Most of the apartments above the 15th floor have stunning vistas in many directions.

The building, whose quoins extend the full height of the tower, replaced a pre-war, Italian Renaissance-palazzo-style building designed by Ernest Greene in 1910 as a cooperative with 18 apartments that were subsequently subdivided into 24. That building was eventually acquired by the Jewish Agency that sought state permission to evict tenants including the Syrian Consultate and the Syrian Mission to the United Nations after which the agency, an umbrella organization, occupied the building along with the World Zionist Organization and the Weitzman Institute.

The building was designed by Frank Williams & Associates.

The limestone, cast stone and beige-brick tower is a Post-Modern design that seeks to carry on the avenue’s predominantly Italian Renaissance-palazzo tradition, albeit here exploded to a huge scale.

Before World War II, only two towers broached the avenue’s traditional cornice line height of about 15 stories: the Ritz Tower on the northeast corner at 57th Street and the Delmonico Hotel on the northwest corner at 59th Street.

When three other post-war high-rises of much inferior quality- 715, 900 and 1065 Park Avenue - in the 1970s there was considerable controversy over them and their possible deleterious impact on the famous boulevard. There was no similar outcry, however, about this project, perhaps because it is so close to the midtown business district and also because it is close to the Ritz Tower that for years was the avenue’s tallest residential building.

This handsome, spindly tower, which seems taller than 43 stories because it has 10-foot-high ceilings, joins the Four Seasons Hotel nearby on 57th Street between Park and Madison Avenues in giving the district north of 57th Street a new skyline.

It is set back only on the north and west sides at the 15th, 33rd and 43rd floors resulting in what Robert A. M. Stern, David Fishman and Jacob Tilove described in their excellent book, “New York 2000, Architecture and Urbanism Between The Bicentennial And The Millennium” (The Monacelli Press, 2006), as an “awkward silhouette.”

“The detailing was heavy-handed, with cast-stone corners, double-height pilasters below each setback, and two cast-stone-clad mechanical equipment enclosures set atop the building. In terms of sheer space, however,” the authors continued, “the interior left little to be desired….The second floor provided ten suites for use as servants’ quarters, and the basement held fifteen private climate-controlled wine cellars and thirty-eight storage rooms….But for all the luxury (and sales success), the building was deemed a poor addition to Park Avenue. Paul Goldberger found 515 Park to be ‘particularly ungainly’” and he found its facade “a pretentious muddle.”

A full-service building with many amenities, this building came onto the market with excellent timing as the demand for large luxury apartments in prime locations pushed prices to record highs in the late 1990s. Many of the apartments sold for $15 million and up.

Apartments have entrance foyers and twelve of the 38 apartments are duplexes. The building has a fitness center, wine cellars, and a dining room entered from the lobby that is available for catered affairs, and a residents’ only library.

The Zeckendorf organization has been one of the city’s major developers for many years and in recent decades pioneered the redevelopment of many areas with important projects at Union Square and on Eighth Avenue in Midtown and at 96th Street and Broadway. A few years after they completed this project, they built 15 Central Park West that was designed in Post-Modern style by Robert A. M. Stern.

Not too long after it opened for occupancy, some of the building’s residents complained about mold in the building, but the issue faded away in not too long a time.

Despite its closeness to the Midtown Business District, the location of 515 Park Avenue is relatively quiet, but close to many famous stores, boutiques and restaurants. There is excellent public transportation nearby.

Boring also was the architect for an apartment building at 520 Park Avenue, but it was demolished in 1932 and replaced by Christ Church. Boring would become the head of the School of Architecture at Columbia University.

This building, which has a doorman but no garage, has 27 apartments and was converted to a condominium in 1987. It has a canopied, three-step-up entrance and no sidewalk landscaping.

Its few but bold and very attractive balconies contrast admirably with the building’s finely detailed limestone facade, all well contained under a large cornice, a strong composition.

The location is wonderful, very close to midtown and many of the city’s best boutiques and restaurants and excellent transportation.

This conservatively elegant edifice is muted luxury: its polished granite entrance reeks of the prospects of satin sheets and the promise of the echoes of fine crystal.

It was designed by Rosario Candela and Arthur Loomis Harmon, the design partner of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the architects of the Empire State Building.

Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins devote considerable attention to Candela in their book, “New York 1930, Architecture and Urbanism Between The Two World Wars,” Rizzoli, 1987:

They noted that “The building…was among the most luxurious apartment houses of the period. Practically all the apartments in the building were duplexes, with some, such as the one designed for John D. Rockefeller Jr., a sumptuous triplex. The exterior expression was that of a quiet, almost hidden Classicism, which the Architectural Forum characterized as a conservative expression of contemporary freedom in architectural design. String and belt courses are used to delimit the principal parts of the façade, and not at all in a classical or traditional manner.”

In his book, “The City Observed: New York, A Guide to the Architecture of Manhattan,” (Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 1979), architecture critic Paul Goldberger suggests that 740 “is in many ways…[Candela's] best - a solid, sumptuous mass that sits on a corner with absolute authority.”

“The building is sheathed entirely in limestone,” Goldberger continues, “and the fluted base and entrance details suggest a hint of Art Deco, but made very, very tame, for nothing would be worse than to have the gentry of Park Avenue think they were being given the style of Central Park West and the Grand Concourse. The front doorway tells all: it is cut through a granite slab, topped by finials, which contains lettering that announces the address thus: 740 PARK AVENVE.”

The building also has an entrance on the sidestreet at 71 East 71st Street.

The 36-unit building has long attracted “heavy hitters.” The former apartment of Mrs. John D. Rockefeller Jr. was purchased by Saul P. Steinberg, the head of the Reliance Insurance Group, and other residents have included Henry R. Kravis of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Rand V. Araskog, the chief executive officer of ITT International and the late Steven Ross, the chief executive officer of Warner Communications.

Candela is widely considered to have been the country’s greatest designer of luxury apartment buildings and he collaborated with many of the city’s most famous architectural firms.

Candela’s buildings, “it is said, were the grandest of the decade that was itself the greatest,” wrote Elizabeth Hawes in her book, “New York, New York, How The Apartment House Transformed The Life Of The City (1869-1930)”, published by Henry Holt in 1993.

“He had a respect for privacy and an eye for significant detail. He was a complete thinker. He added duplicate water connections to street mains and multiple switches for ceiling lights as well as beautifully turned staircases and separate wine cellars. More significantly, he designed buildings from the inside out. He placed windows where they received light, balanced a room, or allowed a graceful arrangement of furniture…. Candela also invested unusual energy in the entry hall. In a typical apartment, he made it a full-sized room with rich views into the interior because he thought it was important to greet a visitor with a full sense of a home…. Candela liked puzzles. During the Depression, he took up cryptography, and during World War II, he broke the Japanese code,” Hawes wrote.

Born in Sicily, Candela came to the United States in 1909 and graduated from the Columbia school of architecture in 1915. His other famous buildings include 834 and 960 Fifth Avenue, 720, 775 and 778 Park Avenue, and 19 East 72nd Street, all considered among the most glamorous addresses in the city.

740 Park Avenue was developed by James T. Lee on the site of his own private house and a limestone mansion that belonged to George Brewster. Lee had been a major developer whose other projects included 998 Fifth Avenue, designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1910, and the Shelton Hotel on Lexington Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets, designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon in 1924.

In a October 21, 1990 article in The New York Times, Christopher Gray noted that Lee took an apartment at 740 Park Avenue for himself and that another resident was his daughter, Mrs. John V. Bouvier 3rd, and her daughter, Jacqueline, who later became the nation’s first lady.

The building underwent a major façade restoration in 1990 that Gray reported cost each shareholder in the building $258,000.

In 2005, Michael Gross published a book about the building documenting its famous tenantry. (12/05/05)

The 15-room duplex apartment on the fourth and fifth floors were owned in 2007 by the estate of the late Janet Coleman, an heir to the Mosler safe fortune. An apartment on the second floor was owned at one time by Winston Lord, the head of the Council on Foreign Relations and an Pillsbury heir, and his wife, Betty Bao, an author. In 2007, Vera Wang moved into the building from 778 Park Avenue. (8/04/07)

One of those buildings is 740 Park Avenue, a 19-story limestone edifice at the corner of 71st Street whose long history is the subject of a very thick book that is to be published on Oct. 18. Written by Michael Gross, “740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building,” examines the waves of rich and richer who have occupied the building since its construction on the cusp of the Great Depression.

