The first three stories are clad in cast stone, and the remainder of the facade is made of tan and brown brick with multi-paned windows.

The floor slabs are cantilevered from a central core, permitting the inclusion of enclosed solariums at the northeast and southeast corners.

[9][10] Major developments on the West Side were erected after the Ninth Avenue elevated line opened in 1879, providing direct access to Lower Manhattan.

[13][14] 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.

[18][19] The hotel was developed by millinery and real estate magnate Jacob Rothschild[20] and had been designed by Alfred Zucker.

The old Majestic had contained an Egyptian-style women's writing room, a ballroom, facilities for bowling and billiards, and a rooftop garden.

[5] By the 1920s, high-rise apartment buildings were being developed on Central Park West in anticipation of the construction of the New York City Subway's Eighth Avenue Line.

[28] The Majestic Apartments was Chanin's first Art Deco residential building;[3] he also developed the Century several blocks south in the same style.

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

[3] The lowest three stories contain a light-gray facade of cast stone, placed above a water table of polished rose-and-black granite.

[27][37] In 2007, Christopher Gray of The New York Times described the rounded structures on the western portion of the roof as being akin to "a giant dynamo" from the film Metropolis.

For example, in the 2000s, Philippe Starck renovated a pair of apartments for entrepreneur Ian Schrager, which were decorated with such details as a large marble bathtub, an imitation of an exposed steel column, and walls paneled in makore wood.

[59] Also in the 2000s, Annabelle Selldorf renovated another pair of apartments that were occupied by businessmen George Malkemus and Anthony Yurgaitis.

[62] 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.

[17] Irwin Chanin was an American architect and real estate developer who designed several Art Deco towers and Broadway theaters.

[65] They then built and operated a number of theaters and other structures related to the entertainment industry, including the Roxy Theatre and the Hotel Lincoln.

[70][71] Brown quickly resold it to the Chanin brothers, who planned to build a 45-story apartment hotel on the site, costing $16 million.

[36] Shortly thereafter, the Chanins received a $9.4 million first mortgage loan from the Straus National Bank and Trust Company, which then issued bonds.

[54] At the building's opening, Chanin predicted that the Majestic would be obsolete in fifty years and that it would be replaced by a glass tower.

[85] Separately, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating allegations that Straus was coercing its own salesmen to sell the building's mortgage bonds quickly.

[100] The journalist Peter Osnos wrote that the Majestic 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.

[102] In 1957, Vincent "The Chin" Gigante shot mobster Frank Costello, a Majestic resident, in the lobby during a failed assassination attempt.

[58] Around 1968, the Majestic replaced the directors on its co-op board with a set of committees that oversaw different parts of the building's operation.

[53] A new service entrance was built in the 1990s; at that time, the building's residents largely worked in law, medicine, or finance.

[34] 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".

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

[111] Notable residents have included: Ian Schrager bought two 19th-story apartments in 1997 for $9 million[123][124] in what was the most expensive sale at a co-op on Central Park West at the time.

[27] Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, a founding member of the New York syndicate, along with Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, and head of its security arm, Murder, Inc., lived in apartment 17J in 1933.

[27] Architectural critic Lewis Mumford regarded the modernist designs of the Century and Majestic apartment buildings as "merely a thin veneer" with their corner windows, terraces, and water towers.

[130] According to architectural historian Anthony W. Robins, "The comparison of Chanin's Century and Majestic with Emery Roth's San Remo is stunning.