New York Songlines: 86th Street

South:

The Clarendon

Corner (137 Riverside): The 11-story Clarendon was built in 1906, and publisher William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951) moved into the top three floors the following year. When the building owner balked at Hearst's request to buy two more floors, the media mogul bought the whole building. The suite he assembled included a three-story Gothic Hall to display his collection of armor and tapestries. When his affair with Marion Davies attracted the attention of rival papers, he built a bridge to an adjoining building on 86th Street so he could exit the building without confronting reporters.

His wife Millicent Willson Hearst continued living here after the couple separated, entertaining the likes of Winston Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt. By 1940, with the Hearst empire in financial disarray, the building was foreclosed and the vast apartment subdivided into more rentable units.

Hollywood couple Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick have lived here.

340: Netherland Condominiums

324: Siddha Yoga Meditation Ashram \

310: Movie producer Samuel Goldwyn moved here in 1917, when he was still Sam Goldfish, and before he became the G in MGM.

Corner (535 West End): The title character of the movie Dr. Strange lives here when he is still a successful surgeon and not yet a master of the mystic arts.

Learn EF Academy, English language school, is here in real life.

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North:

The Normandy

Corner (140 Riverside): Moderne apartment building from 1938 by Emery Roth, who designed the similarly twin-towered San Remo and Beresford. Not named for the Normandy landings, which happened six years after this building was built, but for the Normandie, a stylish French ocean liner that caused a sensation when it first arrived in New York after crossing the Atlantic in four days in 1935.

Residents here have included Herman Wouk, who later authored The Caine Mutiny; Herman Steinlauf, founder of Herman's Sporting Goods; advertising exec Jerry Della Femina; sports stadium subsidy critic Neil deMause; and Morris "Dimples" Wolensky, gambler and Murder Inc. bodyguard who was murdered in 1942 at a Times Square bridge club. Also here are the offices of the Association for Psychohistory.

345: Dexter House, hostel. In 2017, then-landlord Jay Wartski was accused of spraying pesticides into tenants' apartments in an effort to drive them out.

333: Atria West 86, assisted living facility

315: Great Small Works, theater

Corner (545 West End: The Florence, 16-story Italian Renaissance-style apartment building from 1924

South:

Corner (530 West End): Spanish Renaissance highrise from 1912, by Mulliken & Moeller.

250: Crossbar, soccer-themed coffeeshop

Euclid Hall

Corner (2345 Broadway): Euclid Hall, seven-story apartment building from 1902, designed by Hill & Turner in a dignified Beaux Arts style. The building has more than its share of mysteries, including a series of arson attacks in 1910, a 1916 burglar invasion foiled by a 14-year-old girl, and a savage stabbing death in 1945.

By 1980, when the building was bought by the West Side Federation for Senior Housing, it was in a sad state of disrepair. The group's renovation was opposed by some neighbors, who feared its plans to provide housing to people with "histories of mental illness and substance abuse.” Such fears proved overblown, and today the building looks great.

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North:

263 (corner): Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew; built as St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church in 1895-97 to an RH Robertson design. The AIA Guide calls it "a startling work" in a French neo-Classical vein.

The church building also houses the West Side Campaign Against Hunger, a food, and the off-Broadway West End Theatre.

257: Built in 1909, this 14-story Italianate apartment building was designed to cater to artists—like landscape painter Franklin DeHaven and newspaper illustrator Dan Smith— with many of the 41 apartments duplexes with double-height studio space. It also attracted more than its fair share of musicians, writers and movie folk--the most prominent of whom was Robert Duvall.

Corner (2373 Broadway): The Boulevard, 22-story apartment building from 1988.


86TH STREET (IRT BROADWAY) STATION:
1 to 79th Street

South:

Corner (2350 Broadway): Bretton Hall, a 1903 Beaux Arts building of 13 floors, built as a residential hotel. It was designed by prolific hotel architect Harry B. Mulliken.

200 (corner): The St Germaine, a 21-story Art Deco apartment building from 1929.

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The Belnord

225 (block): Completed 1909 to an H. Hobart Weekes design; said at the time to be the largest apartment building in the US. Apartments are only accessible from the vast central garden court. Among its more prominent tenants have been Nobel Prize writer Isaac Bashevis Singer, who lived and wrote here from 1962 until 1987; actors Walter Matthau and Zero Mostel; acting teacher Lee Strasberg, who gave Marilyn Monroe lessons here; and photographer Bruce Davidson.

The Belnord appears as the Arconia, the titular building in the TV show Only Murders in the Building.

South:

176 (corner): The Packard, an 11-story red-brick apartment building from 1985.

