Karl Bitter’s equestrian statue of General Franz Sigel, Riverside Park, 1907. Bitter, a Viennese-born architectural sculptor, rose to prominence after winning a design contest for Trinity Church bronzework, and became a frequent collaborator of the prominent architect Richard Morris Hunt. Sadly, Bitter’s career came to a premature end in 1915, when he was struck and killed by an out-of-control car as he exited the Metropolitan Opera. This statue, completed in 1907, depicts General Franz Sigel, a German-born veteran of the Civil War, and later a civil servant in New York City.

The Alimar entrance detail, ca. 1975. Designed in 1899 as a set with four row houses along West 105th Street, the Alimar Apartments were the ambitious project of builder Hamilton M. Weed. The Alimar was constructed to attract wealthy new-comers to the expanding neighborhood at a time when apartment living (seriously luxury apartment living) was becoming acceptable among well-to-do New Yorkers. The Jane & Leo-designed building has a facade like an explosion of Beaux-Arts features from the ornate two-story rusticated limestone base to the copper mansard roof to the dormers, described by one architectural historian as "frothy." (Jane & Leo also created the equally, if not more, frothy Dorilton at 71st Street for Hamilton Weed.) The interiors were also lavishly designed. The eleven-room apartments included a library, parlor, servant room, and numerous bedrooms. Residents and visitors tread on hardwood parquet floors and sat in dinning rooms and libraries paneled in mahogany. The building suffered in the second half of the 20th century, with its mansard and much of its facade ornamentation removed. A renovation in the late 1990s re-fabricated new facade features and added a flat cornice roof, a convincing recreation.

Master Building STATUS Designated Individual Landmark 310-312 Riverside Drive ARCHITECT: Harvey Wiley Corbett; Helmle, Corbett & Harrison; Sugarman & Burger DATE: 1928-29 STYLE: Art Deco, Skyscraper The Master Building, erected in 1928-29 to house an apartment hotel and museum, is an innovative and significant example of the work of Harvey Wiley Corbett, an architect influential in skyscraper design, and expresses his successful employment of sculptural massing, vertical emphasis, and the minimal, yet elegant, use of surface ornamentation and historically-inspired detailing. The design of the building includes many strong and well-integrated features representative of the best of New York City’s Art Deco style skyscrapers, including patterned brickwork which varies in color from dark at the base to light at the tower, setbacks, irregular and faceted massing of the upper stories, and an ornamental cap.

Schinasi Mansion, ca. 1909. Built in 1909 for the Turkish-born tobacco magnate Morris Schinasi, this mansion is the largest single-family residence on Riverside Drive. Schinasi enlisted William Tuthill, the architect of Carnegie Hall, to produce a heavily ornamented, French Renaissance style residence in white marble. Some sources claim the home included a Prohibition-era trap door leading to the Hudson River below, but these claims do not appear in Landmarks Preservation Commission documents. After Schinasi’s death, the home was a finishing school, before being acquired by Columbia University. The house was bought privately by a Columbia law professor in 1979 and sold again in 2013.

Bronze statue by Augustus Lukeman, in memory of Isidor and Ida Straus, ca. 1975. Lukeman’s statue depicts a nymph gazing into water, representing “memory.” The statue is situated in Straus Park, where it was dedicated in April, 1915.

View west from 2760 Broadway, at 106th Street, 1928. In the foreground is Straus Park, named for Isidor and Ida Straus, Upper West Side residents who perished aboard the Titanic. Isidor Straus and his brother Nathan were partners in Abraham & Straus department store, and later Macy’s, where the brothers became co-owners and opened the flagship Herald Square store. Isidor Straus also held office as a United States Representative for New York. The park, previously known as Schulyer Square and Bloomingdale Square, features a bronze statue in memory of the Strauses by the sculptor Augustus Lukeman. In the background, Riverside Park and the Hudson River are visible. At the foot of 106th Street is a bronze equestrian sculpture by Karl Bitter, depicted General Franz Sigel, a German-born Civil War veteran.

Master Apartments, 1930. The Master, a 27-story Art Deco skyscraper — the tallest on Riverside Drive — was commissioned by financier Louis Horch to house the Master Institute of United Arts, a school founded by the Russian artist, explorer and theosophist Nicholas Roerich. The new building included 24 stories of residential apartments, intended to generate rental income to support the Master Institute and Roerich Museum of the building’s lower floors. Roerich, a painter, set designer (best known for Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”), philosopher, and mystic who traveled extensively through East Asia, immigrated to the United States in 1920, having left Russia shortly after the October Revolution of 1917. In New York, he found an audience for his theories about the relationship between art and daily life — as well as benefactors, including Horch, whose Riverside Drive townhouse previously occupied the site of the Master building. For the Master, Horch and Roerich enlisted Harvey Wiley Corbett, a noted skyscraper architect. Corbett’s Art Deco design featured colored brick gradually shifting to lighter tones in the building’s upper stories, and the first instance of corner windows in a New York skyscraper. The Master was completed in October, 1929, shortly before the market crash, and immediately came under financial pressure. Horch spent much of the early 1930s attempting to sort out its various debts and liabilities, and was eventually able to wrest control of the building in 1935. Roerich, meanwhile, got out of town — he continued his Asian expeditions, and would eventually settle in India. In 1938, Horch closed the Roerich Museum (the patronage relationship had become strained), and opened the Riverside Museum in the same space. That museum operated until 1971, when its collection of contemporary American art was transferred to the Brandeis Museum. The Equity Library Theater hosted productions at the Master from 1961-1989. In 1988, as the surrounding Manhattan Valley neighborhood began to rebound from a period of blight, the Master was converted to a housing co-operative. During the mid-90s, this new ownership structure undertook a multi-year restoration project.

Morris and Laurette Schinasi House ARCHITECT: William B. Tuthill DATE: 1907-09 This two and a half story building is basically rectangular in plan, accented by an interplay of projected and recessed wall sections. The flush entrance facade, facing Riverside Drive, is pierced by windows on each floor. The main doorway, located to the right, is approached by steps flanked by wing walls. These wing walls terminate in high, square, newel posts that, in turn, connect with the balustraded yard railing.

"Duty," part of the Firemen's Memorial sculptural group in Riverside Park, ca. 1976.

The Alimar Apartments, ca. 1905. A seven-story Beaux-Arts apartment building commissioned by developer Hamilton Weed and completed under the ownership of E.G. Thiery. The Alimar, which opened in late 1899, featured stylish and spacious Colonial Revival interiors and amenities including state-of-the-art refrigerated storage.

"Courage," part of the Firemen's Memorial sculptural group in Riverside Park, ca. 1976.

Firemen’s Memorial, 1914. The Firemen’s Memorial at Riverside Park was conceived in 1907, following the death of Deputy Fire Chief Charles W. Kruger. The monument, completed in 1913, commemorates the service of the scores of New York City firefighters who perished in an era when serious fires were a frequent and perilous occurrence. The memorial consisted of a balustraded plaza by architect Harold Van Buren Magonigle, and monument including a bas-relief work (later replaced by a bronze replica) and allegorical sculptures by Attilio Piccirilli.