The Level Club is a residential building at 253 West 73rd Street on the

Upper West Side The Upper West Side (UWS) is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is bounded by Central Park on the east, the Hudson River on the west, West 59th Street to the south, and West 110th Street to the north. The Upper We ...

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

. It was built as a men's club by a group of

Freemasons Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

in 1927; it served this original function for just about three years. Afterwards, the building was used, in turn, as a hotel and a drug re-hab center. It has now been remodeled as a condominium.

History

The building was erected in 1927. ''See also:'' The bank foreclosed on the club's mortgage in 1931."What is The Level Club... A Historical Overview"
Leslie Schier. (archived 2011) It became a hotel for men that rented rooms by the week in the 1930s, and a kosher hotel in the 1940s and 1950s, and a single-room-occupancy hotel in the 1960s. From 1936, it was known as The Hotel Riverside Plaza.

Museum of the City of New York The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is a history and art museum in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It was founded by Henry Collins Brown, in 1923Beard, Rick. "Museum of the City of New York" in to preserve and present the history ...

collections At the height of the urban decay of the 1970s it was purchased by the nonprofit drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization

Phoenix House Phoenix House Foundation was a national nonprofit drug and alcohol rehabilitation organization operating in ten states with 150 programs throughout the United States. Programs served individuals, families, and communities affected by substance ...

."Upper West Side's Level Club: Where residents don't want to leave"
January 25th 2008, Daily News. It was turned into an upscale condominium in 1984. The ''

New York Daily News The ''Daily News'' is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson in New York City as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in Tabloid (newspaper format ...

'' describes it as the city's "most mystical and intriguing condominium." The Capitol Records artist Stan Kenton recorded the album Cuban Fire in this building in 1956 .

Architecture

The

Neo-Romanesque Romanesque Revival (or Neo-Romanesque) is a style of building employed beginning in the mid-19th century inspired by the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque architecture. Unlike the historic Romanesque style, Romanesque Revival buildings tended t ...

building was designed by the New York architectural firm Clinton Russell Wells George and Holton. The facade was designed as an homage to

Freemasonry Freemasonry (sometimes spelled Free-Masonry) consists of fraternal groups that trace their origins to the medieval guilds of stonemasons. Freemasonry is the oldest secular fraternity in the world and among the oldest still-existing organizati ...

, particularly by incorporating aspects of biblical descriptions of the

Temple of Solomon Solomon's Temple, also known as the First Temple (), was a biblical Temple in Jerusalem believed to have existed between the 10th and 6th centuries BCE. Its description is largely based on narratives in the Hebrew Bible, in which it was commis ...

,"Masonic Mysticism"
Jesse McKinley, Dec. 25, 1994, New York Times. a significant building in Masonic tradition.Horne, Alexander, ''King Solomon's Temple in the Masonic tradition,'' Aquarian Press, 1972; James Stevens Curl, ''The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry,'' Overlook Press,1991. The facade also features many carvings of symbols adopted by the Masons, such as the

all-seeing eye The Eye of Providence or All-Seeing Eye is a symbol depicting an eye, often enclosed in a triangle and surrounded by rays of light or a halo, intended to represent Providence, as the eye watches over the workers of mankind. A well-known exampl ...

, the hourglass, the level, the

hexagram , can be seen as a compound polygon, compound composed of an upwards (blue here) and downwards (pink) facing equilateral triangle, with their intersection as a regular hexagon (in green). A hexagram (Greek language, Greek) or sexagram (Latin l ...

, the beehive and the Bible. The door is framed by two large pillars representing

Boaz and Jachin According to the Bible, Boaz () and Jachin () were two copper, brass or bronze pillars which stood on the porch of Solomon's Temple, the first Temple in Jerusalem. They are used as symbols in Freemasonry and sometimes in religious architecture. ...

, the pillars that stood at the entrance to King Solomon's Temple. The figures at the base of the pillars represent two figures of Masonic significance

Hiram Abiff Hiram Abiff (also Hiram Abif or the Widow's son) is the central character of an allegory presented to all candidates during the third Masonic degrees, degree in Freemasonry. Hiram is presented as the chief architect of Solomon's Temple, King So ...

and

King Solomon King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a constitutional monarch if his power is restrained by f ...

."Symbolic Interpretation
Leslie Schier. (archived 2011) According to Bruno Bertuccioli, author of ''The Level Club: A New York City Story of the Twenties: Splendor, Decadence and Resurgence of a Monument to Human Ambition,'' the building was built as a Replica of the Jewish Temple. Bertuccioli describes the building as "the only true-to-size rendering of King Solomon's Temple that exists in the world today." The building's original grand lobby, featuring a two-story atrium with balcony and grand staircases is intact."Level Club : Present Day"
Leslie Schier. (archived 2011) The building originally included "a swimming pool, bowling alley, 4,000-seat auditorium, dining halls, gymnasium, racquetball courts, a club floor, billiards room and rooftop gardens." It did not include lodge meeting rooms. While none of these survive, the facade is "perfectly preserved." The building was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1984.

Books

* ''The Level Club: A New York City Story of the Twenties: Splendor, Decadence and Resurgence of a Monument to Human Ambition,'' by Bruno Bertuccioli and Andrea Bassan, 1991.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Level Club Clubhouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan Apartment buildings in New York City Upper West Side Condominiums and housing cooperatives in Manhattan Romanesque Revival architecture in New York City Former Masonic buildings in New York (state) Masonic buildings completed in 1927 1927 establishments in New York City