Watch “The Paterno Family: Chronicling a New York Real Estate Legacy” video on YouTube
Read ‘The Paterno Brothers & Their Manhattan Apartment Houses‘ Look Book
1938-1939 – 200 Cabrini Boulevard (was Northern Avenue) between West 181st & West 186th Streets – Five 13-story (some say 12) neo-Georgian red brick towers with 580 apartments
– 120-200 Cabrini Boulevard, New York, NY 10033
– Architect: George Pelham, Jr., son of the Hudson View Gardens architect
NB 134-1938
Northern Avenue [Cabrini Boulevard], West 186th Street, southwest corner, through to Riverside Drive
5 12-sty bk apts, 128×134
Cost:
$1,925,000
Owner:
Castle Village, Inc., Chas. V. Paterno, pres, 182 Northern av
Architect:
Geo. F. Pelham, Jr, 100 E 42
Address in Real Estate Record:
NORTHERN AV, swc 186th st, through to Riverside dr
Cabrini Boulevard at 181st Street
– NY Times 8/7/38, 8/10/38, 10/14/38 (Kelley Paterno page 287)
“5 twelve story luxury apartment buildings. The unique site plan of Castle Village was designed to give each apartment a spacious view and ample sunlight.” Kelley Paterno page 212
“Perhaps the most crowing accomplishment was the landmark Castle Village that soared high above prestigious Riverside Drive and with its two thousand two hundred scenic rooms provided safe refuse for six hundred fortunate families.” Kelley Paterno page 233
6 June 1939 Castle Village opening ceremony: Charles Paterno, Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York, and Alfred Rheinstein, Chair of the New York City Housing Authority (Renato Cantore)
“The Castle was razed in 1939 as World War II loomed. The long economic slump was showing recovery and the beginning of war preparedness stirred industrial activity. Our great home of sentimental reminiscences was replaced by five apartment buildings known as Castle Village. The architect, George Fred Pelham, devised an “X Plan” in lieu of a usual central court. This enabled each apartment to have an overview of the river. As an architectural innovation this succeeded so well that it has been imitated by large insurance investment residential complexes in New York.” Carlo Paterno in My Family page 47
Blog article: Paterno Castle To Be Demolished
“I was the only child, yet Dad and I were not emotionally or temperamentally close. I was the one person in his office having the gumption to disagree, realizing that he would never fire his own son. Other employees worked subserviently to his dominating personality. In point was my insistence on putting three elevators in each of the five Castle Village buildings. Dad kept saying that two elevators would do. I won my point. After completion, he complimented me by admitting that his judgment on this had been short.” Carlo Paterno in My Family page 48
Construction overseen by CVP, Anthony Campagna, and Lyndon Brown
“In 1938 he demolished the castle, building in its stead the $6 million Castle Village, five 13-story neo-Georgian brick towers with 580 apartments sharing his large garden. The retaining wall survived, and a few fragments of the estate, among them a single marble pillar at the entrance gate on Cabrini Avenue. But otherwise the Paterno Castle was destroyed.” (source)
Type:Â ca. 1938 five-tower residential complex. The buildings are of concrete frame construction with fully bonded brick walls, terra cotta block backup and ornamental cast stone detailing. (source – beautiful contemporary photos at this link)
Castle Village, a string of five co-op towers, each with four wings, was completed in 1939 and is set on 7.5 acres of parklike grounds with play areas and benches overlooking the river. Hudson Heights: A Hidden Gem, Gaining Popularity By Aileen Jacobson March 28, 2018
Buildings occupied only a fifth of the property (7.4 acres between 181st and 186th Streets) on what was then Northern Avenue now Cabrini Boulevard…remaining space was devoted to gardens, public spaces, small wooded areas, designated spaces for walking and recreation…designed by Robert Cridland, same landscape architect for Hudson View Gardens…3 story underground parking garage; the American Institute of Architecture (AIA) awarded the project a certificate of excellence while still under construction (Renato Cantore)
“Behind 180 and 200 Cabrini and overlooking the Henry Hudson Parkway is the garage, which can hold 300 cars and was constructed in recognition of the remoteness of the location. The garage was originally the swimming pool and still shows the original facade of the estate. There was a billiard room and a restaurant with a dance floor, which was transformed into the recreation room.” James Renner, Dr. Charles V. Paterno (WayBackMachine search) – this is not accurate as the Castle was between the 120 and 140 buildings and the parking garage is behind buildings 180 & 200; the parking garage was not the former swimming pool; the former facade is not still standing; there was not a restaurant in the castle; the original ballroom was not converted into a recreation room
EXTERNAL LINKS:
• PATERNO CASTLE TO BE DEMOLISHED in New York Times 7 Aug 1938
• Streetscapes/Hudson View Gardens; In Upper Manhattan, a 1924 Touch of Tudor Suburbia By Christopher Gray 16 Nov 1997
• Castle Village on Wikipedia
• Photos of Castle Village on Wikimedia Commons
• Castle Village website
• Early History of the Henry Hudson Parkway Corridor
Sales brochure (slideshow below) provided by Mina Minton Paterno Schultes:
Living It Up (published 1984) page 86: CASTLE VILLAGE, 120-140-160-180-220 Cabrini Boulevard: George F. Pelham II was the architect for these five 12-story buildings overlooking the Hudson between West 181st and West 186th streets. They were built in 1938 on the site of the large and elaborate “Paterno Castle” (as it came to be known), home of Charles V. Paterno, one of the major NYC real estate developers of the early 20th century. The buildings, which were described in the original brochure as “conceived and constructed by Dr. Charles V. Paterno,” offered many attractions that were then new. “Tenants may lease space in the large fireproof ramp garage for the storage of automobiles within the Castle Village grounds. This is the first large, multi-car garage to be built in Manhattan in conjunction with an apartment project. Thus Castle Village for the first time offers Manhattan apartment dwellers a garage on the premises.” The first-floor apartments are about 200 feet above the level of the Hudson River; those on the top floor, about 300 feet.