The highlights, for those seeking gossip of the present-tense kind, lie toward the back of the book, which is written in chronological order from the building’s construction in 1930 by James T. Lee, a grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

While money is the most important qualification for getting into the building - the board has let it be known that $100 million in liquid assets would not be amiss nowadays, and maintenances average $10,000 per month - cash does not guarantee entry. Entertainers who were told through their brokers to look elsewhere include Barbra Streisand and Barbara Walters. Joan Crawford was turned down, and Neil Sedaka and his wife got as far as the down payment, then were shut out even before they could file an application.

In the book, the legendary broker Alice Mason shares some of her approval-seeking gambits for getting into the building, designed by the architect Rosario Candela with 30 stacked mansions with enormous galleries and nearly 13-foot ceilings. When the French embassy sought a higher-floor apartment, she advised the embassy to ingratiate itself (through party invitations) with every board member save the one she had learned was hostile to her client’s cause. She waited until the unsympathetic member went on vacation before proposing the sale, which was approved.

Another time, she persuaded a Saudi prince, unaccustomed to being judged, that he was interviewing the board, rather than the other way around. He got in, and decorated his apartment with a tented room and a fountain at the entrance, and used it mainly as a pied-à-terre. His residency usually coincided with the arrival of women by the “truckload,” according to a guest of the late Warner Communications chief executive Steven J. Ross, who was the prince’s neighbor.

Indeed, Mr. Gross chronicles all manner of bad behavior taking place within the gilded residences; life after folly-filled life flashes forward like Park Avenue canopies viewed from a speeding Town Car.

For the bad boys of modern finance, great wealth also seems to have brought great dysfunction.

Take the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, who occupied an 18-room, eight-bath duplex from 1978 to 1985. While ensconced with the first of his four wives, he had an affair with the owner of a nearby flower shop. As Mr. Gross reports, the affair eventually exploded into the tabloids after the luxury jeweler Bulgari sent Mr. Perelman’s wife a pair of diamond-and-sapphire earrings meant for his lover.

“He was a strange character,” a former elevator operator and doorman is quoted as saying. “Not very polite. A double life is bound to catch up with you.” Some of the staff reportedly believe that a scene in the film based on the Tom Wolfe novel “The Bonfire of the Vanities,” in which the protagonist, Sherman McCoy, calls his mistress from a pay phone outside his building, was based on the financier and his florist femme fatale.

Saul Steinberg, another troubled and ultimately unluckier prince of finance, bought the storied John D. Rockefeller Jr. apartment in 1971 at the tender of age of 33, while married to wife No. 1. Not long after moving from Long Island to 740 Park (where his 200-pound Great Dane was awarded its own room with a telephone and a fake tree to relieve itself on), Mr. Gross reports, the financier developed a cocaine habit and embarked on a path of adultery.

After the inevitable divorce in 1977, he brought wife No. 2 home. That marriage failed spectacularly, and in the subsequent battle over the luxurious dwelling, the second Mrs. Steinberg was led away by the police in handcuffs and fur. Mr. Steinberg’s neighbors were not amused.

The book, which took Mr. Gross a year and a half to research and write, is meant to “trace the broad strokes of who is making the most money in the country at any point in the last 100 years,” he said, “and who is using it in essence to show off, which is ultimately what apartments at 740 have become.”

He said that while riding in a taxicab on Fifth Avenue along Central Park a few years ago, he realized that the story of American society could be told by dissecting a Gold Coast building. He went looking for the perfect building, a “money” building whose wealthy inhabitants tended to view money as the great leveler, as opposed to a “good” building where social standing was more important. “Almost immediately, 740 just bubbled to the top,” he said.

His publisher quickly seconded the selection.

“It’s really beyond imagination,” said Peter Gethers, his editor at Random House who worked with him on the 510-page diorama that combines gossip with social history. “With the combination of gorgeous, amazing apartments, and the people who have lived there both in the past and currently, you can make a case that it’s the greatest apartment building in the world.”

So do buyers and brokers think it’s the best building in the city? Some do.

