Several people have asked about the history of our apartment
building. Our building is a pre-war building, a term generally applied to
apartment buildings built
in New York City before World War II.
These buildings typically have high ceilings, thick walls (we can attest to the
thick walls – haven’t heard a peep from any neighbor since moving in) and
plaster ornamentation. Here’s a bit of the history of our building . . .
Between the mid-1880s and the turn of the century, most of
the housing being built in New York City was single family row houses and town
houses in a variety of styles and materials. Around the turn of the century, apartment
living began gaining respectability among the middle and upper classes and
developers began building small multiple dwellings in the West End-Collegiate
Historic District Extension (an area located west of Broadway between West 70th
and 79th Streets). These smaller
dwellings were often referred to as “French flats.”
With the advent of the smaller, more practical electric
elevator in the early 1900s, developers began constructing larger, multiple
dwelling buildings ranging in height from six to nine stories. In addition, the
opening of the IRT subway in 1904 (today’s 1, 2 and 3 subway lines) made the
Upper West Side more accessible and appealing to the city’s expanding
population.
Rules established by the Tenement House Act in 1901
determined the form, massing, and maximum height of new residential buildings.
These regulations contributed to the height of apartment buildings, including
ours, that were designed during the 1910s and 1920s by many of the city’s most
prominent residential architects including Schwartz & Gross, Gaetan Ajello,
Rosario Candela, Emery Roth and George F. Pelham.
Our building – 228 West 71st Street – was designed
and constructed in 1916-1917 by Emery Roth, one of the city’s leading builders of
pre-war buildings. The 14-story (plus penthouse) apartment hotel was named the
Hotel Robert Fulton, in honor of the inventor of the first commercially
successful steamboat to provide ferry service up the Hudson River from New York
City to Albany in 1807. The building’s Colonial Revival style features red
brick, limestone, terra cotta and granite.
Advertisements for the hotel, beginning shortly after its c.
1917 opening, touted one- to three-room suites (either furnished or
unfurnished), “complete hotel service,” an “excellent restaurant,” and
emphasized its views overlooking the Hudson River. By 1955, kitchenettes were added
to the advertisements after the laws were changed to allow them in apartment
hotels. The interior of the hotel was noted for its tasteful design in a 1917
issue of “Architecture and Building Magazine” in an article that included
images of the lobby, a typical living room, and the hotel dining room. 
When we started looking for our new apartment, we hoped to
find a pre-war building that would work for us. We love the original wood
floors, thick walls and old-New York feel these buildings offer – plus it’s
wonderful to be able to discover the history of these dwellings. The location
of our building in the heart of the Upper West Side – just blocks from
Riverside and Central Parks, Lincoln Center and the Hudson River – makes it
ideal for us. We’re very happy with our apartment and the neighborhood so far!