740 Park Avenue

The three-storey penthouse at 740 Park Avenue

The building was constructed in 1929 by James T. Lee, the grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis – Onassis lived there as a child – and was designed by Rosario Candela and Arthur Loomis Harmon; Harmon became a partner of the newly named Shreve, Lamb and Harmon during the year of construction. The building was officially opened in October 1930, a year after the Great Depression began, and the poor timing was devastating. Even though the New York elite had moved in, the building had failed financially by 1933. It remained in the red for 50 years.[4] It was not until the 1980s that the building's apartments sold for incredibly high prices.[2][5]

In 1937, one of the first well-known residents was John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who moved into 15/16B, a duplex that many still consider New York's crown jewel apartment. According to New York City real estate lore, "whoever inherits the biggest penthouse at 740 inherits the throne of New York society itself."[4][6] In 1971, Saul Steinberg bought that triplex for $285,000 (equivalent to $1,799,000 in 2019) and after two divorces sold it to Stephen Schwarzman for "slightly above or below $30 million" in 2000. This was the highest price ever paid on Park Avenue[7] until May 2012, when Howard Marks paid $52.5 million for two adjoining two-story duplexes (totaling 30 rooms), which set a short-lived record as the highest price ever paid for a co-op apartment.[8]

In 1979, the French government purchased an 18-room duplex for $600,000 to be used as their United Nations ambassador's residence.[9] The French government's duplex unit was sold in June 2014 for $70 million, reportedly $22 million over the asking price – a bidding war involving three prospective buyers escalated the eventual selling price. The buyer was hedge fund billionaire Israel Englander, who already lived in the unit directly above, and surpassed a record set just days earlier by Egypt's richest man, Nassef Sawiris, for a penthouse unit on nearby Fifth Avenue.[9]

Undergoing renovation in 2008

In 2005, author Michael Gross published a detailed book on the building and its history, 740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building. According to Gross, builder Lee's daughter, Janet Lee Bouvier, and son-in-law Jack Bouvier, attained the final open lease; according to one account, they did not pay for the lease.[10] Hedge fund manager David Ganek paid $19 million for the childhood duplex home of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 2005.[11]

The residents of 740 Park were heavily affected by the financial crisis of 2007–2008, as many of the residents are hedge fund billionaires as opposed to the titans of industry like Rockefeller who moved in during the 1930s.[4] The building was once home to one of the world's largest private collections of Mark Rothko works.[11] The former owner—alleged Bernie Madoff middleman and ex-financier J. Ezra Merkin—still lives there, but the paintings were sold during the Madoff scandal.

Hedge fund billionaire Charles Stevenson paid $9 million for an apartment in the building and was the head of the 740 Park Avenue cooperative in December 2011.[2]

In 2012, the Alex Gibney documentary Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, based on the Michael Gross book, aired on the "Independent Lens" series of the PBS TV network. The film details that the building was home to the highest concentration of billionaires in the United States.[12]

• Rand Araskog – former CEO of ITT Corporation
• Thelma Chrysler Foy – heiress to the Chrysler fortune
• Woody Johnson – heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune, owner of the New York Jets and U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
• David H. Koch – businessman, co-owner of Koch Industries, occupied an 18-room duplex on the fourth and fifth floors said to have been purchased in 2005 for $17 million[3]
• Jerzy Kosinski – novelist
• Howard Marks – chairman of Oaktree Capital Management
• J. Ezra Merkin – hedge fund manager, son of late businessman Hermann Merkin
• Steven Mnuchin – investment banker, film producer, and Secretary of the Treasury of the United States[13]
• Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis – childhood home[3]
• Ronald Perelman – businessman[14]
• John D. Rockefeller, Jr. – businessman and philanthropist, lived from 1937 to 1960 in a 24-room, 12-bath duplex.[3]
• Steve Ross – late CEO of Time Warner
• Julio Mario Santo Domingo – Colombian businessman lived in the building from the 1980s until his death in 2011
• Stephen A. Schwarzman – CEO of the Blackstone Group; bought the former Rockefeller apartment for just over $35 million[3]
• Saul Steinberg – financier; owned the Rockefeller apartment until selling to Schwarzman.
• Allene Tew – American socialite in the Gilded Age. Occupied two different units in the building.
• John Thain – CEO of CIT Group, last chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch[15]

Applicants who have sought to purchase units in the building but have been refused include Barbra Streisand, Neil Sedaka and Russian billionaire Leonard Blavatnik.[2]

Notes

Bibliography

• Alpern, Andrew. The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter, Acanthus Press, 2001
• Gray, Christopher. "Streetscapes: 740 Park Avenue; Repairs for a '29 Luxury Co-op", The New York Times (October 21, 1990)
• Gross, Michael. "Where the Boldfaced Bunk", The New York Times (March 11, 2004)
• Gross, Michael. 740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building, Broadway Books, 2005
• Horsley, Carter B. "740 Park Avenue" in The Upper East Side Book – gives references to articles about Candela's design for the building

Wikimedia Commons has media related to 740 Park Avenue.

• Michael Gross's "740Blog" with near complete list of residents.
• "The Root of All Evil and Home Sweet Home" (2005)
• Curbed
• Brick And Cornice: 740 Park Avenue