From CMP interviews: 1939 – 5 large apartment houses where the castle used to be – X plan by George F. Pelham, Jr. – each apartment had view of Hudson River (Tape #1) – he got interested in pipes in NY made of galvanized steel – the water was rusty – all the bathtubs in 270 [Park Avenue] had a rust mark – so Charles developed a system where all the water was run through scrap iron that would take the oxygen out of the water – the oxygen made rust – would eat the steel and turn into rust – filter water w/o oxygen – eliminated rust – copper and brass pipes came out shortly after (Tape #1)
Regarding the rooftop structures: “The elevators open on the penthouse level (floor 12 or 13 depending on the building) and the elevator machine rooms continue up one more level and are accessed from the roof level. (Note: access for residents to the roof is by stairs taken from the penthouse floor). Above the elevator machine rooms, for approximately two more stories, is the building’s water tank.  This is a huge wooden tank (prevalent throughout NYC) and serve in the hydraulics of counterbalancing water pressure in these ~ 13 story buildings with the standpipe at the street level, used by the fire department.  Often left to be visible atop residential buildings, Dr. Paterno’s architect [George F. Pelham, Jr.] for these early apartment towers chose to construct brick enclosures around these water tanks to camouflage their utilitarian purpose.” per Tom Navin, founder of The Paterno Trivium
Saxman Landsman on Facebook: “I lived in Castle Village from when I was born in 1946 till around 1976! In the entrance area to the garage that we use to call “the pit” between the 180 and 200 bldgs there was a metal plate that covered a tunnel that led out to the ivy covered ledge that was part of the big wall that disintegrated and the kids that did this exploration told us younger kids that the found a cave built under the gardens! This may have been the air raid shelter that was abandoned. Also the cottages to the side of 120 were many of the maintenance staff lived, during my time Mr. Benson was the supervisor and he lived there with his family, also the lawn mowers and other equipment was stored over there!”
Dennis Ryan on Facebook: “I remember climbing up to the ledge from the far left in the photo and going into the three entryways. There were apparent slopes going upward to the castle area as shown but they had been caved in with unpassable rubble. Back in the 1950’s.”
A Plea to Leave Some Stones Unturned By Alex Mindlin April 16, 2006 • New York Times
Last May 12, a portion of a 75-foot-high retaining wall collapsed onto the Henry Hudson Parkway just north of the George Washington Bridge, blanketing the road with tons of soil and trees, as well as luggage-size chunks of stone.
Nearly a year later, one lane of the highway is still fenced off along the 1,000-foot-long wall, a rustic pile of rough-hewn stones topped by turreted battlements. The Castle Village co-op, which owned the roughly 80-year-old wall, has yet to restore the missing portion, currently replaced by a raw slope of boulders and earth. And the complex is arguing with the city and with Castle Village’s insurers over who should pay for repairs and for the hectic three-day cleanup last May. The combined bill is expected to exceed $20 million.
But amid all these larger questions, as the board of the complex mulls designs for a new wall, residents there — and some outsiders — have been asking another question: What happened to the stones?
“We would like the stones back that the city took from us,” said Gerald Fingerhut, the treasurer of the 550-unit co-op. “But I’m saying it semi-facetiously, because the chance of our getting them is zero.”
Mr. Fingerhut was referring to the pieces of rough-cut Manhattan schist that make up the surface of Castle Village’s wall. They are stones from Manhattan’s bedrock, of a type known as subway mica because it is often found during subway excavations.
If the stones were still available, some residents speculate, Castle Village might be able to embed them in the surface of any repaired areas, helping it blend in with the intact portions of the wall. Because there are almost no new sources of Manhattan schist, the stones might also have resale value, which could have helped Castle Village climb out of its financial hole.
“To stockpile them would definitely have been the intelligent thing to do,” said Kate Ottavino, a partner and conservator at the A. Ottavino Corporation, an Ozone Park stoneworks.
Instead, the stones seem mostly to have been dumped or pulverized along with the 41,000 cubic yards of rubble removed by contractors.
“They were all disposed of,” said Anthony Santoro, a vice president at Trocom, one of the cleanup’s two principal contractors. “A lot of it was loaded up on sanitation barges that went to landfills.” He said that separating the stones from the soil, trees, and other debris that crashed down along with the wall would have been both expensive and time-consuming.
City officials said that some stones are probably still buried under the remaining pile of rubble. And the Parks Department took 1,000 cubic yards of material (about 2 percent of the total haul) to Randalls Island, where Castle Village’s stones now dot the shoreline.
In recent meetings with city agencies, “We’ve said: ‘Oh, by the way, you’ve carted away all our stuff. When are you going to bring it back?’ ” recalled Donna Rounds, the co-op president. But amid negotiations with the city over carting fees, and under the threat of fines if a new wall isn’t built by year’s end, Castle Village is reluctant to offend the city over missing rocks.
“We’ve been in the doghouse since May 12th,” Ms. Rounds said, “not feeling like we can really assert ourselves on any level.” ALEX MINDLIN
