Building: The Aristocrat

The Aristocrat

Designed by DeYoung, Moskowitz & Rosenberg, the architectural firm best known for several buildings at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Aristocrat was built 1949, as a 13-story cooperative apartment house hosting approximately 45 apartments.

The Aristocrat’s cream-colored brick façade is fronted by a canopied entrance with a white marble entrance surround, a deco type step-down lobby with a spare artsy feel. The fascia is distinguished by its many stringcourses which band the building horizontally with a thin projecting course of brick work. These architectural accents are meant to emphasize the junction between floors and bring a linear feel.

The building has a full-time doorman, laundry on each floor and a garage. Floors 2- 10 have five apartments per floor: a pair each of 1 bed and 2 bedrooms and 1 oversized studio with separate dressing area. Floors 11-12 are larger duplexes and the Penthouse tops out with 2 apartments each with a terrace which wraps the building.

West 54th Street is anchored on the east by the University Club, designed by Mc Mead and White, and is bordered on the south by the Museum of Modern Art and its sculpture garden. West 54th street was called by the A-AI Guide to New York City: “A street of great modern apartment houses”. The Aristocrat is similar in size to the Regent House at 25 West 54th Street and to the patina-ed buff color of the Rockefeller Apartments at 17 West 54th Street; together they create a 1940’s aesthetic contrasting nicely with the Neo-Georgian, Neo-Renaissance townhouses farther east on the block. All in in all; an architecturally sophisticated New York street scape from which to approach the building.

This building has a very central midtown location, just a few blocks north of Rockefeller Center and a few blocks south of Tiffany’s, Bergdorf Goodman and the Apple Store.

Description provided by Camille Duvall-Hero