Great Buildings: In the Reborn Belnord, Modern Luxury and Classic Grandeur Live in Perfect Harmony

The meticulously designed and appointed model units featured furnishings from a combination of designers, including Anna Karlin, and high-end staging by frenchCALIFORNIA. The enviable amenity spaces, designed by Rafael de Cárdenas, caught the eye of such publications as Wallpaper. And because of how the apartments sold, the models ended up migrating around the building.

“Seeing only the plans required a lot of imagination for some buyers,” said Kadouri, looking admiringly at M1, its wonderful finishes and layout. “Nothing really compares to being in the space.”

Befitting an architect whose love and knowledge of New York architecture is unparalleled,  Stern’s new interiors, although contemporary, retain the gracious, otherworldly feel of the building itself. (The originals walls and floors were removed prior to the renovation.) This sense of a grander past is immediately recognizable when you enter from 86th Street and step through the Belnord’s famous portico (the one made even more recognizable thanks to its star turn as the exterior of the fictional Arconia from the Hulu series Only Murders in the Building).

Once inside, you immediately find yourself in the extraordinary central courtyard. It is huge—understandably, as the building encircling it occupies an entire city block. I was taken aback.

At first glance, you might think you’re in Europe, another world altogether. All around are the Belnord’s magnificent apartments, reached by six separate entrance doors. The stacked limestone walls are broken up by single columns of copper-clad bay windows on both the north and south facades. After many years of oxidation, these strips of copper that travel down the exterior are a luminous and exciting green. In the center of the courtyard is the massive, newly restored fountain.

Apartment M1 is similarly otherworldly. Spacious, quiet, contemporary but formal. Beautifully decorated. Still, the bones of the Belnord and their promise of luxury living from more than 100 years ago remain. But now a new, different way to live comes through: tranquil, easy, still with a sense of permanence.

A Bold Undertaking

Certainly, there are other famous former residential “palaces” on the Upper West side—the Apthorp and the Dakota come to mind—but few had the resources or the vision to be reborn like the Belnord.

The restoration was done in stages. At one point, Kadouri recalls there were over 150 contractors and workmen on site. Nothing was overlooked; no corners were cut.

“The gold leaf on all the bannisters were reapplied, and the white mosaic tile floors in the elevator lobbies were all restored,” she tells me. The pace of sales was steady at the outset, she adds, but as the restored apartments were completed and new owners moved in, the sales price climbed. Apartment 712, on the northside of the building, is priced at $9.9 million. Just under 4,000 square feet, it boasts five bedrooms and four-and-a-half bathrooms.

One of the constant, often cacophonous conflicts that bedevil this city is the one between the advent of the new—especially new buildings—at the expense of the old. The rebirth of the Belnord—in which the Modern has been so thoroughly and seamless integrated into the Classic—proves that it needn’t be a zero-sum game. You can have it both ways.

The Belnord’s fame as the epitome of luxury living remains, only revived and emboldened for today’s New York.

David Hay is a well-known architectural writer and playwright. His stories have been featured in The New York Times, Dwell and New York.