160: Westbury House, a 21-story red-brick apartment building from 1998, in a post-modern style.

100 (corner): A five-story Queen Anne building from 1887, designed by John G. Prague. Used to be called The Amy.

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North:

165 (corner): West Park Presbyterian Church, handsome if dour Romanesque Revival. The chapel, by Chapel, 1884, Leopold Eidlitz, dates to 1884; Henry F. Kilburn's sanctuary is from 1890.

161: Broadway songwriter Richard Rogers moved to the fifth floor here in 1911, when he was nine, and moved out in 1929, at the age of 27, years into his collaboration with lyricist Lorenz Hart.

131: The Jewish Center is a prominent Orthodox Jewish synagogue founded in 1918. Its first rabbi, Mordechai Kaplan, left in 1922 over religious differences, and went on to found the Reconstructionist movement. His replacement, Leo Jung, was influential in the Modern Orthodox tendency.

101 (corner): The Ormonde is a five-story red-brick apartment building, built by John Prague in a Queen Anne/Renaissance Revival style. It was the scene of an elaborate NYPD undercover operation in August 12, 1895, that broke up a stolen violin ring.

South:

76 (corner): The Sterling, six-story neo-Renaissance building by Mulliken & Moeller from 1906.

50: A five-story townhouse built in 1907 for Sarah Harris, designed by Neville & Bagge. It was owned (but not lived in) by bandleader King Curtis from 1963 until 1971, when he was fatally stabbed by someone he asked to get off the stoop. In the early 1980s, Tom Cruise was the super here. Robert Downey Jr. and Sarah Jessica Parker, then a couple, lived in the penthouse in 1989, and Hank Azaria later lived here as well; the success of its residents gave it the nickname the Good Luck Building.

18: 1905 Beaux Arts townhouse renovated for use by the Bard College Graduate Center.

10: Actor Christine Lahti has lived here.

Corner (257 CPW): The Orwell House apartment building was built in 1905-06 as the Central Park View, later the Hotel Peter Stuyvesant. Designed by Mulliken & Moeller in a Beaux Arts style. Actor Bea Arthur, soul singer Jimmy Radcliffe and reporter Sue Simmons have lived here. The building was featured in movies like Fame (1980) and Other People's Money (1991).


86TH STREET (IND 8TH AVE) STATION:
B/C to 81st Street

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North:

61 (corner): The Elliott, five stories built c. 1900.

57: Five-story Art Deco building from 1929.

47: Actor/songwriter George M Cohan lived in this five-story white stone townhouse, built 1896 in the Georgian Revival style.

15: The Society for the Advancement of Judaism, the first Reconstructionist synagogue, was founded in 1922 by Mordecai Kaplan after he parted with the Jewish Center. The SAJ held the first bat mitzvah in the US in 1922, for Kaplan's daughter Judith. SAJ's cantor Moshe Nathanson is said to have written the words to "Hava Nagila."

The Calvary Baptist Church held services here after its building on 57th Street was torn down.

7: Bon vivant Diamond Jim Brady moved to a four-story townhouse in 1902, one of a set of four from 5-11. It was "ornately furnished," the New York Times noted when it was torn down in 1937, with a "huge billiard room" in the basement with "roulette wheels and other gambling devices." But it was most notable for "the vast arrray of articles of clothing with Mr. Brady always had on hand."

5: A 20-story Moderne apartment building from 1937.

Corner (262 CPW): This building, called The White House, was home to songwriter Yip Harburg (1896-1981) towards the end of his life. He turned to songwriting after his appliance company was bankrupted by the Great Depression, with "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" his first hit. Other standards he wrote include "April in Paris," "It's Only a Paper Moon" and "Over the Rainbow."

"Yip" was short for Yipsel, his adopted middle name; that was members of the Young People's Socialist League were called, though Harburg said it meant "squirrel."


86TH STREET (IND 8TH AVE) STATION:
1 to 96th Street

South:

Arguably the greatest work of art in all of human history. I have been known to make that argument, anyway.

An 853-acre expanse of green in the middle of Manhattan, it's the most-visited public park in the world, with 25 million visitors annually. Responding to calls from civic leaders like William Cullen Bryant, the city acquired the land in 1853 and held a design contest in 1857, choosing the Greensward Plan of Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux (rhymes with "Walks"). After the moving of 3 million tons of earth and the planting of 270,000 trees and shrubs, the park—almost entirely landscaped, despite its naturalistic appearance—opened to visitors in 1859 (though not officially completed until 1873).

