Building Spotlight: THE WOODSTOCK

Continuing our survey of individual Tudor City buildings, here's the lowdown on The Woodstock, known within the French Company as the Seventh Unit.

320 E. 42nd Street, at sunrise

➺ Opened May 1, 1929. Faced with red brick, trimmed with limestone and terra cotta. It once had a spire, removed in the 1940s for reasons unknown.

➺ 459 apartments, arranged over 32 stories. The tallest building in Tudor City (and the tallest apartment building in Manhattan when it first opened). Most units are studios, with some one- and two-bedroom apartments on the upper floors. 

➺ Opened as an Apartment Hotel (efficiency apartments offering hotel amenities like room service from the on-premises restaurant, plus maid and laundry services, for an additional fee). The original onsite restaurant was converted to a club room around 1942.

➺ In 1951-52, the entrance to The Woodstock was lowered 17 feet as part of the regrading of 42nd St., and the first basement became the ground floor.

Newspaper ad, March 10, 1929. The "apartments of the future" feature
31 feet-long living rooms with five windows.

Floor plan, 1930

Entire floor plan, 1930. The apartments of the future are the corner units.

A massive terra cotta lion guards a 23rd-floor terrace