Beaumont Apartments

History and architecture

The Beaumont Apartments (1912-13), at Riverside Drive and West 150th Street, is a premiere example of the Arts & Crafts style architectural designs of the firm of George & Edward Blum. The firm specialized in apartment houses, and the years 1910 to 1917 were the core period of the Blums’ most creative experimentation, when they produced a distinctive group of designs with unique ornament, usually executed with patterned brickwork and specially-commissioned geometric terra-cotta and art tiles, many influenced by progressive Parisian design.

The Beaumont’s “textile-like” facades feature patterned brickwork above a two-story limestone base, glazed art tiles, noteworthy iron balconies, foliate terra- cotta bandcourses, and unusual octagonal terra-cotta medallions with birds in high relief. Following the arrival of the IRT Broadway-Seventh Avenue subway line in 1904, Washington Heights rapidly developed with apartment buildings and accompanying commercial structures. The Beaumont’s location at 150th Street and Riverside Drive was an optimum site because of its close proximity to Riverside Park as well as Audubon Park and Terrace, John James Audubon’s former estate.

The Beaumont’s figurative and naturalistic decorations can be interpreted as a tribute to its surroundings; the close proximity of the Hudson River and the former Audubon estate acted as inspirations, expressed through the foliate tiles and bandcourses. The Beaumont is unusual in that the Blums’ use of decorative terra-cotta plaques featuring birds applied in high relief, including owls, symbols of wisdom; eagles, emblems of democracy and a sacred symbol of the Lenepe tribe once indigenous to that part of Manhattan; and parakeets. This decorative terra cotta was topped by the Blum brothers’ signature use of abstract interlocking patterned brick and decorative tile in place of a stone cornice.

The Beaumont housed a number of famous tenants over the years, including U.S. Representative Jacob K. Javits; architect Alfred Fellheimer; legendary African-American contralto Marian Anderson; and African-American writer Ralph W. Ellison, author of Invisible Man (1952), who lived in the building for four decades until his death in 1994.