23 Beekman Place, also the Paul Rudolph Apartment & Penthouse, is an apartment building between 50th and 51st streets in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Built as a five-story brownstone residence, it was substantially redesigned in the late 20th century by Paul Rudolph, an American architect and one-time dean of Yale University. It is one of the few known projects Rudolph designed in the city.
The house is part of a secluded residential enclave surrounding Beekman Place. It consists of the original brownstone residence, along with a four-story steel skeletal penthouse with concrete wall panels, which is cantilevered slightly over the street. The rear walls contain full-width windows with East River views, while the interiors contain high ceilings and open floor plans. Throughout his occupancy at the building, from the 1960s to 1990s, Rudolph constantly adjusted the interior layout. The penthouse originally received negative feedback from neighbors, who expressed concerns that it would draw excessive attention to the area and that it would block their own views of the river.
The building was originally a brownstone along with the other structures in the area. In the first half of the 20th century, it was occupied by actress Katharine Cornell and director and producer Guthrie McClintic, who were married. Starting in 1961, Rudolph leased a fourth-story apartment at 23 Beekman Place, and he ultimately bought the entire building outright in 1976. Following that, Rudolph redeveloped the building from 1977 to 1982, constructing the steel penthouse above the existing masonry apartments. After Rudolph died in 1997, the building was sold to the Boyd family and then to Steven Campus, who both renovated the interior. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the house as a landmark in 2010.
Site The Paul Rudolph Apartment & Penthouse is at 23 Beekman Place in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is along the eastern sidewalk of Beekman Place, between 50th Street to the south and 51st Street to the north. The building has an area of , a frontage of along Beekman Place, and a depth of . According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the building has a gross floor area of .
The land at 23 Beekman Place was once part of the country estate of James Beekman, a descendant of Dutch colonist Willem Beekman. Beekman Place, running two blocks from 49th to 51st Street, was laid out in the 1860s and was originally flanked by four-story brownstone residences. It had developed as a residential enclave because the topography was higher compared to the rest of the neighborhood. With the surge of immigration from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century, the area's well-off residents gave way to impoverished workers employed in the East River's coal yards, although Beekman Place's rehabilitation began in the 1920s.
Architecture 23 Beekman Place is designed as two distinct parts: the original five-story masonry structure, as well as a four-story penthouse addition over the front and back of the building. The original building comprises the slightly depressed first story and the second through fourth stories. The penthouse consists of the sixth through ninth stories. The west facade faces Beekman Place and is visible from 50th Street, and the east facade overlooks the FDR Drive and the East River.
The original structure, dating from the 1860s, was redesigned in the late 20th century by architect Paul Rudolph, a former chairman of Yale University's School of Architecture. Rudolph completed at least five other buildings in the city. In his late career, Rudolph designed buildings in Southeast Asia, and his renovation of 23 Beekman Place included some aspects of these projects. Rudolph’s style was considered within the "second generation" modernists, and he generally respected pre-existing styles, including the structure of the existing brownstone at 23 Beekman Place. While technically an alteration, 23 Beekman Place is among New York City's few remaining structures designed by architects or artists as their own residences. Within Turtle Bay, other examples include the Morris B. Sanders Apartment and Lescaze House.
Facade Rudolph experimented with industrial materials, such as concrete, even though he did not use it as a primary material in some of his major works. The penthouse was made of steel, the exposed sections of which he painted brown, thereby contrasting against the lighter concrete facade of the base. The concrete panels themselves were light in color, similar to the base.
Base The first story, slightly depressed beneath sidewalk level, contains a rusticated-stone facade and three round-arched openings. The northernmost opening, on the left of the Beekman Place facade, contains an entrance doorway and is wider than the other two openings. The doorway is accessible by a set of steps descending from the sidewalk. The keystone above the doorway contains a lamp made of metal and glass, which in turn has decorative reliefs on either side of it. The entrance contains an arch, wood-paneled door designed in the Adamesque style, along with an arched transom surrounding the door. In front of the first story on Beekman Place, there are four columns surrounding a black-painted metal awning. The wall also has a plaque next to the door, as well as a camera next to the rightmost window.
