By Carter B. Horsley

This large and quite handsome 23-story condominium occupies the Broadway blockfront between 83rd and 84th Streets.

Designed by Costas Kondylis of Philip Birnbaum & Associates, this red-brick, 308-unit building is most notable for its oculi - circular openings and motifs - on its top five floors and around much of is base above the retail spaces and in the middle of a three-story, white-colored base. Despite such motifs, the building itself is quite rectilinear.

The façade is very rhythmic with relatively deep recesses (that provide many corner windows even in the middle of the building) below the terraced top floors.

The building is on the site of the Loew's 83rd Street theater, designed in 1921 by Thomas W. Lamb, but it contains the Loew's 84th Street Sixplex, designed by Heid & Rubin. The sixplex, one of the first major multiplexes on the West Side, contains about 2,975 seats and is one of the more popular ones in Manhattan.

The building, which was completed in 1986 and developed by William L. Haines and Haseko, Inc., has a health club and pool, garage, a children's playroom, a bicycle room and room service. More than half are one-bedrooms. Its design is nicely consistent with circular motifs used not only in the many oculi but also in the entrance marquee and lobby.

In their definitive "A.I.A. Guide to New York City, Third Edition," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), Elliot Willensky and Norval White remark that this building is "a chunky filler of Broadway's belly," adding that "Post Modern green glazing with limestone gives a graceful edge to West 83rd Street and a serrated neo-Dutch profile."

Although the oculi are something of a design gimmick, they and the building are quite attractive. This is one of the more desirable buildings in the area, which is pretty desirable because of a nearby a major Barnes & Noble bookstore and Zabar's. It is also across Broadway from a popular Chinese restaurant, Ollie's.