The Beresford, at 211 Central Park West, between 81st and 82nd Streets, is an upscale, 23-floor apartment building in New York City. The architect, Emery Roth, was famous for building luxury apartments and hotels throughout the city. The Beresford, completed in 1929, is one of four Roth apartment blocks on Central Park West including the El Dorado (between 90th and 91st Streets), the San Remo (between 74th and 75th Streets), and the Ardsley (on the corner of 92nd street).[1] The Beresford is the largest by volume. Its mass relieved by horizontal belt courses, staggered setbacks governed by the 1916 zoning law,[2] which provide some apartments with terraces, and architectural detailing that gives an impression of Georgian houses embedded in the mass. It takes its name from the Hotel Beresford, which had occupied the same site since 1889.[3] The Beresford has two very prominent street-front facades,[4] crowned by its three distinctive octagonal copper-capped corner towers,[5] the eastern facade overlooks Central Park; and the southern facade overlooks Manhattan Square, the park that contains the American Museum of Natural History.[6]
The massive block is opened to the west, giving it a U-shape, wrapped round a central court. Three elevators give separate access to small foyers, originally each accessing two apartments of a scale that was eliminated in New York, both by the stock market crash and the new Multiple Dwellings Law.[7]
Unlike some of Manhattan's prestigious co-op buildings, the Beresford accepts celebrities and politicians as residents. Current residents include comedian Jerry Seinfeld in Isaac Stern's former apartment, singer Diana Ross, actress Glenn Close, Betsy Gotbaum and Victor Gotbaum, magazine editor Helen Gurley Brown, reporter John Stossel, and movie producer David Brown, actor Andrew McCarthy, tennis player John McEnroe, Coach CEO Lew Frankfort, and Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit.[8] Former residents have included historian Alan Brinkley, diplomat Richard Holbrooke, Tony Randall, Rock Hudson, Margaret Mead, Laura Nyro[9] and Beverly Sills.
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