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North:

Seneca Village Site

The creation of the park destroyed a mainly African-American village located from 89th to 82nd streets, between 8th and 7th avenues. Founded in 1825, two years before New York state abolished slavery, it was the city's only concentration of Black landowners; it also welcomed Irish famine refugees and a few German immigrants in the late 1840s. It may have been named for the Roman philosopher Seneca, for the Native American nation that was part of the Iroquois Confederacy, or for the West African nation of Senegal.

By the time the village was seized through eminent domain in 1857, it had a population of some 225 people, with three churches, two schools and three cemeteries. It's unclear where the displaced community members ended up; some may have gone to Staten Island or New Jersey.

Several historical markers discussing the village's history are found in this section of the park.

South:

Arthur Ross Pinetum

Central Park Police Precinct

East Pinetum

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North:

Onassis Reservoir

The Reservoir is surrounded by a running track, which has been used by such luminairies as Onassis, Bill Clinton and Madonna, and featured in films like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Marathon Man and Hannah and Her Sisters. Surrounding the track is a bridle path—used mainly by runners who prefer dirt to gravel.

South Gatehouse

South:

E <===         TO E 84TH ST

Ancient Playground

Egyptian-inspired play equipment, evoking the nearby Temple of Dendur at the Met.

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North:

South:

Neue Galerie

Corner (1048 5th): This six-story Louis XIII-style townhouse was designed by Carrere and Hastings for William Starr Miller (1856-1935), a lawyer and industrialist who married Edith Warren (1866-1944), the sister of architect Whitney Warren, who lived on the same block. Their daughter was Edith Starr Miller, a far-right conspiracy theorist who married Almeric Paget, Lord Queenborough, here in 1921.

After Edith Warren Miller's death, the house was bought by Grace Vanderbilt (1870-1953), widow of Cornelius Vanderbilt III and grand dame of New York society, who had been forced to sell her palatial mansion to the Astors, and referred to this place as "the gardener's cottage."

The house next became the home of YIVO, the world's largest Yiddish-language archive, now located on West 16th Street.

In 1994, it was purchased by cosmetics tycoon Ronald Lauder, who opened the Neue Gallerie New York here in 2001, a museum of early 20th century German and Austrian art, featuring works by artists like Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and George Grosz. When Lauder purchased Klimt's Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I for the museum in 2006 for a reported $135 million, it set a record for the highest price paid for a painting. The museum is a tribute to Lauder's late friend, the art dealer Serge Sabarsky. (cc photo: Mark Hinchman)

2: Though it goes by 1049 Fifth Avenue, this 23-story beige-brick building is not actually on the avenue; its owners successfully appealed for an address change in 1991 on the grounds that you could see Central Park from many of its windows.

It was built in 1928 as the Hotel Adams. Otto Rank, Freud's protege, lived and practiced therapy here. He had an affair with writer Anais Nin, whom he taught psychoanalysis to; she also saw patients here. Hector Guimard, one of the primary artists of the Art Nouveau movement, died in obscurity here in 1942 (AATT). Novelist P.G. Wodehouse stayed here in 1947-48, as did playwright Arthur Miller in 1960 after his separation from Marilyn Monroe.

Right-wing broadcaster Rush Limbaugh bought a penthouse here in 1994. He sold it and left town in 2010, a year after New York state adopted an income tax surcharge on wealthy individuals (NNY).

12 (corner): The Croydon, 15-story apartment building designed by Schwartz & Gross in 1923. Songwriter Harold Arlen moved here in the early 1930s, when it was a residential hotel called the Croydon Hotel.

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North:

Corner (1050 5th Ave): A 19-story beige-brick apartment building from 1960, built by Bernard Spitzer, father of the former governor. It appears as Elizabeth Taylor's apartment building in the film Butterfield 8.

It replaced 1054 Fifth Avenue, the home of financier Bernard Baruch, an advisor to presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who lived here from the 1920s until 1946 (NNY). His friend Winston Churchill would sometimes stay with him here.

Also on this footprint was the 40-room mansion, built in 1917, of Sarah Mae Caldwell Manwaring Plant Hayward Rovensky, who lived here with three of her four husbands.

9: William Woodward, president of the Hanover bank, had this mansion built in 1916, a neo-Georgian design by Delano & Aldrich with one recessed bay, giving the illusion of a detached home. Woodward was a prominent horse-breeder, with his stables producing two Triple Crown winners. His son William Jr. was fatally shot by his wife—apparently accidentally—a tragedy that inspired Truman Capote's novel Answered Prayers, Dominick Dunne's The Two Mrs. Grenvilles and the miniseries Feud. After Woodward Sr.'s death in 1956, the mansion became home to the Town Club, known for its high-stakes card games; armed robbers crashed a gin rummy game here in 1971 and made off with $100,000. When the club sold off the building in 2001, it was bought by an even higher-stakes gambler: hedge fund manager John Paulson, who bet against the housing bubble in 2007 and made $4 billion.

