The Century is an apartment building at 25 Central Park West, between 62nd and 63rd Streets, adjacent to Central Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It was constructed from 1930 to 1931 at a cost of $6.5 million and designed by the firm of Irwin S. Chanin in the Art Deco style. The Century 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 lowest 19 stories surround an interior 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 ground story, and much of the second story, is clad with an ochre-colored stone facade and contains a water table of pink granite. The remainder of the facade is largely made of tan brick, with multi-paned windows, though some portions of the facade are clad with brown brick. There are shallow bow windows on Central Park West, as well as enclosed solariums at the northeast and southeast corners. When the building opened, it operated much like a short-term hotel with housekeeping and catering services, and it had 417 apartments and 1,688 rooms.
The Century was officially completed at the end of December 1931. Numerous entertainment and business tenants have lived in the building over the years, and Irwin Chanin lived in the building for over a half-century. The Century was purchased in 1982 by a consortium that proposed the next year to convert the building into a housing cooperative; the consortium withdrew the plan and a tenant–landlord dispute continued for several years. Most of the building was converted to condominiums in 1989, and the Century remained a luxury residential apartment building through the beginning of the 21st century.
Site The Century is at 25 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 62nd Street to the south and 63rd Street to the north. The Century Apartments occupies a rectangular land lot with an area of . The land lot has a frontage of along Central Park West and each along 62nd and 63rd Streets. 15 Central Park West is immediately to the south, the Society for Ethical Culture School and 5 West 63rd Street are to the north, and Central Park is to the east.
The current apartment building replaced the Century Theatre (originally the New Theatre) at 25 Central Park West. The New Theatre, which had opened in 1909 to designs by Carrère and Hastings, was initially backed by many wealthy New Yorkers but it quickly became unprofitable. The theater had an ornate gray-and-gold interior with carvings and marble surfaces, as well as a large stairway and foyer. While the Century Theatre was architecturally acclaimed, its production history was marked by failures. The theater's original tenant had moved out within two years of the theater's opening, and the theater hosted flops and revivals for most of its history. 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.Central Park West Historic District , National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, New York's State and National Registers of Historic Places Document Imaging Project, New York State Historic Preservation Office. Retrieved 2 April 2007. It is 30 stories tall. The Century Apartments was Chanin's second Art Deco residential building; he also developed the Majestic several blocks north in the same 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. The Art Deco structures contrast with the Beaux-Arts buildings that surround them. 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. The Century's original design survives almost in its entirety, except for some modifications to the upper stories.
Form
At the Century's 19-story base, the building's massing, or shape, fills its lot line on the north, east, and south, and there is an interior courtyard. Two wings on the western section of the site, one each on 62nd and 63rd Street, flank the interior courtyard. The wings step down, as required by the 1916 Zoning Resolution and the Multiple Dwelling Act, and are arranged in four tiers. The inner courtyard measures wide from west to east. Above the 19th story, two towers rise from the eastern portion of the base. The towers are approximately tall. The Century is one of four buildings on Central Park West with a twin-towered form; the others are the Majestic, 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 Century, 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 ground story contains an ochre facade of stone above a water table of pink granite. Much of the second story, except for the section directly above the main entrance on Central Park West, is also faced in stone. Above the ground story, the building is largely clad with tan brick, which was intended to be similar to the color of limestone. The building contains a limited amount of ornamentation, which is mostly concentrated around major design elements such as the entrances, the setbacks, and the tops of the towers.
Lower section
The main entrance is in the middle of the Central Park West elevation and is surrounded by a pink granite doorway with vertical quoins and horizontal molded blocks. The main doors contain Art Deco grilles made of white metal, surrounded by a metal frame. The rest of the ground story contains doorways to individual ground-floor offices. The southeast and northeast corners of the building contain doorways that lead to storefronts; the doorways are part of the original design, but the storefronts were added after the building opened. The storefront entrance from the southeast corner, facing Central Park West and 62nd Street, is chamfered; the apartments are cantilevered above it.
Above the second story, there are six bays of shallow bow windows on the Central Park West elevation. The six bays are arranged in a 1-2-2-1 pattern, dividing the Central Park West elevation vertically into five "pavilions". Metal mullions divide each bow window vertically into five sections with movable casements. The bow windows on different floors are separated horizontally by rust-colored spandrels, which contain angled bricks that roughly correspond with the metal mullions in each window. There are concrete sills beneath each window, as well as brick lintel bands above. The bow windows are slightly below the other windows on each floor, since the living rooms behind them were sunken below the rest of the apartments.
In the three middle pavilions on Central Park West, the windows on each floor are separated vertically by darker brown brick (except for the bow windows on either end of the facade, which are flanked by light brick). On the 2nd through 15th stories, the central pavilion has two double-casement windows on each floor, which share a concrete sill. On the 3rd through 15th stories, the second-from-center pavilions (on either side of the central pavilion) have one double casement window and two single-casement windows on each floor. The corners of the building are clad entirely in tan brick. The corners are outfitted with windows wrapping around the edge at a 90-degree angle, which Chanin referred to as solariums. The corner windows rise to the 17th story.
The 62nd and 63rd Street wings are shorter than the main section of the building. Where the wings step down, the roofline contains cantilevered terraces with Art Deco chevron designs on their balustrades. The 62nd and 63rd Street elevations are largely faced in tan brick. On each elevation, there are three groups of two bays that contain rust-colored brick spandrels. There are secondary entrances to the residential wings on either street. Service entrances with Art Deco designs are placed on the westernmost section of either frontage. The facade of the inner courtyard is visible from a private plaza to the west and is faced in tan brick similar to the rest of the facade. Chanin believed that, since the courtyard and street facades were in the same style, residents would not experience the sensation of living around a dark courtyard.
Upper stories The 16th through 19th stories are designed as "transitional stories" and contain cantilevered terraces with Art Deco chevron designs on their balustrades. Above the 19th story rise the towers, which are mostly clad in tan brick. The corners of each tower contain light-brown bands, while the four center windows on each of the towers' elevations contain geometric brick patterns. The windows in the towers are similar to those on the lower floors. On Central Park West, some of the original ornamentation has been removed at the 20th and 21st stories.
Above the 30th story of each of the apartment towers is a water tower with vertical buttresses. There are concrete slabs with vertical grooves on each side of either water tower. The northern tower's northwest corner and the southern tower's southwest corner also contain horizontal grooves. The southern tower's grooves were removed at some point and subsequently restored. Promotional materials for the Century proclaimed: "Towers, roofs and terraces make the building as interesting from the air as from the street".
Features When the building opened, it operated much like a short-term hotel with housekeeping and catering services. The Century also had a valet service; a laundry; a private restaurant; and storage spaces for fur, silverware, and jewelry. The vestibules, foyers, and elevator lobbies were decorated in the Art Deco style. The lobby also contained a painting by Frank Stella, which was commissioned in 1970 and installed on the suggestion of Irwin Chanin's daughter Doris Freedman. About of steel was used in the Century's structural frame. The floor slabs were cantilevered from heavy central columns. The cantilevered floor slabs allowed the inclusion of the solariums at each corner, since there were no corner columns like in typical buildings.