared with the East Side. Except for Central Park West (which opened as Eighth Avenue in 1816), streets in the area were not laid out and opened until after the 1850s. The block of 76th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue opened in 1861, while 77th Street to the north and 75th Street to the south opened in 1865 and 1869, respectively.
Major developments on the West Side were erected after the Ninth Avenue elevated line opened in 1879, providing direct access to Lower Manhattan, and after the American Museum of Natural History and the Dakota apartment building were constructed nearby in the 1870s and 1880s. The first phase of housing development in the West 76th Street Historic District began in 1887, when Leonard Beeckman helped finance two rows of houses on opposite sides of the street. That July, George S. Walgrove filed architectural plans for nine houses at numbers 40–56 West 76th Street and six houses at numbers 27–37. The property owners agreed to a restrictive covenant in 1890, which dictated the massing and design of future buildings on these lots.