6. Graham Court

Graham Court, built at the crossroads intersection of West 116th Street, Seventh Avenue, and St. Nicholas Avenue in 1901, was arguably the high point of Harlem’s pre-war apartment house period.

The grand 8-story building measures approximately 200 feet by 175 feet but what distinguishes it is the spacious 79-foot by 108-foot interior courtyard. To put its size in perspective, The Nordica would fit inside Graham Court’s courtyard.

Graham Court was developed by William Waldorf Astor, one of the New York’s biggest landowners. While Graham Court’s grandeur was never equaled again in Harlem, it was the first in a wave of large courtyard buildings modeled after Italian Renaissance palazzi that later included The Apthorp, by the same architects, Clinton and Russell, and The Belnord, both built in 1908.