Master Apartments
in New York, United StatesCategory: Attraction
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310 Riverside Dr, New York, NY 10025, USA Print route »
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The Master Apartments, officially known as the Master Building, is a landmark 27-story Art Deco skyscraper at 310 Riverside Drive, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City. It sits on the northeast corner of Riverside Drive and West 103rd Street. The Master Apartments is one of the city's first mixed-use structures as well as the tallest building on Riverside Drive. It was the first skyscraper in New York City to feature corner windows and the first to employ brick in varying colors for its entire exterior.
The Master Apartments' name derives from the Master Institute of United Arts, an art institute founded in 1920 by Nicholas and Helena Roerich. The institute's name, in turn, may have come either from Master Morya, a non-corporeal spiritual leader from whom Helena Roerich received guidance via automatic writing, or from Nicholas Roerich, a theosophist master. In 1925, wealthy financier Louis L. Horch, who funded the Roeriches' institutes and some other expenses, began purchasing lots to build the apartment building, and in 1928, secured a bond to fund its construction. Harvey Wiley Corbett; Helmle, Corbett & Harrison; and Sugarman & Berger constructed the Master Apartments, which opened in 1929 to generally positive acclaim. As built, the building's lower floors consisted of a museum; a school for the fine and performing arts; and an international art center.
Soon after the Master Apartments' opening, the building and the institute both experienced monetary deficits, with the building going into foreclosure in 1932. Two years later, Horch had his tax-exempt corporation, Master Institute of United Arts, Inc., become the building's landlord, with receivership ending the next year in 1935. Soon after, the Horch and Roerich families dissolved their partnership due to disagreements, and the Roeriches unsuccessfully sued Horch to regain control of the Master Apartments. Horch then closed the Roeriches' museum, forcing it to find a new location, and replaced it with the Riverside Museum. Louis Horch's wife Nettie also controlled some aspects of the building and its organizations during this time, but by 1958, the Horches' son Frank became the building's manager.
During the 1950s and 1960s, people moved out of the surrounding Manhattan Valley neighborhood. Consequently, the Master Apartments' museum and cultural center closed by 1971, their holdings dispersed elsewhere, although the building's auditorium was still used for cultural events. After Louis's death in 1979, the building was bought by real estate investor Sol Goldman, who converted it to a housing co-operative over the next decade. Further renovations, which were completed in 2005, resulted in many of the one-bedroom studios being combined into two- and three-bedroom units. These renovations attracted more families and made the building more luxurious by both quality-of-life and purchase-price measures. The Master Apartments was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
