Waterside Plaza

Waterside Plaza is a multi-building rental apartment complex on Manhattan’s East Side at 25 Waterside Plaza, with Waterside Management as manager on record. It is a complex rather than a single building: four residential towers designed by Davis, Brody & Associates, set on a raised pedestrian platform built out over the East River, east of the FDR Drive. The United Nations International School has its main campus on the same platform.

The complex spans roughly East 25th to East 30th Street, reached from Manhattan by a footbridge over the FDR Drive at East 25th Street next to Peter Cooper Village. Bellevue Hospital and the VA Medical Center are across the highway. NYC Ferry stops at the East 34th Street landing, the M23 SBS runs crosstown along 23rd Street, and the 6 is at 28th Street and Park Avenue South.

Waterside Plaza was developed by Richard Ravitch and completed in 1974 under New York State’s Mitchell-Lama program, which offered low-cost financing in return for regulated middle-income rents. Its brown-brick towers, the tallest of them 37 stories, are among the best-known works of Davis, Brody & Associates, and the raised plaza between them is closed to cars, with open views across the East River to Long Island City and Greenpoint.

The complex left the Mitchell-Lama program in 2001. Under an agreement reached with the state and with tenants, existing residents kept protections against steep rent increases, while apartments that turned over moved to market rents. As a result, Waterside has a mix of long-term tenants and newer market-rate renters, and a community feel that is unusual for a complex of its size in Manhattan.