“Other buildings are very, very grand,” said Jane Bayard, an executive vice president at Warburg Realty who has shown several of the fabled apartments and even become lost inside one. Like other brokers, she mentioned 820 Fifth, 834 Fifth, 1 Sutton Place and 10 Gracie Square as prewar powerhouses. “But in 740 Park, the rooms are bigger, the ceilings are higher, and I would say as a whole, the residents of the building are the wealthiest,” she said. Boldfaced business-page names currently colonize the place. The money managers Israel Englander and J. Ezra Merkin make their homes there, as do the cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder, the shipping heir Spyros Niarchos and the billionaire buyout king Stephen A. Schwarzman, amid a smattering of heiresses, diplomatic types and others.

There have never been any black residents, though Arabs, Greeks, Japanese, Hispanics and Chinese have all called 740 Park home at one time or another. And while Jews now make up more than half the inhabitants, they were only permitted in inoculating doses at first. Indeed, for around 20 years beginning in 1979, Mr. Gross reports, the board president enjoyed long liquid lunches at the 21 Club inveighing against “genetically inferior blacks, Irish, Italians and Jews.”

Mr. Gross, a former New York Times reporter, said he plans to follow his book on 740 Park Avenue with a biography of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, another “compelling institution of American aristocracy.”

Of all 740 Park Avenue’s colorful personalities, Mr. Gross turns his most critical eye on Mr. Schwarzman, the 58-year-old Blackstone Group chairman who in 2000 acquired the building’s choicest property, the Rockefeller apartment, from Mr. Steinberg. The latter had suffered a scandalous reversal of fortune, Mr. Gross reports, when his formerly high-flying Reliance Group imploded, raising shareholder allegations that he had drained the company to finance his lavish lifestyle. Mr. Schwarzman bought the apartment for just under $30 million, the highest price paid for a Manhattan apartment at that time.

“Ultimately,” Mr. Gross writes of Mr. Schwarzman, “his mere residence at 740 will not be the yardstick by which Schwarzman will be judged.” People will look at his legacy, he said. “John D. Rockefeller Jr. left a long record of good works, albeit one financed by his father, and a pack of children who went on to do wonderful things in the world,” Mr. Gross said.

In the most recent sale at 740 Park, Rand V. Araskog, the former chairman and chief executive of the ITT Corporation, sold his duplex in March to the hedge fund executive David Ganek for around $20 million. “It was a three- or four-bedroom and library duplex facing Park Avenue but it’s not the grandest of the duplexes,” said Kirk Henckels, an executive vice president and director of Stribling Private Brokerage. “It was remarkable that it actually fetched that.”

He estimated that the Schwarzman apartment would garner $40 million if it went on the market today, whereas an apartment on a lower floor in a smaller line might command $15 million.

The only 740 Park Avenue property available now is a maisonette used as a doctor’s office. It is listed at $2.5 million, with a $5,966 maintenance; entrances are from the street, not the lobby, and board permission would have to be secured to turn it into a residence.

Mr. Gross, who lives on the parlor floor of a Greenwich Village row house, toured three apartments at 740 Park Avenue. He confessed that given the means, he would leap at the chance to own a dwelling in the building.

“I only wish that I could afford one,” he said.

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

740 Park News Archives

Click a title to read the entire post.

