It was state-of-the-art green architecture before the term was coined: a 325-unit luxury apartment building across from Manhattan’s Central Park occupying less than half of its site and punched with planters meant to extend the foliage of the park into the high-density development. Completed in 1940 by Albert Mayer and Julian Whittlesey—known for Modern, middle-class apartments that self-consciously vied with the emergence of suburban housing—240 Central Park South featured two towers (the larger one arranged in a horseshoe plan to maximize airflow and views), cantilevered balconies, and generous steel casement windows to reinforce a connection to the landscaped pathways, fields, and ponds across the street.
Over the years, everyone from Lewis Mumford to Robert Stern had praised the building as one of the period’s best examples of high-density housing [record, January 1941, page 68]. In 2002—a year before the competition to renovate Edward Durell Stone’s 2 Columbus Circle made the area a preservationist battleground—it was designated a New York City landmark. Today, 240 Central Park South is the only fully restored landmark on Columbus Circle, and with the help of an artfully landscaped green roof by Balmori Associates and some loving updates by architect Douglas J. Lister, its ideas remain as current as when it was built.
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