The Colosseum is an apartment building located at 116th Street and Riverside Drive in

Morningside Heights Morningside Heights is a neighborhood on the West Side of Upper Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Morningside Drive to the east, 125th Street to the north, 110th Street to the south, and Riverside Drive to the west. Morningside ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The building is noted for its curved facade, unusual among New York City buildings, and impressive marble lobby. Across 116th Street, The Colosseum faces

The Paterno The Paterno is a Manhattan apartment building located at 116th Street and Riverside Drive and also known as 440 Riverside Drive. The building is noted for its curved facade, impressive marble lobby with a stained-glass ceiling, and substantial ...

, another building with a similar curved facade. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' has said that the "opposing curves, (form) a gateway as impressive as any publicly built arch or plaza in New York." The unusual curved facades are the result of an 1897 plan to make the land between

Claremont Avenue Claremont Avenue is a short avenue in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It begins at 116th Street and runs north for a length of eleven blocks until it ends at Tiemann Place (the western segment of 127th Street) ...

and Riverside Drive into a public park in order to give veterans' parades a large park adjacent to

Grant's Tomb Grant's Tomb, officially the General Grant National Memorial, is the final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th president of the United States, and his wife, Julia Grant. It is a classical domed mausoleum in the Morningside Heights neighborho ...

as a terminus. The street was redesigned to enter the proposed park in a gracious curve, but the city never appropriated funds to buy the land. The Colosseum was designed by Schwartz & Gross and built by the Paterno Brothers,

Charles Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English language, English and French language, French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic, Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*k ...

and Joseph, in 1909-1910. The luxury four-bedroom apartments with sweeping views of the

Hudson River The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...

rented for $150 to $175 a month.

Harlan Fiske Stone Harlan is a given name and a surname which may refer to: Surname *Bob Harlan (born 1936 Robert E. Harlan), American football executive *Bruce Harlan (1926–1959), American Olympic diver *Byron B. Harlan (1886–1949), American politician *Byron G ...

and Lajos "Louis" Jambor lived in the Colosseum when it was a private building. The Colosseum was later acquired by

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. Among the distinguished members of the Columbia faculty who have lived here are

David Weiss Halivni David Weiss Halivni ( he, דוד וייס הלבני; September 27, 1927 – June 28, 2022) was a European-born American-Israeli rabbi, scholar in the domain of Jewish sciences, and Professor of Talmud. He served as '' Reish Metivta'' of the U ...

and

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''White ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Colosseum Apartment buildings in New York City Residential buildings in Manhattan Condominiums and housing cooperatives in Manhattan Residential buildings completed in 1910 Morningside Heights, Manhattan 1910 establishments in New York City Columbia University campus