Johannes Brahms was once taken to task for certain similarities between one of his symphonies and a symphony by Beethoven. The composer simply replied, “Well, of course, any idiot can see that!”

Robert A. M. Stern may experience the same exasperation when people look at the lofty residential tower that he designed at 15 Central Park West, between 61st and 62nd streets, and feel compelled to point out, with a trace of disparagement, his references to other, older residences along the avenue. Surely there is this obvious difference between Messrs. Stern and Brahms: The composer merely derived a certain formal inspiration from his predecessor, Mr. Stern intends for you to see the connection. More materially, the developer, Zeckendorf Realty, is banking on your propensity to see and delight in the formal continuity between this new project and its more established neighbors. Indeed, it would not be too wide of the mark to say that the appreciation of that continuity is almost the dominant formal feature of the design of 15 Central Park West.

But the relevance of the Brahms anecdote is that not all imitation is equal, and that not all imitation is, a priori, artistically or culturally beyond redemption — a point that needs to be made in a culture that prizes originality at all costs. Roughly a quarter of a century ago many architects turned away from the severities of modernism and rediscovered the classical idiom. One form of this reawakening, an ostentatious, theatrical and exorbitant classicism associated with Charles Moore, quickly fell by the wayside. The other, more respectful and less individualistic, persisted for a few more years before falling out of favor among the most prominent architects. But unlike Moore’s classicism, this form, though less fashionable now, never disappeared. In fact, it succeeded to such a degree that it has become the default idiom of most contemporary architecture — albeit precisely the sort of architecture that tends not to be written about or much discussed. Most of it, the architecture of malls, motels, and public housing is no worse than the default modernism that it replaced, though it is hardly better. But just as there is good modernism as well as bad, so there is good neoclassical architecture, and 15 CPW is an example of it.

The immediate and manifest fact of this project is its massive expanse of limestone. One reads that this is the most extensive use of the material in any New York building since the Four Seasons Hotel by Frank Williams and I. M. Pei (1997). Mr. Stern elicits from this material an unsuspected richness, a chastity and elegance that make the building one of the most distinguished on the avenue.

In fact, it is really two buildings, a 19-story structure along Central Park West and a 35-story building along Broadway. These are separated by a courtyard which looks to be one of the most successful of such spaces in the entire city. Seen from the park side, the building can be read as a relatively low one that is of a piece with most of the other buildings on the avenue, like 91, 101, and 135 CPW. At the same time, through a trick of perspective, the building on Broadway appears visually to be a setback for the smaller structure to the east, recalling the setback towers of Emory Roth’s San Remo and El Dorado.

But what transforms this project from elegant pastiche into Architecture with a capital “A” is the sensitivity of the detailing around the windows and the entrances. Above all, Mr. Stern has applied a skillful sense of proportion and scale, not only between the two buildings in the project, but in the handling of the angular, pillared summit of the taller building, and the zigguratted terraces in the smaller building. Just as modernism at its best translates the essence of classicism into a new idiom, so Mr. Stern translates the best of modernism, its measured sense of volume and patterning, back into a vocabulary of restrained classicism. Mr. Stern’s fluency in modernist language can be seen in his most recent residential tower, The Seville, on Second Avenue and 76th Street.

Perhaps the best index of this project’s success is the Broadway building. The way it fits into the diagonal thrust of the avenue, as it veers from Columbus Center over to Lincoln Center, conforms to a pattern respected by the four buildings immediately uptown along the eastern side of the avenue, all of them towers on a base. With the exception of Costas Kondylis’s decent Grand Tier on 64th Street, completed in 2005, all the others are from the 1970s and represent modernism at its dismal and unimaginative low point.

This is the setting into which Mr. Stern’s new project now inserts itself, and its distinction, even for critics resistant to his brand of contextualism, will be apparent immediately in comparison with its neighbors. We can assume readily that the 200 units in these two buildings will be a pleasure — and a costly one — to inhabit. No less important is that two of New York’s finest avenues, Broadway and Central Park West, have already been enhanced by their arrival.

jgardner@nysun.com