History and architecture
The 103 Riverside Drive House, originally designed by well-known architect and developer Clarence F. True, was built on speculation in 1898- 99 as one house of a picturesque group of six houses on the southeast corner of Riverside Drive and West 83rd Street. Today the 103 Riverside Drive House is architecturally significant and as one of the five extant houses in this group represents the first period of development on Riverside Drive.
True designed several hundred houses, primarily in groups, on the Upper West Side in the years between 1890 and 1901, and was largely responsible for promoting the development and establishing the character of lower Riverside Drive. The houses in the group at Riverside and West 83rd Street were designed in True's signature "Elizabethan Revival" style based on French and English Renaissance prototypes and built by True's development firm, the Riverside Building Company; they are the northernmost of True's designs built along the Drive.
The design of the L-shaped 103 Riverside Drive House is characterized by such picturesque elements as contrasting tan Roman ironspot brick and limestone facing, round-arched and rectangular windows, keyed surrounds, side courtyard facades, decorative ironwork, dormers, and a tile roof. This house was originally designed with a projecting bowfront and a low stoop, but these features (along with those of the adjacent houses) became the focus of an interesting legal controversy several years after construction.
As the result of a lawsuit brought by an adjacent property owner, the court ruled in 1903 that no one had the authority to place permanent encroachments onto public thoroughfares, and the owners of the houses in the True group facing onto Riverside Drive were thus ordered to remove the projections. In 1911 the main facades were removed and rebuilt to follow the diagonal of the Riverside Drive property lines. No. 103 (owned by Amelia Bingham, an immensely popular actress) was rebuilt with the original materials by the firm of Clinton & Russell so that today, although it reflects the work of two -architectural firms, it basically remains a modified version of the original picturesque Elizabethan Revival design.
Sources and further reading
This history comes from the Landmarks app’s historical catalog. Names and building uses may reflect the period described.