Apartment 6E at 790 Riverside Drive is spacious, with a Park Avenue apartment kind of flow, not
what you might expect to find in a coop on 157th Street in
lower Washington Heights, aka the Audubon Park Historic District. With
predominantly north facing windows, it looks above the rooftops of the building
across the street with magical city views and affords sightings of the George
Washington bridge.
The apartment has three bedrooms, two of which are currently furnished as libraries, two full
bathrooms and another half bath which houses the vented washer/dryer. There are
several unusually large public spaces, There's the huge living room (once laid
out as a study and a side-by-side parlor), a full-sized dining room and a
very gracious entry leading to a foyer that feels like a space in an art
gallery. The very ample kitchen has a Sub Zero refrigerator, a Viking
stove, a Bosch dishwasher and a universe of storage cabinets.
There are twoadditional office spaces not shown in the photographs, originally staff
bedrooms, one off the kitchen, and the other next to the laundry room. (see
floorplan.) You can hide in this apartment, and it would be very tough to
find you.
Similarly grand is the building lobby, a block-long and clad in marble, with a doorman station
at one end of it and a wheel-chair accessible door. The landmarked building has
24 -hour doormen, a live-in super, t handymen and porters. On the lobby
level there's a package room, a laundry room, lockers and bike
storage. The tree-filled neighborhood with meandering streets is
sprouting restaurants, home-grown cafes, and bakeries and boasts increasingly
open and friendly cultural institutions, including the Hispanic Society Museum
and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, both of which now offer changing
exhibitions and public performances, and are only a block from the back door of
the Riviera. There is good transportation: the #1 train is a block away, the C
and A trains are also nearby, as are the 4 and 5 bus. N-Y Presbyterian hospital
and Columbia Medical Center are in the immediate neighborhood and City College
and Columbia's Manhattanville campus are in a slightly farther away. The
Hudson River Greenway down the street with its sports fields, playground and
tennis courts, and there's also Riverbank State Park with an Olympic-sized
pool, a track, skating and other facilities.

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