Carter's Review

This impressively ornate 12-story, beige-brick apartment building situated at 88 Central Park West, on the southwest corner at 68th Street, was erected in 1928. It is a cooperative overlooking Central Park and has 28 apartments.

It was designed by Schwartz & Gross, which also designed 55, 91, 101, 241 and 440 Central Park West.

Bottom Line

This very handsome building is very popular with celebrities and there is good bus service and a subway station three blocks north on Central Park West. The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is a few blocks away, as are various schools, religious institutions and shopping centers.

Description

It has a 3-story, rusticated limestone base and a canopied, double step-up entrance with glass doors that lead to a vestibule with very attractive, wrought-iron doors and a large lobby. The building has consistent fenestration and balconies with wrought-iron railings on the 4th and 11th floors. It has bay windows, fronting its large light well above the entrance, which permit the installation of protruding air-conditioners.

In “The A.I.A. Guide to New York City” (5th Ed.), Elliot Willensky, Norval White and Fran Leadon note that “a wondrous projecting bracketed copper cornice [hovers] benignly, over brick limestone and terra cotta, [but as you] raise your eyes, it gets better as it goes up.”

Amenities

The pet-friendly building has a full-time doorman, a concierge, a canopied entrance with sidewalk landscaping, and a laundry room. It has no roof deck, fitness center nor garage.

Apartments

Apartment 5N is a three-bedroom duplex unit with a 20-foot-long entrance gallery that leads to a 31-foot-wide living room with a fireplace. Next to the enclosed 19-foot-wide dining room is a bay window. Next to that, an enclosed 23-foot-long windowed-kitchen that is around the corner from the 12-foot-long staff room.

Apartment 11S is a two-bedroom unit with a 15-foot-long entrance gallery that leads to a 16-foot-wide music room, a 20-foot-wide living room with a decorative fireplace, and a 19-foot-long dining room with a bay window. It also includes a 15-foot-long butler’s pantry, a 24-foot-wide eat-in, a windowed-kitchen, and a 12-foot-wide staff bedroom. There is also a 16-foot-wide library that also faces Central Park, and the living room and music room all share a Juliet balcony.

Celebrities

Residents of this building have included musician Paul Simon, music producer Clive Davis, film producer Harvey Weinstein, film producer Sean Lennon, and actress Celeste Holm.

In 2009, Sting put his two-story, four-bedroom apartment on the market for $26 million. It was previously owned by Billy Joel but only managed to sell a year later, after a $7 million price drop.

In 2012, a duplex on the 8th and 9th floors was sold by N. J. Nicholas Jr., a former chief executive of Time Warner, for $19.5 million. It had previously been combined with 9W that had been owned by Kirk Henckels, a broker at Stribling Associates, and his wife, Fernanda Kellogg.

Actor Robert De Niro, who owned a duplex on the 4th and 5th floors of the building, had bid unsuccessfully on the Henckels duplex, a month after a fire had broken out in a laundry unit in his apartment.