• Model Life (and death)
• Tasty Trump
• Karma, Served Cold?
• The Next Big Brown?
• Eat it!
• All is Vanity
• R.I.P. YSL
• Is it Supes Yet?
• Model Movie
• Fifth Avenue Freezeout
• Sheik Philippe
• First (Amendment) on Fifth
• The Birth of St. Barth
• Can’t Buy Me Love
• Vacancy at 740 Park
• Good Morning, Vienna
• A Shark Story
• Model Walks Again
• Once, Bitten
• Sibling Revelry
• Co-ops Keep the Faith
• Self-Knowledge is a Wonderful Thing
• Temporarily Like Hercules
• Back to the Islands
• Meet the Neighbors
• Good Carriage II
• Veronica Uncovered
• Good Carriage
• Shabby Chic
• Brother, Can You Spare an Elevator?
• Thrill Bill
• Arianna On Top
• I Love New York
• Reading is Fundamental
• We Are #37???
• The Intriguing Mrs. Hearst
• Hole in the Heart
• Steve-a-rino
• Dem Bones
• New York Post
• “They like me. They really like me!”
• Viva Peru!
• White Man Can’t Jump
• I’m Not Goin’ To China/I Say ‘No No No’
• Closed at $32 million!
• Department of Factual Hyperbole (cont’d)
• Department of Factual Hyperbole
• Black-eye-stone
• Baby on Board
• Foreverland
• Boney Morony
• Better Than a Mosler Safe
• Just Say No
• The Two Faces of Philippe
• Scoop: De Montebello Resigns
• Stallman Resurrected
• Washington Place Freeze Out
• Requiem for a Heavyweight
• View From the Top
• Eduardog Bites
• Henry Kravis Punk’d
• Circle in the Square
• The Sixteenth Minute?
• Good Wood
• Happy Thanksgiving
• Lawyers, Swords and Money
• Jackie O, No!
• Victimes de la Mode???
• Thain Named
• Good Heir Day
• On Unauthorized Biography…
• Len Makes His Mark? Update: Oops. Maybe Not.
• Linda Stein Online
• Linda Stein, R.I.P.
• A $23 million Vera Wang
• Looking Down on Tina Brown
• Papa Don’t Preach
• Shiny Happy Bowery
• Sprecken sie deutsch?
• Ruby Ralph
• Memory Motel
• Little Big Man
• Bile appeal
• Back in the ‘hood
• Shall We Sundance?
• Crabby Commentary
• It Rhymes With Bitch
• Hedge Hogs
• The Liesl Deal
• Rich and Richer
• Starchitecture
• Think Print
• Weill-y Coyote
• The New Medici
• Goldberger Standard
• Brooke Astor, RIP
• Yo Mike, An Idle Thought
• Blogrolling
• Schadenschwarzmanfreude (Eastern Division)
• Italy Gets Getty Booty
• Co-op Power…Gold Coast News
• Vera Wang Walks the Aisle
• Hello, I Won’t Be Going…Yet
• D. D. Ryan, R.I.P
• Schadenschwarzmanfreude Pt. II
• The Old New Journalism
• In the Pink
• Name Games
• Win For All?
• “I embody the gag reflex.” –Doug Marlette, R.I.P.
• Frank Talk
• Schadenschwarzmanfreude
• (Kill the) Chill Bill
• A Horse is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course
• Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?
• Making the Mummies Cringe, Pt. III
• Montebello-á-no-go
• Making the Mummies Cringe, Pt. II
• Party Hearty
• New Kid on the Block
• Immune Deficiency
• Caryl Palin, R.I.P.
• Making the Mummies Cringe
• Roots, Ralph-Style
• Sell, Steve, Sell
• One for the Books
• Brokerback Mountain
• The Very Model of a Modern Hedge-Fund Billionaire
• Leo Roars
• When Worlds Collide, Pt. 2
• The Sun Shines on Shelby
• Ahmet, Amen
• Bush League
• Currying Favor
• When Worlds Collide
• No Biga Deal
• Peevish Piqued Picón
• Public Lives, Private Spaces
• Schwarzman Gets an Upgrade
• Clap Your Hands Say…Huh?
• Off the Record–On the Money
• Geckoration
• Zippy
• Trippy
• Hot Boites
• What Becomes a Legend Most (Often)?
• Avast Ye, Scurvy Buyout Boys!
• The Write Stuff
• Box ‘o’ Billions
• Ratdominium

It’s the latest entry into the annals of ridiculous wealth, and some of Wall Street’s biggest names are getting ready to move in: Brand-new 15 Central Park West has been causing a fuss ever since it sold out its $2 billion worth of real estate in less than two years. Hedge funder Daniel Loeb raised eyebrows when he paid $45 million, or $4,200 a square foot, for his pad on the “tower” side two years ago, but it turned out to be a value play: Sandy Weill paid $6,200 a square foot for his.

Sandy Weill “House” side penthouse,$42.4 million Weill’s new spread has four bedrooms and a 1,979-foot wraparound terrace.

Daniel Loeb “Tower” side, $45 million The price reportedly paid by hedge fund manager Loeb set a record when he was one of the first buyers two years ago; now it’s a bargain.

