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1910 The Colosseum 435 Riverside Drive at 116th Street
– Joseph & Charles Paterno (Kelley Paterno page 285)
Featured with floorplan in Andrew Alpern’s book New York’s Fabulous Luxury Apartments page 64.
NB 99-1910
Riverside Drive, West 116th Street, southeast corner
12-sty brick and stone apartment house, 93.1×65.11
COST:
$325,000
OWNER:
Paterno Bros, Inc, Claremont av and 116th st
ARCHITECT:
Schwartz & Gross, 347 5th [Fifth] av
ADDRESS IN REAL ESTATE RECORD:
RIVERSIDE DRIVE, s e cor 116th st
Located in the Morningside Heights Historic District designated 21 February 2017
The Paterno Brothers soon began the construction of ten- to 12-story apartment houses along West 116th Street, Riverside Drive, Broadway and Cathedral Parkway. Prominent among these are the Colosseum, 435 Riverside Drive (Schwartz & Gross, 1910) and the Paterno, 440 Riverside Drive (Schwartz & Gross, 1909-10) which anchor the corners of Riverside Drive at West 116th Street, their curved facades framing the vista that terminates at the main gates of Columbia University. Built in the Renaissance Revival style, the Colosseum’s stone and tan brick facade features an elaborately decorated entrance surround below a triple window with balcony and pedimented surround with scallop shell. Above the entrance, the architects employed similar decorative devices employed in the larger Paterno begun the previous year. Both facades are delineated by multiple moldings with decorative friezes, and the curved central bays of both feature elaborately decorated surrounds highlighted by balconies and arched tympana with cartouche that in the case of the Paterno is crowned by a distinctive mansard. Unique to the Paterno is its recessed, formal drive-through entrance on Riverside Drive. (source)
The Colosseum on the south corner was the most luxurious of the two: 16 large apartment, some of which taking up an entire floor, with prized wood finishes, wall safes in every dwelling and an elegant lobby with a waiting room for drivers (Renato Cantore)
On Morningside Heights, this ideal division of spaces is realized in some of the more expensive buildings, such as the Paterno Brothers’ Colosseum. This building was planned with only sixteen apartments, including twelve-room and eight-room simplex (one floor) units and ten-room duplexes (two floors). Separate service and passenger elevators led to separate small public halls, from which employees and delivery personnel entered the service wing set in the rear of the building and tenants and their guests entered a foyer. In the largest apartments the foyer flowed directly into a sizable dining room, library, and parlor, which were laid out en suite overlooking Riverside Park and the Hudson River. A door from the foyer led into the service wing and another door led to a private hall along which were aligned five bedrooms (four of which had views toward the Hudson River), three baths, and a dressing room. Although slightly less ideal in arrangement, the smaller simplex units were arranged in a similar manner. In the duplexes, the zones were clearly differentiated by placing the bedrooms on a separate level from the public and service spaces. The Colosseum’s duplex apartments are unusual on Morningside Heights where simplex units were far more prevalent. Dolkart page 310
At the far grander Colosseum on Riverside Drive and 116th Street, designed in 1910 with sixteen apartments, twelve household responded to the queries of the 1915 New York State consensus enumerator. Fifty people lived in the building, including several large families. There was only one woman listed as head of household. The men were employed in higher paying jobs than those at the Blennerhassset (George F. Pelham 1903 for Max Liebeskind), but at both buildings people in business and the professions predominated. Residents at the Colosseum included a man in the Victrola business, a liquor merchant, a picture manufacturer, two Columbia professors, a mining engineer, president of a lithographic business, a railroad vice president, a coffee merchant, and real estate developer Joseph Paterno. Only Paterno and a German professor were of foreign birth. Eight servants lived in apartments, including two male butlers (one from Japan), and women servants from England, Switzerland, Finland, and Germany. Dolkart page 319-20
The New York Times Streetscapes/The Colosseum and the Paterno, 116th Street and Riverside Drive; At Curves in the Road, 2 Unusually Shaped Buildings By Christopher Gray Aug. 15, 1999
435 Riverside Drive (aka 435-437 Riverside Drive; 624-630 West 116th Street)
( Colosseum )
Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 1896, Lot 87
Date(s): 1910 (NB 99-1910)
Architect(s) / Builder(s): Schwartz & Gross
Owner(s) / Developer(s): Paterno Bros.
