The Belnord is a condominium building at 225 West 86th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The 13-story structure was designed by Hiss and Weekes in the Italian Renaissance Revival style and occupies the full block between Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue, and 86th and 87th Streets. It was built between 1908 and 1909 by a syndicate of investors as a rental apartment building. The Belnord is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The building occupies a nearly rectangular site and has a limestone and brick facade, which is divided horizontally into three sections. On 86th Street, a pair of arches at the center of the facade lead to an internal courtyard with a garden, driveway, and entrances to the apartments. The Belnord contains six entrances, each of which lead to a different set of apartments, and originally had a mechanical plant in the basement, as well as amenities such as horse stables and storage rooms. The building originally had 175 apartments, which were designed in the Louis XVI style. The apartments generally had multiple rooms and faced both the courtyard and the street. By the 1940s, the building had 225 units; this was further increased to 231 condominium units by the late 2010s. The design of the apartments dates to a 2010s renovation by Robert A. M. Stern.
A group of investors acquired the site from the Hoyt family in 1908 and developed the Belnord there. When the building was completed in October 1909, it was characterized as the United States' largest apartment building. The Belnord was sold multiple times in the 1920s before being acquired by the City Bank-Farmers Trust Company in 1935. The bank sold the building in 1945, and the Belnord fell into disrepair during the next several decades. Between the 1970s and 1990s, the tenants were involved in multiple disputes with then-owner Lillian Seril, and many residents refused to pay rent because of the Belnord's poor condition. Property Markets Group and Gary Barnett bought the Belnord in 1994, and Barnett spent over $100 million on renovations. Barnett's Extell Development Company sold the apartments in 2015 to the HFZ Capital Group, which converted many apartments to condominium units starting in 2017. Westbrook Partners took over the project by early 2021 and had sold 80% of the units by the next year.
Site The Belnord is located at 225 West 86th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. It occupies the entirety of a city block bounded by Broadway to the west, 87th Street to the north, Amsterdam Avenue to the east, and 86th Street to the south. The building is cited as having frontage of approximately on Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, on 86th Street, and on 87th Street. The site is variously cited as covering , , or ; the New York City Department of City Planning cites the plot as covering .
The building is opposite the West-Park Presbyterian Church to the east and St. Paul's Methodist Church to the west. An entrance to the New York City Subway's 86th Street station, serving the , is directly outside the southwestern corner of the building. The Belnord is one of a few full-block apartment buildings in New York City, with its structure occupying about two-thirds of its site and a center courtyard making up the balance. The Belnord's arrangement is similar to that of the Apthorp, another large apartment building on Broadway and 79th Street built during the early 20th century.
Architecture The Belnord was designed by H. Hobart Weekes of the architectural firm of Hiss and Weekes, and it was completed in 1909. It is 13 stories tall and features Italian Renaissance Revival style decorative elements. The architect boasted to The New York Times that it was the "largest apartment building in the country, and maybe the world." Its design features, such as an interior courtyard, bay windows, and large apartments, were intended to evoke those of the Dakota apartment building and to attract wealthy tenants who had been unable to move to it. The George A. Fuller Company was the general contractor for the Belnord's construction. The modern design of the interior dates to a 2010s renovation by Robert A. M. Stern.
Form and facade The facade is divided horizontally into three sections: a five-story base, a seven-story shaft, and a one-story upper portion. The first three stories of the base have a rusticated limestone facade, above which is a horizontal band course. The fourth and fifth stories are clad with brick and are topped by another band course. The facade of the midsection is also made of brick, except at the corners, which contain vertically arranged quoins. The outermost bays are wider than the others on the facade and are flanked by the quoins. A third band course runs above the twelfth floor. The top story contains decorative panels between each window; above it is a cornice with dentils. The windows are of varying sizes and contain classical decoration. The interior facade, facing the courtyard, is made of terracotta and brick.
Entrances and courtyard
The Belnord contains two entrances, one each on 86th and 87th Street, which lead to six residential lobbies. The main entrance is via two massive, double-height grand archways on 86th Street, which lead to an interior courtyard. There are keystones with cartouches above each archway. The undersides of the archways contain barrel-vaulted ceilings and multicolored frescoes, as well as three lanterns. The writer Elizabeth Hawes said the barrel vault "amounted to an architectural rite of passage", separating the enclosed courtyard from the wide-open cityscape.
