Stuyvesant Apartments
- Architect
- Richard Morris Hunt
- Year
- 1870
- Style
- Gothic Revival
- City
- Manhattan, NY
The Stuyvesant Apartments, built in 1870 and designed by Richard Morris Hunt, was the first apartment building in New York City meant for the middle class, at a time when respectable New Yorkers still saw apartment living as something only the poor or the French did. Developed by Rutherfurd Stuyvesant, it rented units for $1,000 to $1,800 a year and proved there was demand for upscale, higher-density housing beyond tenements and townhouses. Robert A. M. Stern later called it the "foundation stone" of the middle class's move into apartments.
the building
A new way to live. Before the Stuyvesant, New Yorkers of means lived in townhouses; apartments, then called "French flats," were considered unrespectable. This building changed that by packing upscale, self-contained units into one structure.
the style
Hunt designed the building in the Gothic Revival style, giving a genuinely new kind of housing an established architectural pedigree to help ease its acceptance.
More on Gothic Revivalthe architect
Richard Morris Hunt was one of the era's most important American architects and the first American trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
significance
The Stuyvesant's success led directly to the construction of other apartment buildings for the middle class across the city.
nearby
- Scheffel Hall
- Samuel J. Tilden House
- Saint George's Church
- W New York Union Square
- The Players Club
- Consolidated Edison Company Building