Erin Callan “Tower” side, price not available The Lehman banker led the Fortress and Blackstone IPOs and was just named the bank’s next CFO.

Lloyd Blankfein $27 million (reportedly) Goldman’s Whitehall real estate investment fund is a 30% investor in the building.

It’s the most successful residential development in New York history. So just what is it that makes 15 CPW so different, so appealing?

One of the interesting things about 15 CPW is that it’s unabashedly retro. “I have never seen anything quite like it,” says Golberger. “Historical pastiche is common enough in country houses or museums, but it’s rare on the scale of a skyscraper.”

Here’s another interesting thing about 15 CPW: “All the apartments were sold before the building was finished, at prices that started at more than two thousand dollars a square foot and were subsequently raised nineteen times.”

And this is a big building: the apartments in it are worth roughly $2 billion. If you added up all the trendy downtown starchitect developments, from Richard Meier’s glass towers in the West Village through Jean Nouvel’s glass block in Soho, to Charles Gwathmey’s glass tower in the East Village, Bernard Tschumi’s glass tower on the Lower East Side, and even Herzog and De Meuron’s glass building in Noho and John Pawson’s minimalist temples in Gramercy Park, you’re still not even close to $2 billion.

What’s going on here? New York’s ultrarich buy Cattelan, not Canaletto. They flock to Thomas Keller, and abjure Alain Ducasse. If their lifestyles are so modern, why would they want to live in a limestone tower with book-matched marble in the bathrooms?

I think there’s a combination of factors at play here. One is that 15 CPW simply feels solid. It has an excellent address and a timeless quality to it: “the traditional-looking front wing blends into Central Park West as if it had always been there,” notes Goldberger, and there’s very little chance that it will be seen as hopelessly dated in a decade or two. If any post-war residential building in New York will ever achieve true long-term desirability, this is probably the one.

Another factor is that 15 CPW’s arhitect, Robert A. M. Stern, isn’t asking the residents of his building to change their lifestyle in order to fulfill his vision. You want a living room and a dining room and walls to hang art and elegantly-proportioned spaces and even bedrooms for the children or houseguests? You’ve got it. You want to have stuff, rather than an elegantly curated collection of mid-century modern architecture presented in a white cube? No problem. You like to walk on carpet, and admire the view, and not have your favorite leather armchair feel out of place? Walk right in.

When you buy something downtown and trendy, by contrast, you’re buying not an apartment so much as a lifestyle. Which is maybe fine for a young trader cashing a massive bonus check. But the real titans of the financial world already have a lifestyle, thankyouverymuch, and they’re not about to trade it in for a new one.

AA Gill famously toured many of the new downtown buildings for Vanity Fair last year.

What they all seem to have in common are their vast expanses of glass. Over in Europe, we’re all a bit fed up with the answer to every urban architectural problem being a sheet of textured glass wrapped around steel. We’ve grown cynical about the metaphor of transparency, openness, harmony, and light. It’s not like floating in the sky. It’s like living in Pyrex. Like being the ingredients in some glutinous civic fruitcake...
These apartments don’t have space for a family, or dogs with hair, or lives that involve more than passive absorbing of electronic stimuli and e-mails…
No one will buy one of these gloomy spaces and say, “I want to have kids here. I want to grow old and die here.”

And there, in a nutshell, you have the attraction of 15 CPW. When you’re lying on your fantasy deathbed, with your loving family gathered around you, you don’t want floor-to-ceiling windows and sterile minimalism. You want to feel at home, in a place of warmth and comfort.

Few buildings in New York City have received more press than 15 CPW and there’s really little we can add that hasn’t already been said about the lavish and obscenely expensive building. However, since Your Mama has been receiving phone calls, emails and telegrams up the wazoo wanting to know what’s what and who’s who at the new at 15 Central Park West, we thought we’d weigh in with a short list of some the deep pocketed big names who have scooped up high priced condominiums in the soon to be completed two-tower building.

The complex is comprised to two buildings joined by a lavish lobby. The “House” side fronts Central Park and the “Tower” side rises behind to more than 40 stories. Resident amenities include pre-war sized rooms and unusually large windowed kitchens, a large motor court so that the ridiculously rich residents need not been seen by the common folks when entering or exiting the building, full time doormen and concierge staff (natch), a private 20 seat theater, 20 wine cellars (sold separately), 29 staff suites (sold separately), room service, a private in-house chef, a fully stocked library, landscaped out door space, and a massive health club with a 75 foot long lap pool.

