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The Latest News From 740 Park

By lpiraino

For 75 years, it’s been one of the most lusted-after addresses in the world. Even today, it is steeped in purest luxury, the kind most of us can only imagine. Until now. The story of 740 Park Avenue sweeps across the twentieth century, and Michael Gross tells it in glorious, intimate and unprecedented detail. From the financial shenanigans that preceded the laying of the cornerstone, to the dazzlingly and sometimes decadently rich people who hid behind its walls, this is a sweeping social and economic epic, starring our wealthiest and most powerful old-money families-–Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Bouvier, Chrysler, Houghton and Harkness-–and today’s new-monied elite: Bronfman, Perelman, Kravis, Steinberg, Koch and Schwarzman.

The Latest News From 740 Park

Shrouded Sale at 740


There’s another apartment for sale at 740 Park, currently hidden behind a black shroud (anyone know why? please e-mail me!). Peter Huang, a Chinese-born investment banker whose ex-wife Nancy once shook up the house by inviting the likes of Chic’s Nile Rodgers, Kid Creole and Fab Five Freddie to party there (earning herself a nasty divorce), has listed apartment 4-5D for a whopping $38 million (maintenance is $10,574 a month). Here’s the listing. Or should I say lusting? (Ignore the furniture. Aging I-Banker taste. Feh.) Broker Corcoran’s web site has no floor plan, but it’s almost the same as this one, one floor down. Lust on.

Posted on July 23rd, 2008 | Permalink

Summer Rules

After a few quiet months, it’s back in the news for 740 Park just at the start of the long summer slump. First came Page Six Magazine’s dissection of its co-op board. Today, the New York Observer rumors that Leonard Blavatnick, the 740 Park reject (David Koch lives in the apartment he wanted) has bought Jocelyn “Bride of” Wildenstein’s house, and Page Six prints an hysterical vignette involving the new Cityfile web site and the chauffeur who warned one of its photographers away from the front of 740, “if you know what’s good for you.” Which reminded me of the time a Fortune photographer staked out the front door of 740, trying to snap one of its most mysterious residents, hedge fund fella Israel Englander. They never did get that photo. Is 71st and Park a no-snap zone? A quick search of Google images yields not a single image of Izzy.

Posted on July 16th, 2008 | Permalink

Good Company

Style.com recommends the paperback of 740 Park for summer reading along with books by Marcel Proust, Barbara Walters, and Sheila Weller. Thanks!

Posted on July 15th, 2008 | Permalink

Nailed by the Boards

Page Six Magazine had a great article on co-op boards this weekend.

Posted on July 15th, 2008 | Permalink

In the Belly of the Beast


I got to this late but can’t resist. Last week’s Home section of the Times had a very funny story about a real estate marketing party at the Park Avenue maisonette of the late William F. and Pat Buckley, which has just come on the market. The Times captioned the photo above saying only that they were “guests” at the affair. That caption is worthy of expansion, for the two swells pictured are Michael and Eleanor Kennedy. He is the one-time radical lawyer who defended the likes of Huey Newton, Tim Leary, and the Weathermen. His presence in the apartment of the late great voice of conservatism is enough to make one’s head spin. The question is, left to right, or right to left???  

Can’t Buy Me Love

Steve Schwarzman is likely channeling Rodney Dangerfield today. He can’t get no respect. A very snarky article on B-1 of the Times takes pot-shots at the Blackstone Group biggie and the New York Public Library for its plan to plaster his name all over the library’s facade in thanks for his recently announced gift of $100,000,000 to kick-start the library’s modernization. Schwarzman’s spotty track record in philanthropy is well known. Less known, perhaps, is his relationship to books and authors. When I approached him for an interview for 740 Park, his contempt was as clear as it was clarifying. So I wasn’t entirely surprised to learn that he’d filled the bookshelves in his trophy apartment with books by the yard, bought at the Strand Bookstore. But hey, better books he hasn’t read than no books at all!
UPDATE: Galleycat on Gripebox on Schwarzman

Posted on April 23rd, 2008 | Permalink

Vacancy at 740 Park

Hear ye, hear ye, hedge fund honchos: There’s about to be a rare apartment for sale in the quiet half of 740 Park Avenue, the anti-chic “back of the bus” apartments that use 71 East 71st Street for their address. June Speight, widow of a former co-op board president (and one of the last of the old breed WASPS in the building), died this past weekend, which means that apartment 4/5 C (you can see an equivalent floor plan here) should be on the market soon, priced somewhere around $30 million. The last sale in the building, of the somewhat larger apartment 4/5A facing Park Avenue and using the front entrance, to David and Tamara Winn, fetched $32 million.

Posted on April 16th, 2008 | Permalink

Co-ops Keep the Faith

According to the New York Observer, New York’s best buildings are the last bastion of standards in a condo kind of anything-goes world about to be shaken to its foundations by recession. They also call 740 Park–the book not the building–”colossol.” And it only costs $16.95.

Posted on April 9th, 2008 | Permalink

Self-Knowledge is a Wonderful Thing

The truly deeply awesomely despicable lawyer-couple who threatened costly litigation against a neighbor for smoking in her own apartment (“As you may not be aware, we are both lawyers and both litigators, for whom the usual barriers to litigation are minimal,” they wrote) are concerned that people won’t like them. So let the word go forth: it is legal for co-ops and condos to reject lawyers who behave like that: “Although a 1977 court decision upheld a landlord’s right to refuse to rent to a lawyer, the city’s human rights law was amended in 1986 to bar discrimination in housing on the basis of a lawful occupation” the Times reported in a February correction to their initial story on the affair. “Co-op and condominium boards may, however, reject lawyers and other applicants based on specific actions — for instance, a pattern of filing lawsuits against neighbors.” Alas, lawyer-cide is not an option.

Posted on April 8th, 2008 | Permalink

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