25 (corner): Sixteen stories of brown brick from 1929.

South:

Corner (1165 Madison): The Bellemont, 13-story luxury condo building from 2023, with just 12 units. Faced with Indiana limestone. Garin, clothing store, on ground floor.

74 (corner): Nineteen-story building from 1957.

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49 (corner: An 18-story Art Deco building from 1931. Novelist Louis Auchincloss lived here.

55: The Lipsenard, a 15-story building from 1924. Writer John O'Hara lived here from 1946 to 1949, his last New York home (NNY).

Corner (1040 Park): A handsome 1924 building designed by Delano & Aldrich, with 14 floors. A third-story frieze features tortoises chasing hares. Conde Nast, millionaire publisher of Vanity Fair, Vogue and House & Garden, lived in a lavish duplex on the top two floors, an apartment that popularized penthouses as the literal height of luxury. When he moved in in 1925, guests at his housewarming party included Fred Astaire, George Gershwin and Edna St. Vincent Millay. After he died here in 1942, his apartment was split into six units.

South:

Corner (1035 Park): A 15-story apartment building by Henry Pelton, built in 1925 to provide income for the church next door. Playwright and director George S Kaufman moved in the penthouse here in 1951, where he died in 1961. Actor Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, also died in his apartment here in 1967 (NNY).

106: The Park Avenue United Methodist Church was founded in 1837 as the Methodist Episcopal Church in Yorkville. It had several buildings and more than one location; the present structure was completed in 1927 to a design by Henry Pelton, who also designed Riverside Church (as well as the apartment building next door). The cover of KISS's Music From the Elder features a photo of the church's door.

112: Modern State, party supplies/toy store

130 (corner): This five-story building is said to have been built in 1920.

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North:

101 (corner): A 15-story Schwartz & Gross building from 1923.

103: Another Schwartz & Gross project, this one from 1914 with 13 floors. Author Nathaniel Benchley lived here; he wrote mainly children's books (e.g., Sam the Minuteman, Oscar Otter), though his grown-up book The Off-Islanders was made into the movie The Russians Are Coming. His motto was, "A craftsman is one who does what he is given to do better than others feel is necessary." Benchley's father was Robert Benchley of the Algonquin Round Table; his son Peter wrote Jaws.

Corner (120 E 87th): This building opened as Gimbels East in 1972; after the store went under, it was converted to apartments in 1989 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.


86TH STREET (IRT LEX) STATION:
6 to 77th Street
4/5 to 59th Street

South:

Corner (151 E 85th): The Lucida, greenish glass luxury building from 2009, by Cook + Fox.

Corner (185 E 85th): Park Lane Towers, a massive 35-story apartment building with 442 units, is the "deluxe apartment in the sky" featured in the sitcom The Jeffersons.

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Corner (1289 Lexington): The Hayworth, a modern 21-story apartment building from 2022, by HOK Architects.

179 (corner): This was the original location of Papaya King, opened in 1932 by Constantine "Gus" Poulos and popularizing a combination of cheap grilled hot dogs and frothy tropical fruit drinks. A billionaire bought this lot and forced the New York icon out in 2023; plans to open a new space nearby came to naught.

South:

Corner (205 E 85th): This neo-collegiate apartment building from 2009 is by Robert A.M. Stern with Ismael Leyva. It's on the corner of 3rd and 86th, but it has a spur that connects to 85th that's counted as the main entrance, since 85th is considered a classier address. (Who knew?)

206: Was Cafe Geiger

210: A movie theater opened here in 1904, known by 1914 as the Yorkville Casino Theatre, with 1,000 seats. In 1935 it reopened as the 600-seat 86th Street Casino Theatre, where many German-language imports had their premieres. It was remodeled as the 86th Street East Cinema in 1968; it went from one screen to two in 1987, and to four in 1999. City Cinemas, its last operator, closed it on May 10, 2019.

When the German-American Bund, an American Nazi group, marched from Carl Schurz Park to the Yorkville Casino to celebrate Hitler's birthday on April 20, 1938, the 3,000 fascists were met by a small group of Jewish mobsters led by Meyer Lansky—who thrashed the Nazis, putting some in the hospital. The Bund never entirely recovered from the antifa action.

222: Was the York Hotel, built c. 1910; later the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health. This building may not be long for this world.

230: Was Karl Ehmer Meats, noted German butcher shop

232: Was the Bavarian Inn.

