On Central Park West, the first three stories are clad in cast stone, and the main entrance consists of three angular bronze archways.

The current apartment complex was constructed from 1929 to 1931 by developer Louis Klosk, who was unable to complete the building after the Wall Street Crash of 1929.

[3] The El Dorado is one of several apartment buildings on Central Park West that are primarily identified by an official name.

[12][13] Major developments on the West Side were erected after the Ninth Avenue elevated line opened in 1879, providing direct access to Lower Manhattan.

[16][17] The city installed power lines on Central Park West at the end of the 19th century, thus allowing the construction of multi-story apartment hotels with elevators.

[19][20] The original El Dorado, an eight-story apartment complex completed in 1902,[11] was designed by Neville & Bagge and developed by John Signell.

[2][22][23] Irving Margon and Adolph M. Holder were relatively obscure architects,[24][25] but they are known to have collaborated from 1928 to 1932, designing apartment buildings in Manhattan and the Bronx.

[28] The El Dorado is one of four buildings on Central Park West with a twin-towered form; the others are the Century, the Majestic, and the San Remo.

[5][36] The main entrance on Central Park West contains three angled bronze arches at ground level, each of which corresponds to two bays.

[5][37] On the second story, there are two windows above each arch, or six in total, separated vertically by a stepped bronze pier with an incised geometric pattern.

[28] Above the ground story, the Central Park West elevation is divided into eleven groupings of bays from south to north.

Each of the lower stories had 11 apartments with three to twelve rooms per suite, and most units occupied a single level (as opposed to double-level duplexes).

[33] The El Dorado was generally marketed to a less wealthy population than other buildings on Central Park West, such as the Beresford and San Remo.

Documents indicate that the lobby contained three murals, which depicted the concept of a high-rise skyline as a "type of promised land", according to Joseph Giovannini of The New York Times.

[47] By the late 1920s, high-rise apartment buildings were being developed on Central Park West in anticipation of the completion of the New York City Subway's Eighth Avenue Line, which opened in 1932.

[20] In March 1929, developer Frederick Brown acquired the original El Dorado Apartments, as well as eight adjacent row houses on 90th and 91st Streets.

[48][49] Three weeks later, Brown resold the sites to Louis Klosk, a Bronx-based developer who planned to erect a similarly named 22-story apartment building at a cost of $8.5 million.

[57][58] In early November 1931, the Central Park Plaza Corporation took over the El Dorado for $4.2 million, having submitted the only bid in the auction.

[62][63] The journalist Peter Osnos wrote that the El Dorado and other Central Park West apartment houses contained many Jewish residents during the 1930s and 1940s, since these buildings were not "restricted", unlike others on the East Side.

[41][42] The Pick Hotels Corporation refinanced the El Dorado in 1947 with a $2.2 million mortgage loan from Mutual Benefit Life Insurance Company.

[55] That May, the Central Park Plaza Corporation sold the El Dorado to Charles M. "Daddy" Grace, the Bishop of the United House of Prayer for All People, an African-American congregation.

[39] At the El Dorado, Grace faced heavy overhead costs because he had to pay high salaries for staff, including elevator operators.

The work included replacing mechanical equipment, automating the elevator cabs, and restoring the lobby and garage doors.

[47] During that decade, Crain's New York described the Majestic, Beresford, and El Dorado as having "become brand names that grow in strength as noted personalities move in".

The cast-stone balconies were replaced with glass-fiber reinforced concrete terraces, and new windows approximating the original designs were also installed.

[11] According to a 1996 article in New York magazine, many brokers classified the El Dorado as one of several "second tier" apartment buildings on Central Park West.

[107] In 1930, as the building was being completed, The New York Times wrote that "The lofty towers of the San Remo and El Dorado apartments, rising high over the park area and clearly observable from long distances, provide an object lesson of the new architectural treatment there.

[109] In 1986, Steven Ruttenbaum wrote: "The futuristic sculptural detailing of the El Dorado, as well as its geometric ornament and patterns and its contrasting materials and textures, make it one of the finest Art Deco structures in the city.

[111][31] Following the dispute over the building's windows, the LPC hosted hearings in 1984 to determine whether the Century, Majestic, San Remo, Beresford, and El Dorado should be designated as city landmarks.

[112] The LPC designated the El Dorado as a city landmark on July 9, 1985,[83] citing its brickwork, entrances, window layouts, balconies, and "futuristic crowning pinnacles".