The Manhassett Apartments

This stylistically unique building is one of the few apartment buildings in Manhattan that has a mansard roof without the usually curlicues and curvature aping Paris. Today, the pre-air-conditioning awnings you see below are gone and that nice unified storefront is all broken up into a riot of styles. Still, this building is so highly regarded locally that it was explicitly used as the stylistic inspiration for the new Columbia faculty apartment building going up kitty-corner at 110th St. There was a horrible grease-fueled fire, which rocketed up 90-year old chimney flues and burned out several apartments above, in a restaurant at the northeast corner in 1998. The floorplan at bottom shows how these apartments have long corridors, regarded as a waste of space from the early days of apartment design. In 2000, the exterior of this building is still undergoing a restoration that will, as the years patinate, eventually restore the copper decoration on its roof to the green it should be from the tarred black it had become. Kudos to the board for paying to fix it properly!

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