Type: Apartment building
Style(s): Renaissance Revival
Stories: 13
Material(s): Brick; limestone; terra-cotta
Status: Contributing
History, Significance and Notable Characteristics
The Paterno at 440 Riverside Drive and the Colosseum at 435 Riverside Drive, were constructed in 1909 and 1910 across 116th Street from one another, for the Paterno Brothers, prolific 65 apartment house builders in Morningside Heights between 1898 and 1924. The two buildings feature rare curved corner facades, with different orientations, anchoring the corners of this major intersection. The Colosseum’s curve faces towards the northwest and begins on Riverside Drive, while the Paterno’s starts on 116th Street where it meets Claremont Avenue. The two buildings were designed by Schwartz & Gross, and both feature stone bases and Renaissance ornamentation, complimenting each other in style and details. The Colosseum is a 13-story brick and stone apartment building that features a curved facade, three-story rusticated limestone base, central entrance with elaborately carved stone enframements, stone and terra-cotta bracketed balustrades, central tripartite window groupings with decorative spandrel panels, transitional stone cornice, Flemish-bond brick work, stone quoins, brick window surrounds, stone flared lintels, keystones, and sills, tripartite window groupings with floral terra-cotta window surrounds, bracketed balconettes with decorative terracotta friezes, and arched windows with elaborately detailed terra-cotta enframements and a denticulated cornice.
Harlan Fiske Stone, a professor at Columbia Law School from 1902 to 1905 who also served as the school’s dean from 1910 to 1923, lived in The Colosseum, during his time as dean. Stone later became the 52nd United States Attorney General (1924-1925), Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (1925-1941), and 12th Chief Justice of the United States (1941-1946). Other residents at the time of the 1920 census were actor and director Francis X. Bushman (1883-1966) and Victor Hugo Emerson (1866-1926), the founder of Emerson Records.
Alterations
Riverside Drive Facade: Cornice altered; windows replaced; non-historic bronze plaque at first story; incised numerals flanking the entrance; non-historic iron security grilles at first-story windows; siamese standpipe; metal piping at first story
Site
Wide stone stoop
Sidewalk / Curb Materials
Concrete sidewalk and metal curb
References
Christopher Grey, “Streetscapes: The Colosseum and the Paterno,” New York Times, August 15, 1999, 8; Columbia Forum, “Building Morningside Heights,” https://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/win99/36.html; “The Apartment Houses of New York,” Real Estate Record and Guide, 85 (March 26, 1910), 644; U. S. Census records,
1920; http://www.recordingpioneers.com/RP_EMERSON4.html; http://www.biography.com/people/harlan-fiske-stone-9495917 (accessed: December 30, 2016). (source)
Spring 2008 Proposed for Designation as Historic Landmarks: Coliseum and Paterno Apartments (1910), 435, 440 Riverside Drive
1910: The 12-story Colosseum apartment house is completed at 435 Riverside Drive, southeast corner 116th Street. Designed by Schwartz & Gross for Charles and Joseph Paterno, it curves around the corner and has just 16 apartments, some of them duplexes, some full-floor simplexes. The building boasts mahogany dining rooms, wall safes, and a ground-floor lounge for chauffeurs. The New York Chronology: The Ultimate Compendium of Events, People, and Anecdotes from the Dutch to the Present by James Trager
The Colosseum on Wikipedia
Photos of Colosseum on Wikipedia
Living It Up (published 1984) page 109: COLOSSEUM, 435 Riverside Drive (southeast corner West 116th Street) Built by Schwartz & Gross [correction: built by Paterno Brothers] in 1910, this structure curves around the corner of West 116th Street and Riverside Drive. A bronze plaque to the left of the entrance states that Harlan Fiske Stone (1872-1946), dean of the Columbia Law School and later chief justice of the US Supreme Court, lived here between 1920 and 1925. The similarity of this curving building to the Colosseum amphitheater in Rome gives the name.
