Hendrik Hudson Apartments (Thursday Doors)

camera

both
shoots and captures–
eye
hand lens in concert–
in or out of focus each subject

exposed
developed reproduced
in surprising ways–
transparent,
shadowed, magnified

I lived in various apartments within ten blocks uptown and downtown from this building at 110th Street and Riverside Drive for 30 years. I must have passed by hundreds of times. But never once, until a few weeks ago, did I look closely at the front door.

I observed to Dan last week that since I started looking for doors I see all kinds of things I never saw before. To be fair, I never knew anyone who lived in this building, so I never actually walked up to the entrance. But still! How could I have missed this?

The Hendrik Hudson Apartments was one of the first large buildings on upper Riverside Drive when it was opened in 1907. The architecture firm Rouse and Sloan were inspired by Italian villas, and the red tile roof was capped with two towers connected by a promenade for the residents. The building also contained, in addition to luxury apartments, a smoking room, a billiard room, a banquet hall, a restaurant with private dining rooms, and a barber shop.

the building as originally constructed

Interestingly, none of the articles I found about the building mentioned the doors.

After World War II, the building fell on hard times, along with the neighborhood. The owners, who had turned it into an SRO, were sued as part of a major effort by the city to get rid of slum landlords who allowed building violations to pile up while their buildings deteriorated. A new owner renovated it in 1960, returning the rented single rooms back into apartments, and even constructing a parking garage for residents on the lower level. At that time, one of the towers was removed.

In 1971, the building became a co-op. There is currently a 3 bedroom apartment for sale for $1,800,000. It’s come a long way back to luxury from its SRO days. As has the entire neighborhood.

My poem is written in the piaku form, which can consist of any number of lines, following a syllable count to match the numbers of pi. This one is 3.14159 26535 long. For Colleen’s #TankaTuesday where the prompt, provided by David at The Skeptic’s Kaddish, is the photo of his father (with camera), below.

And, as always, find more doors with host Dan Antion, here.