Noonan Plaza Apartments

The Noonan Plaza Apartments are an eight-story Art Deco apartment complex in the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. Built in 1931 by Horace Ginsbern & Associates, with exteriors by Marvin Fine, the building forms part of the rich tapestry of Art Deco apartments in the West Bronx.^[1] It was made a New York City designated landmark in 2010.^[2]

Noonan Plaza Apartments
Location	139 West 168th Street Highbridge, Bronx, New York City
Coordinates	40°50′18″N 73°55′30″W
Built	1931
Architectural style(s)	Art Deco
Governing body	Private
New York City Landmark
Designated	June 22, 2010
Reference no.	2400
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Description

The Noonan Plaza Apartments is a 300-dwelling, garden apartment that occupies much of the book bounded by West 168th Street and Ogden and Nelson Avenues. It rises between six and eight stories, with facades on three sides and a central 15,000-square-foot courtyard garden bounded by a one-story arcade at the corner of Nelson and 168th.^[3]: 74

History

In the 1920s, the population of New York grew substantially, with migration from the crowded environs of Manhattan to the outer boroughs. Jews, in particular, eagerly decamped from crowded tenement ghettos to new, modern housing that was being built in locations such as the West Bronx, centered along the Grand Concourse. Horace Ginsbern and his company, Ginsbern & Associates, collaborated with Marvin Fine on a number of apartment buildings in the Bronx.^[4]

Fine had been inspired by watching the Art Deco skyscrapers going up from Ginsbern & Associates' Midtown Manhattan offices, and was inspired to use the Daily News Building's multicolored brick as the firm's trademark in the Bronx. Ginsbern and Fine built one of the earliest Art Deco apartment buildings in the Bronx at 1005 Jerome Avenue, the Park Plaza Apartments, from 1929–1931.^[4]

Ginsbern's work on Park Plaza impressed Bernard Noonan, an Irish developer who was building housing in the Bronx, and he recruited them to build a much larger version of those apartments, to be called "Noonan Plaza". Noonan intended the Plaza to be the apotheosis of design and craftsmanship of his building.^[4]

See also

• Art Deco architecture of New York City
• List of New York City Designated Landmarks in the Bronx

References

1. Bird, David (February 7, 1982). "Swans are gone, but Art Deco grace returns to Bronx apartment house". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 3, 2019. Retrieved August 2, 2019.
2. "Landmarks Preservation Commission June 22, 2010, Designation List 430 LP-2400" (PDF). Landmarks Preservation Commission. City of New York. September 16, 2008. Retrieved August 6, 2019.
3. Rosenblum, Constance (2011). Boulevard of Dreams: Heady Times, Heartbreak, and Hope Along the Grand Concourse. NYU Press. ISBN 978-0814777244.
4. Robins, Anthony (2017). New York Art Deco: A Guide to Gotham's Jazz Age Architecture. Albany, New York: Excelsior Editions. ISBN 978-1438463964.