241 Central Park West
241 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024
- Year built
- 1930
- Type
- Rental — owned by the Rudin family since 1945
- Units
- 139
- Floors
- 19
- Landmark
- Designated
- Pets
- Per current lease terms
241 Central Park West occupies a particular and somewhat unusual position on the avenue: it is one of only a handful of CPW pre-war buildings that has never converted to cooperative or condominium ownership. Acquired by the Rudin family in 1945 and held continuously since, the building has remained a rental property for 80 years — across multiple waves of CPW conversions that swept the avenue between the 1950s and 1990s — making it a singular institutional artifact of the New York rental market.
Built by Earle & Calhoun in 1930–1931 and designed by Schwartz & Gross (the same firm responsible for 55 CPW, 101 CPW, and the Brentmore), 241 CPW is an Art Deco composition in beige brick with substantial cast-stone ornamentation at the lower and upper floors. The ornamentation has been variously described as cornstalks, calla lilies, and tulips — a botanical Art Deco vocabulary that distinguishes the building from the more geometric Art Deco ornament at peer CPW Schwartz & Gross buildings. The facade spans the entire blockfront between West 84th and West 85th, producing a substantial street-level presence unusual among CPW pre-wars (most of which occupy single side-street frontages).
For prospective renters who want pre-war CPW architecture without the financial barriers and board scrutiny of a co-op purchase — or for buyers researching the broader CPW market who encounter 241 CPW listings on rental platforms — the building represents a meaningful pre-war Park-facing rental option in a corridor that is otherwise dominated by ownership product.
The persistent rental status is itself part of the building's economic identity. The Rudin family — among Manhattan's largest and longest-tenured rental landlords — has maintained CPW Park-facing rental inventory at 241 CPW as an institutional holding rather than a development opportunity, an unusual decision in the post-conversion CPW landscape.
Architecture and unit composition
The building's 139 apartments originally ranged from three to six rooms, distributed across 18 residential floors plus a penthouse. Some apartments feature sunken living rooms, railed galleries, and wood-burning fireplaces — design signatures noted in 1931 newspaper marketing of the building. Color-tiled bathrooms were another period feature highlighted at the original lease-up.
Apartments have been renovated to varying degrees across the building's 95-year history; many units have been substantially modernized while others retain more original detail. Park-facing apartments on the eastern flank offer direct Central Park views.
Building operations
241 CPW operates as a full-service rental building under Rudin Management. The building maintains the pre-war service signature appropriate to its tier — full-time doorman, attended lobby, on-site superintendent — but as a rental property, operational details (lease terms, fees, policies) are subject to landlord control rather than co-op or condo board governance.
The building is not in a cooperative or condominium structure. There is no proprietary lease, no flip tax, no NYC stockholders' abatement, no board approval process. Resident-tenants hold leases rather than shares or units. This produces a fundamentally different daily-life signature than peer CPW co-ops and condos — tenants can be issued non-renewal notices subject to NYC rent regulations, and capital decisions are made entirely by the landlord rather than by a resident-elected board.