Manhattan Square Apartments

44 West 77th Street | Upper West Side | built 1909

Open on the map10 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. 1909

    January 9

    Harde & Short's Neo-Gothic Manhattan Square Apartments rises on West 77th Street

    Developer and portrait painter Walter Russell commissions architects Herbert Spencer Harde and Richard Thomas Short in 1907 to design a 14-story Neo-Gothic apartment tower facing the American Museum of Natural History. The facade is brick and terra cotta with tracery, trefoil balconies and a French Gothic tower. On January 9, 1909, The New York Times says the building is a distinct departure from earlier apartment house design in the city.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1914

    A patient sues surgeon Otto Kiliani, a resident, over sponges he says were left inside him

    Dr. Otto G. T. Kiliani, a Columbia professor of clinical surgery and a surgeon at the German Hospital, was one of the building's first owners. Jacob Weiss, who was operated on at the hospital in April 1912 as a free patient, sued him two years later, charging that two sponges had been sewn up inside his abdomen. At trial Weiss offered practically no evidence, and it emerged that Kiliani had not even been present at the operation. The doctor told reporters that such suits were brought constantly against surgeons, usually by patients who had been treated free.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1915

    February 10

    Former City Controller Theodore Myers, 70, marries a fellow resident about 30 years younger

    Theodore W. Myers, a banker and former City Controller who lived in the building, married Rose Alixis Knight on February 10, 1915. She had moved in with her mother some years earlier and was about thirty years his junior, so the match surprised political and social circles. The couple stayed in his apartment, where his collection of paintings and engravings hung, and Myers died there of a heart attack on March 20, 1918, soon after returning from Florida.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1915

    April 9

    Sculptor Karl Bitter, an early resident, dies after a street accident

    Sculptor Karl Bitter, one of the building's first residents, wins the commission for the Pomona figure of the Plaza Hotel fountain after a competition held following Joseph Pulitzer's death in 1911. On April 9, 1915, only days after he finishes his clay model, a car strikes him as he crosses Broadway near the Metropolitan Opera House. He dies of a skull fracture at age 47.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1939

    A 45-foot studio living room is built for portrait painter Paul Trebilcock

    The New York Times reported on September 28, 1939 that a 45-foot studio living room was being built in the building for the portrait painter Paul Trebilcock. Daytonian in Manhattan suggests that the top-floor windows may have lost their mullions in favor of plate glass around that time. The blog describes a later modernization that stripped much of the Gothic ornament from the upper floors.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1940

    Metropolitan Life takes over the building in a foreclosure, ending its life as a cooperative

    In 1940 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company took over 44 West 77th Street through a foreclosure proceeding, and it became a regular apartment building. Later in the decade, because of fears that the decorations might fall off, the terracotta ornament was dismantled and replaced with brick, a job overseen by the insurer's in-house architect, Samuel R. Bishop. In 1947 Metropolitan Life sold the property to a group led by David Jacobs and kept a $355,000 mortgage.

    “The building was taken over by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1940, following a foreclosure proceeding, and became a regular apartment building.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  7. 1954

    Patricia Neal and Roald Dahl make the building their home

    Actress Patricia Neal and her new husband, the writer Roald Dahl, live in an apartment here in 1954. They are among the artists and performers who have called the building home since it opened.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  8. 1970

    The building returns to cooperative ownership after decades as a rental

    After Metropolitan Life's 1947 sale and several later ones, 44 West 77th Street was reconverted to cooperative ownership in 1970. It later became a contributing property in the Central Park West-76th Street Historic District, which the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated in 1977.

    Source: Wikipedia

  9. 1983

    May 19

    The building joins the National Register of Historic Places

    On May 19, 1983, 44 West 77th Street is added to the National Register of Historic Places. It had already been a contributing building in the Central Park West-76th Street Historic District since 1977. In the early 1990s a $500,000 repair of the facade fixes leaks and loose sections.

    Source: Wikipedia

  10. 1987

    Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities sends a startling figure out the building's doorway

    The building makes a brief appearance in Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. The character Kramer is feeling comfortable with a vision in his head when a figure who startles him comes out of a "swell-looking" doorway at 44 West 77th Street. Daytonian in Manhattan notes that, despite the loss of its upper Gothic details, the building still has mostly two apartments per floor.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 64 buildings with stories in Upper West Side