234: Was Kleine Konditorei Café & Restaurant—German for "Little Pastry Shop."

238: Was Ideal Restaurant, German restaurant founded in 1932; moved down the street after a fire.

240: Was The Montgomery, a row of four-story tenements built in 1883. From 1933 to 1997, it housed Elk Candy, a German chocolate and marzipan shop, one of the last remnants of German Broadway.

244 (corner): The Manhattan, an early example of "French flats," apartments designed for middle-class living. Completed in 1880 to Charles Clinton's design. This was Mayor Robert F Wagner's childhood home.

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201 (corner): The Colorado, 35-story apartment building from 1987.

207: Was Cafe Wienecke, Austrian bar

225: Buckingham East, a 15-story condo building from 1983, designed by Stephen B. Jacobs; the AIA Guide likes its "Post-Baroque fun with windows." The building that used to be here housed Barney Google's, a restaurant and then a disco in the 1960s-'70s. It may have been the same space as Platzl, a German restaurant whose address was 225-227.

231: Site of the Lorelei, a German dance hall. In the 1980s it was a new wave club called The '80s, where the Soft Boys played a memorable show.

Corner (250 E 87th): The Newbury, 31 stories of apartments that went up in 1971.


86TH STREET (2ND AVE) STATION:
Q to 72th Street

First proposed in 1919, this station on the 2nd Avenue subway line finally opened in 2017—almost a century later.

South:

300 (corner): Was Gracie's Corner Diner from 2014-23, when it moved a block south.

304: 86th Stret Wine & Liquor

316: Maz Mezcal, Mexican

322: Sandro's, Italian. Was MIdeal Restaurant, the final remnant of German Broadway; founded in 1932, but only here for its latest years.

340: Was Tisane Pharmacy & Cafe

Corner: The original location of Gracie's Corner Diner & Grill

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The adjacent Yorkshire Towers building unsuccessfully sued to have this entrance moved, claiming it would destroy residents' quality of life.

305-315 (corner): Yorkshire Towers is a 21-story building from 1964 with 693 apartment units.

333: Tal Bagels Appetizing, mini-chain

361 (corner): Hybrid Florist, since 1937

South:

Corner (1646 1st Ave): This unassuming 17-story, built in 1968, is called Tri-Faith House; I'm guessing the name reflects hopes for peace following the 1967 War in the Mideast. Yorkshire Wines & Spirits on ground floor.

420: A 7-story Art Deco building from 1929.

430: A 17-story building from 1931.

444: A 37-story beige-brick tower built 1974.

446 (corner): A 14-story building in white and blue brick, built 1960.

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401 (corner): 401

419: Cassidy's Place, a day nursery for homeless and disabled children, run by the Association to Benefit Children. Cassidy is the daughter of Frank and Kathie Lee Gifford, supporters of the charity.

425: A 16-story co-op from 1929, designed by Sugarman & Berger as a residential hotel. Elaine Kaufman, proprietor of Elaine's, lived in the penthouse here until her 2010 death.

435: A nine-story building from 1974

445: The Caravelle, a 16-story white-brick building from 1961.

455 (corner): The Channel Club is a 39-story condo building from 1987, a dark brown monolith designed by Wechsler-Grasso-Menziuso.

South:

Corner (1622 York): The Bristal, assisted living

510: 21 stories from 1958.

516: These eight floors were built in 1978.

520: A 15-story building from 1927, built by Vincent Astor to a Charles Platt design.

530: A near-twin of 520, built a year later with the same developer and designer. Aviator Charles Lindbergh and author Anne Murrow Lindbergh lived here in early 1934, two years after the murder of their first child, Charles Jr. New York Sen. Robert Wagner lived here from 1939 until his death in 1953; a widower, he shared the apartment with his son, Robert Wagner Jr., who later became mayor of New York City (NNY).

544: A 15-story building from 1929.

Corner (130 East End): Songwriter Irving Berlin lived here from 1933 until 1942; it was aviator Eddie Rickenbacker's home in the 1940s and '50s.

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North:

Corner (1634 York): The Mansion, diner that dates to 1945

519: A six-story building from 1939.

525: A beige-brick apartment building from 1961 with 21 floors.

535: Henderson House is another 21-story apartment building from 1961. Eight houses in the Henderson Place development were demolished to make room for this relative giant.

Henderson Place

The opening scene of Harriet the Spy is thought to be set in Henderson Place.

549-553: These were also part of the Henderson Place development, built in 1882.

Corner (140 East End): Another Henderson house. The duke and duchess of Richelieu, whose line traced back to the grand-nephew of Cardinal Richelieu, lived here in the 1920s.