The courtyard is one of the largest in the city and was, at the time of its construction, the largest interior court in the world. It measures long and is either or wide. A driveway leads to the courtyard; the driveway was originally paved in oak blocks as a sound-damping measure. Inside the courtyard are three landscaped gardens, including a small garden surrounded by an iron fence and illuminated by a dozen ornamental street lamps. The garden was decorated with shrubs and trees, and has a center fountain. Early 20th-century photographs of the courtyard indicate that it contained four small patches of grass with a skylight in the middle. There are entrances to the courtyard at each corner of the building. Originally, there were six, with one on the north side of the courtyard and the other between the two driveways to the south.
The 87th Street side contained a wide driveway which lead to a service area under the courtyard. When the building opened, all delivery vehicles were required to use it to keep freight traffic away from 86th Street, a major thoroughfare. Elevators carried freight from the service area to a vestibule just outside each room.
Features
Mechanical features The basement accommodated dozens of mechanical staff. The Belnord originally had its own mechanical plant in the basement, which was placed directly beneath the courtyard to minimize vibrations within each apartment. The pump and engine room contained three generators, each with a total capacity of . The boiler room contained four boilers, each of which was capable of ; these boilers provided all of the building's steam. There was a coal bunker next to the boiler room. The refrigeration room contained an ice machine with a capacity of 25 tons, as well as a vacuum-cleaning system. An electric motor ventilated air from the basement; the apartments originally did not have a ventilation system.
The Belnord drew cold water from the New York City water supply system, which was then pumped up to the roof. There was a reserve tank on the roof with a capacity of , as well as three other water towers. The building initially contained 14 hydraulic elevators, of which eight were for freight and six were for passengers. The Belnord had the same number of passenger and freight elevators after its condominium conversion. There were also emergency staircases with fire hoses on each story. In addition, there was a telephone switchboard made of Vermont marble, measuring .
The modern-day condominium building contains service rooms, such as mechanical, plumbing, and electrical rooms, in its two basements, ground level, and roof. The Belnord is served by the city's gas supply system and power grid, although the building produces its own steam using boilers in the sub-basement. Although the apartments formerly used window-mounted air conditioners, some of the apartments have been connected to the building's central air system.
Amenities and common spaces Originally, each of the building's lobbies was wide. The ground story was initially arranged as dentists' and physicians' offices; two of the ground-level offices were part of duplex apartments with living spaces on the second floor. The ground story contained 17 storefronts by 1921. Each tenant had a storage room in the basement. There were horse stables in the basement as well, beneath the courtyard. The roof contained private laundry rooms. There was a laundry room at each corner of the building; each laundry room had 36 washtubs, as well as a private dryer for each tenant.
After the 2010s renovation, the Belnord contained about of amenities. These included dining areas and a private lounge for residents. The lounge contains several groups of seating, as well as a set of doors that can split the lounge into two spaces. The ground story contains mailboxes for each apartment, a small laundry room, and a playroom with an attached kitchen. There are also two bicycle storage rooms and a small fitness center. On the upper stories, the vestibules were clad with mosaic tiles. Many of the original design details were preserved in the 2010s renovation, including floor vestibules with mosaic tiles. Stern also installed black-and-white decorations within the public spaces, which were inspired by Dorothy Draper's original decorations for the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side. These decorations included marble vestibules, white hallways, and black apartment doors.
Residences
The Belnord originally contained 175 or 176 rental apartments, each of which contained up to 11, 12, or 14 rooms. Each floor above the first-floor mezzanine typically contained 16 apartments. The building was initially divided into six sections, each with two to four apartments per floor; each section was served by its own set of elevators. To minimize the amount of space that was occupied by corridors, the elevator lobbies on each floor connected directly with the apartments on that floor. Although many apartments contained bedrooms for servants, the top story contained additional servants' quarters, with hardwood floors, cement walls, and bathrooms. By the 1940s, the servants' rooms on the upper stories had been subdivided, and the Belnord contained 225 apartments. When the Belnord was converted to condominiums in the late 2010s, it was divided into 231 units. The first 95 condos, with two to five bedrooms each, were sold beginning in 2018.
Originally, servants' rooms, bedrooms, and family rooms were generally separated. Each apartment was deep, facing both the street and the courtyard. Many apartments had a library, dining room, and parlor. The bedrooms and servants' rooms typically faced the courtyard, which was wider than the neighboring section of 86th Street. Family rooms such as living rooms, parlors, dining rooms, and kitchens faced the street. In general, each apartment was accessed by a large foyer. The foyer led to a parlor and dining room that were connected to one another. A kitchen, butler's pantry, and servants' bedrooms were next to the dining room. Another corridor led perpendicularly from the foyer to the bedrooms. On average, each apartment had two to four bathrooms and two or three servants' bedrooms. Each apartment also had large closets.