Wednesday, November 24, 2021 – Landscaping the Island
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2021
The 528th Edition
The Wild West-inspired
apartment house
designed for
urban cliff dwellers
FROM EPHEMERAL NEW YORK
The Wild West-inspired apartment house designed for urban cliff dwellers
November 22, 2021
In Gilded Age New York, a new term popped up to mock a certain type of Manhattanite: cliff dweller.
“By about 1890 the growing number of residents in apartment houses were sardonically called cliff dwellers, after the image of the cliff-dwelling Native Americans in the Southwest,” wrote Irving Lewis Allen in his 1995 book, The City in Slang.
Inspired by the new slang term as well as Southwestern images and motifs, a new residential building opened its doors on Riverside Avenue and 96th Street in 1916: the aptly named Cliff Dwelling.
The 12-story Cliff Dwelling, situated on a flatiron-shaped plot only roughly eight feet deep on one side, opened as an apartment hotel high up over Riverside Park on posh Riverside Drive.
Unlike the restrained elegance that characterized similar new buildings on the Drive, the Cliff Dwelling had a playful, inventive facade unique in New York City.
Buffalo or cattle skulls, two-headed snakes, and mountain lions in terra cotta decorate the front of the building, along with images of corn, spears, and masks. Raised bricks form geometrical patterns and zigzags that mimic Aztec and Mayan design motifs.
The 12-story Cliff Dwelling, situated on a flatiron-shaped plot only roughly eight feet deep on one side, opened as an apartment hotel high up over Riverside Park on posh Riverside Drive.
Unlike the restrained elegance that characterized similar new buildings on the Drive, the Cliff Dwelling had a playful, inventive facade unique in New York City.
Buffalo or cattle skulls, two-headed snakes, and mountain lions in terra cotta decorate the front of the building, along with images of corn, spears, and masks. Raised bricks form geometrical patterns and zigzags that mimic Aztec and Mayan design motifs.
By 1932, the Cliff Dwelling was converted to apartments, according to Carter Horsely at cityrealty.com, with kitchens added to the already small rooms. Since 1979, the building—which lost its marquee at some point, visible in the above 1939 photo—has been a co-op.
I’ve never been inside the Cliff Dwelling, but I imagine there’s still a sense of living high above an urban canyon, with a view to the Hudson and perhaps the New Jersey Palisades.
One recent change, however, may make the Cliff Dwelling feel more like a typical squeezed-in city structure: In the early 2000s, a new residential building was built inches away from the Cliff Dwelling’s eastern facade.
At least the western facade still has those wonderful tongue-out faces at eye level.
WEDNESDAY PHOTOS OF THE DAY
SEND YOUR ANSWER TO:
ROOSEVELTISLANDHISTORY@GMAIL.COM
IF MESSAGE REJECTS SEND TO:
JBIRD134@AOL.COM
TUESDAY PHOTO OF THE DAY
IT DID NOT MAKE IT INTO YESTERDAY’S ISSUE, ENJOY THANKSGIVING !!!!!
LAURA HUSSEY GUESSED THE CORRECT ANSWER TO THE PHOTO OF OUR KIOSK CEILING
[Third image: NYC Department of Records and Information Services]
ephemeralnewyork
Tags: 1916 Apartment Buildings NYC, Cliff Dwelling Apartment Building NYC, Cliff Dwelling Riverside Drive, Cliff Dwelling Upper West Side, Riverside Drive Apartment Buildings, Upper West Side Apartment Buildings
RIHS (C) FUNDING PROVIDED BY ROOSEVELT ISLAND OPERATING CORPORATION PUBLIC PURPOSE GRANTS CITY COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE BEN KALLOS DISCRETIONARY FUNDING THRU DYCD
Copyright © 2021 Roosevelt Island Historical Society, All rights reserved.Our mailing address is:
rooseveltislandhistory@gmail.com
Leave a comment