On the west facade, there are three windows on each of the second through fifth stories. The windows on the second story consist of nine-over-nine windows, and the bottom portion of each window is covered by a short decorative metal railing. The third through fifth stories have double-hung windows with sills beneath them. Above each of the third-story windows are large keystones, which extend upward to a scalloped cornice running just beneath the fourth floor. The center window in each of the third through fifth stories has an air-conditioning unit underneath it. On the east facade of the first through fifth stories, there are balconies extending the full width of the house, overlooking the FDR Drive. The eastern part of the south facade at the fourth and fifth stories is visible from the southeast, with small rectangular windows on these stories.
Penthouse The penthouse, on the sixth through ninth stories, consists of metal panels and steel I-beams, as well as concrete-panel walls. Along the west side of the house, the penthouse cantilevers about over Beekman Place. The bottom of the cantilever has a grate on the left (north) and an empty opening on the right (south). The north and south walls of the cantilever have several concrete panels each while the west wall has one large concrete panel. The cantilever's roof contains a terrace on the south side and a staircase between the seventh and eighth floors on the north side. The cantilever was meant to provide extra space for the guest room, as well as for the terrace staircase, but it also served to increase privacy for the top floors. The cantilever was unusual for the largely residential area around it, although Rudolph had often included cantilevers in his previous work. As he had written in 1954, Rudolph disliked the "tyranny of the endless streets" and wished for some designs to overhang the street to create an aesthetic point of interest.
The rear of the penthouse contains full-width balconies facing the FDR Drive, similar to those at the base. The eastern end of the sixth floor's south wall contains a small rectangular window, visible from the southeast, while the eastern end of the seventh floor's south wall contains a wide rectangular window separated by vertical mullions and glass panes. The eastern end of the penthouse's northern facade is partially visible and consists of a steel frame. The cantilevers of the penthouse were meant to resemble a "floating platform" overlooking the East River. The penthouse has five levels of terraces, which Rudolph hung with plants and other greenery to blunt the effect of the steel frame. According to one of his associates, Rudolph initially struggled to create a satisfactory arrangement of vegetation, but the plants were "full and abundant" before he died. In total, there are six terraces.
The penthouse includes one terrace with a metal-grating floor overhanging the street several stories below, in what Progressive Architecture magazine called "a gantry from nowhere". William Grindereng, who once stayed in Rudolph's apartment while the latter was on a trip, found the views to be "really scary". According to Grindereng, "I mentioned this to Rudolph when he came back. He said, 'Yes, I’m afraid to go out there myself.'"
Interior When Rudolph moved into the house in the 1960s, he configured his fourth-floor apartment with mirrors, exposed lighting, and curtains composed of plastic discs. Three windows at the rear of the fourth floor were combined into one large window. The curtains consisted of nylon wires with disk mirrors, which allowed the illumination of the interior to be shown at night, while making it nearly invisible from the outdoors during the day. Rudolph also installed a grand piano in front of the entrance to his apartment. To further personalize his space, he installed part of a billboard along one wall of his bedroom, as well as posters from gasoline companies along his kitchen wall. Rudolph also built his own bookshelves; installed plastic furniture, panels, and doors to give a united character to his small apartment; and decorated his spaces in white. His living room had a cantilevered seating platform, and his furnishings included kid-fur carpets as well as transparent-glass-topped tables. Low cantilevered platforms in his living room had lighting beneath, giving the impression that the platforms were floating.
In the 1970s, Rudolph greatly redesigned the entire house and built the penthouse. During this renovation, he installed beige-carpeted floors and platforms, with plastic-tube lighting inlaid in the floors and bookshelves. The fireplace in his bedroom was also clad with mirrors. In the upper stories was a Jacuzzi, the bottom of which contained a skylight looking down some . In the guest bedroom, the sink contains a skylight looking down into another bedroom, while the shower stall has glass doors that open onto a balcony above the street. Rudolph likened the shiny spaces to "living in a milk bottle". Rudolph largely eschewed furniture, opting instead for built-in furnishings, such as a daybed with pillows that could be attached to springs. The primary materials used were painted brown steel, metal beams, concrete panels, acrylic, and mylan. When contractors renovated the building in the 1970s, they found a piece of sheetrock with the words , referring to the melamine used in the kitchen and likely dating to his 1960s fittings.