Overview

About 19 East 72nd Street

There are many, although not enough, limestone-clad luxury apartment buildings in the city. Such facades, in fact, probably are the easiest clue that an apartment is truly "luxury," which is not to imply that brick and glass structures are automatically not "luxury."

Many fine apartment buildings may only have limestone bases and most are rusticated, that is sharply or roughly delineated as large blocks, usually in a quite bold, horizontal pattern follow the model of many Italian Renaissance palazzos.

This fine building, clad entirely in limestone, has perhaps the best base in the city. It is sinuous. Its very graceful and subtle arcs of the curves are superbly proportioned and soften the what would otherwise be the traditionally hard edges of the building. The vertical curves, which are limited to the lower three stories, give the otherwise quite formal building an undeniable and memorable air of graciousness. They are a constant reminder that too many developers, architects and particularly building managers are contemptuous of pedestrians and their occasional need or desire to lean, sit or perch against or on a building and that curved surfaces are more inviting than spikes, or hard edges.

The use of curves in architecture is fairly uncommon simply because it is not "industry-standard" and costs more. The huge popularity of architect Frank Gehry's geometric convolutions, such as in the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, however, is likely to encourage more usage of curves. The rectilinear street grid of most of Manhattan, of course, is still very influential, almost as much as the city's building code and the economic realities of development.

This 17-story, 40-unit building's canopied entrance is framed with very pleasant bas-relief sculptures of animals by C. Paul Jennewein and there is a pleasant garden visible from the lobby.   

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