380 Riverside Drive

New Building application 730 of 1906 went to the Department of Buildings for a whole block-front of Riverside Drive, Cathedral Parkway to West 111th Street, in the name of the Hendrik Hudson Company. The architects were Rouse and Sloan, and the Real Estate Record and Builders' Guide announced the scheme on July 21 of that year: an Italian villa in limestone, brick and colored terra cotta, a wide projecting tile roof carried on bronze brackets, two towers on the Drive joined by a pergola. The building opened on October 1, 1907, the largest of the apartment houses that had gone up in Morningside Heights since the subway arrived, its apartments of seven to nine rooms set around a central light court and side courts so that almost every room had a window. Marcus Loew, later of the theatre chain, was an early tenant.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission's 2017 designation report for the Morningside Heights Historic District lists the Hendrik Hudson as a contributing building, eight stories over a basement and attic, Italian Renaissance Revival. It reads the facade floor by floor: banded limestone rustication for the first two stories, buff Roman brick laid in Flemish bond with recessed joints above, terra cotta panels and architrave surrounds at the top story, and at the attic two podiums dressed with garlands, festoons and bull's eye windows, the southern one still carrying a belvedere with Palladian openings. The entrance sits in a light court off Cathedral Parkway, and the report traces its arched surround closely to Pierre Puget's 1656 design for the town hall of Toulon, a head of Bacchus at the keystone, the monogram HH carved on a shield. Two historic metal lampposts on granite bases still stand at the Riverside Drive areaway, and the curb along the Drive is bluestone.

Eighth floor, seven rooms, four bedrooms and three baths, the plan a U around one of those courts. The living room holds a stone mantel under a chandelier, crown mouldings, and a glazed door into the hall. A round arch opens from the dining room into a white kitchen, and the dining room's window looks across the court into the building's own Roman brick and terra cotta, the closest view of the facade anyone gets. The primary suite is set apart from the other three bedrooms, one of which sits in a bay. The floors are hardwood throughout, the ceilings high, the baths white tile over hexagonal mosaic, and a full-size laundry room is inside the apartment rather than down in the basement, where the 1907 building put its billiard parlor and barber shop. Between the two wings on the Drive, the windows drop over Riverside Park to the Hudson and the far shore.

The co-op, converted in 1971, keeps a full-time doorman, a marble lobby, an elevator, a bike room, private storage and a garage. Pets are welcome. The apartment is available November 2. The 1906 announcement promised apartments of seven rooms with a window in nearly every one of them; a hundred and nineteen years on, 8Q is still exactly that.

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