While there are several Hollywood celebrity types that have purchased condos, many of the hideously high-priced penthouse units were scooped up by Wall Street types, who despite a downturn in the economy feel no pinch in their own pocketbooks. Certainly our short list below does not represent all the big names with fat bank accounts who are set to shack up in 15 CPW, so if any of you kids would like to provide us with more high profile names, be sure to give Your Mama a jingle.

1. Legendary television writer and producer Norman Lear and his wifey Lyn reportedly purchased a 2,800 square foot (approx.), 2 bedroom and 2.5 bathroom unit for nearly $10,000,000. We think they may have in fact purchased a high floor B line unit in the “Tower.” According to the NY Post, the octogenarians are downsizing from their 15 room sprawler at 828 5th Avenue.

2. Just about every real estate gossip has reported that television sportscaster Bob Costas recently forked over $11,017,000 for an 8th floor “House” unit. Property records indicate the Costas residence measures 3,333 square foot with 4 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms, however, listing information for that unit shows the residence measuring 3,454 square feet with 3 bedrooms (plus library) and 4 bathrooms. Not sure why the discrepancy.

3. Oscar winning actor and Beverly Park denizen Denzel Washington is reported to have shelled out around $12,000,000 for an approx. 3,000 square foot unit facing Central Park with 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, and a park view terrace. Your Mama speculates that Mister Washington’s unit may be located at the southern end of the 38th floor of the “Tower,” but we’re not certain. Nothing like an 8-figure New York City pied a terre.

5. Filthy rich NASCAR star Jeff Gordon purchased a 3,800 square foot unit.

6. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, who brought home a reported $68,500,000 in 2007, is rumored to have used $27,000,000 of his bacon to purchase one of the larger condos at 15 CPW. Your Mama speculates (speculates, children, speculates) it might be the 6,473 square foot penthouse on the 42nd floor of the “Tower.”

7. Although nobody seems to know which one, one of the gazillionaire Google guys, is rumored to have purchased a high floor spread in the “Tower” to the tune of around $30,000,000. No one connected to that sale is yakking or leaking and none of the real estate gossips, including Your Mama, have been able to confirm.

8. Fifty something and still touring rock star Sting and his long time wifey Trudi Styler reportedly dropped around $30,000,000 for a 5,500 square foot “Tower” side duplex with 5 bedrooms and a terrace. However, the Tantric sexing couple recently took their current home, another massive Central Park West duplex, off the market. Could it be they’ve changed their minds about moving down the street?
9. Former Citigroup CEO and current billionaire banker Sandy Weill is said to have spent $42,405,000 for a 6,744 square foot penthouse unit on the 20th floor of the “House” side of the building. That’s a coma inducing $6,200 per square foot, children. Think about that for minute. The full floor residence includes 4 bedrooms (plus 1 maids room), 6.5 bathrooms, nearly 1,979 square feet of terraces, and a surprisingly unimaginative floor plan (see above, thanks to the good folks at Curbed). You’ll note the small secondary bedrooms with their small bathrooms and paltry closet space. No offense to Mister Stern, the Zeckendorfs or Mister Weill, but for forty some million smackers Your Mama wants properly sized guest rooms that do not feel cramped and claustrophobic like those itty bitty caves at the Paramount Hotel.

Property records reflect that Mister and Missus Weill also purchased a 1,079 square foot, 1 bedroom and 1.5 bathroom residence, presumably for guests, staff or a nearby place to go when they need a little time away from each other. Although the schedule A for the building indicates the unit had a price of $2,100,000, records show the couple paid only $950,000 for the sixth floor unit.

10. Hedge fund honcho Daniel Loeb is reported to have purchased both units on the 39th floor of the “Tower” for a staggering $45,000,000 (approx.). Combined the units have 10 bedrooms and 10,700 square feet.

As more of the units close and are recorded, Your Mama expects that a few more big name residents will be revealed. Stay tuned. The real question is whether living in the building will live up the the hype and sky high prices.