321 West 246th Street

Riverdale | built 1962

Open on the map3 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1962

    Simon B. Zelnik's modern house for Irving Levi is completed

    Architect Simon B. Zelnik designed this house for its first owner, Irving Levi, and it was finished in 1962, after Fieldston's property owners association had eased its preference for traditional designs. The building has strong horizontal lines, single-pane windows and almost no ornament. Even so, its brick, fieldstone and vertical wood siding are materials used across Fieldston, which helps it fit in among older neighbors and the wooded setting.

    “Its architect, Simon B. Zelnik, designed the house for its first owner, Irving Levi…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1962

    Theater and synagogue architect Simon Zelnik sets a house into a steep slope

    Zelnik, born in Austria in 1896, studied at New York University, Cooper Union and the Beaux Arts Institute of Design and worked as a draftsman for Rosario Candela before founding his own firm in 1932. His work included the Elgin Theatre, now the Joyce Theater, and the Riverdale Temple of 1954. For this house he made the street side read as one story while the remaining floors drop down a steep hillside, and the design shares many ideas with a Scarsdale house of his that Architectural Forum featured.

    “…appearing as a single story on the street façade but with other floors hugging a steep drop in terrain…”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 2003

    A 2003 renovation turns the breezeway into a kitchen addition

    In 2003 owner Samantha Jacobson had the open breezeway between the garage and the main house enclosed and converted into a kitchen. Rosenberg-Kolb Architects designed the work, filed with the Buildings Department under job number 200785463. The Commission still considered the house a substantially intact example of mid-century design.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Nearby

All 301 buildings with stories in Riverdale