Friday, March 8, 2013

Friday Floor Plan Porn: 720 Park Ave

SELLER: We Don't Know, Do You?
LOCATION: New York City, NY
PRICE: $25,000,000
SIZE: 3 bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms (plus 1 staff room and bath)

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: We woke up this morning and thought it might be nice to tie up the work week with a little high-priced floor plan porn of the New York City variety. Fortunately for Your Mama and the children we awoke bushy tailed but bleary eyed to a short missive from our favorite real estate rabbi—that would be, of course, Rabbi Hedda LaCasa—who thoughtfully pointed Your Mama to a spectacular penthouse at 720 Park Avenue that popped up on the market today with a $25,000,000 price tag.

In an era of $100+ million dollar listings in London and Los Angeles and the recent spate of $50+ million sales in Manhattan, $25,000,000 for a multi-terraced simplex penthouse in one of Park Avenue's most coveted buildings sounds almost like a bargain, don't it?

The resplendently posh pre-war grande dame at 720 Park Avenue was designed by legendary apartment house architect Rosario Candela. The 17-story Neo-Georgian red brick and limestone edifice was completed in the late 1920s and today remains one of the most prestigious addresses on Park Avenue.

Your Mama can't vouch for its veracity but, so the stories go, 720 Park Avenue was built so that wealthy Jewish folks who were largely forbidden from acquiring apartments in many of the swankier of the swank apartment houses that line Park Avenue. Of course, those sorts of restrictions aren't legally allowable anymore...

Anyhoo, 720 Park Avenue offers residents de rigueur white glove services such as 24-hour doormen and concierge and laundry facilities (that most residents will only ever see through the eyes of their washerwoman Helga) as well as a few unique extras that include basement level storage space and a residents only fitness room and squash court. That's right, a residents only squash court. Naturally these things don't come cheap and listing information shows the monthly maintenance and common charges for the simplex penthouse in question come to $14,391. That's $172,692 per year, in case you were about to make the mental calculation.
Listing details for the simplex penthouse in question show there are a total of ten rooms with more than 90 feet of west-facing Park Avenue frontage. The square footage isn't listed but a quick perusal of the floor plan including with marketing materials shows there are three bedrooms, 4.5 bathrooms (plus a staff room and bathroom), three terraces (plus two more planting terraces), four exposures and and two wood burning fireplaces

A private elevator vestibule opens into a foyer that is unexpectedly but satisfyingly humble in size for a penthouse of this proportion and expense. The cocoon-y foyer bursts open into a baronial wood floored corner living room with wood burning fireplace, direct access to two terraces and more square footage that two large living rooms combined.

The dining room can be gotten directly to from the living room through a set of double doors or—the more fun route for booze hounds like Your Mama—by passing through the bar, a tiny room devoted to the storage and serving of mood altering beverages.

Less formal, family quarters are the fully paneled and wall-to-wall carpeted library with built-in book shelves and a second wood burning fireplace. (Is that ever so humble pine paneling?)

The kitchen and service areas make a compact unit on the west side of the penthouse and include a spacious, T-shaped butler's pantry, a roomy center island kitchen with built-in breakfast banquette, an office nook with two work stations and a utility hall with washer, dryer and service elevator access. Listing description says the staff room off the butler's pantry is—and we quote—"large." We don't know in whose world a 9-foot by 8.5-foot room with a two-foot wide closet and a three-quarter pooper so tiny that Kim Kardashian couldn't even get her ass in there is large but, seriously, the people in that world need a reality check.

Each of the two guest/family bedrooms have decent closet space and a private, windowed bathrooms. The master bedroom, tucked up into the northeastern quadrant, has a tiny entry vestibule, two fitted walk-in closets and two windowed bathrooms. Now, see, children, this is why Rosario Candela-designed apartments are so in demand. Here was a man that really knew how to place a pooper to allow it some natural ventilation. We know all about those whisper quiet air filtration systems that can be installed in a windowless bathroom to deal with the steamy damp and putrid odors of a bathroom but we simply prefer a window. Better yet, a window and one of those state-of-the-art ventilation systems.

The largest of the three walk-out terraces runs for 31 feet on the east side of the penthouse—the Park Avenue side of the penthouse—has perfectly charming retractable striped awnings and is accessible from either the library or one of the guest/family bedrooms.

Listing information goes on to show that the penthouse is equipped with Crestron home automation and Sonos wireless audio systems, 5-zone heating and cooling, a separate storage room in the basement and a wine cellar.

There are two other apartments currently on the open market at 720. They include a Mark Hampton-decorated second floor two bedroom and three bathroom with large laundry room, one puny staff room and a private 320-square foot terrace. It's listed at $4 million. Also up for sale is a 14-room sprawler with three fireplaces, four exposures, more than 20 closets, five bedrooms (plus two tiny staff rooms), 5.5 bathrooms (plus two more for the staff) and monthly maintenance and common charges of $17,504. It was originally listed for $30,000,000 in June 2011 but the price has been cut to $25,000,000.

Apartments don't change hands so much at 720 and, in fact, the most recent recorded sale was in May 2010 when Phillip and Susan Sassower sold their 15-room digs to philanthropist Jaime Tisch for $21,995,000. The next most recent transaction was in late 2008 when Carl Spielvogel and Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel sold a 7th floor spread wit 5 bedrooms and 6.5 bathrooms for $36,630,000 that they'd only purchased two years earlier for $20 million. The Spielvogels didn't, however, move very far. They only moved, as per property records, to a smaller, lower floor unit with two bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms (plus another bathroom between the two staff rooms) for which they paid $8,980,000.

listing photos and floor plan: Brown Harris Stevens

59 comments:

Anonymous said...

This interior is beaitiful. Especially the kitchen.

wrldtrvlr said...

I had a friend in 720 in a Mark Hampton designed duplex sprawler until her divorce. It is a magnificent building with impeccable services.

Anonymous said...

Just wondering -

Are we looking at the original floor plan circa 1920s or something remodeled?

I ask because an apartment of this caliber in those days would probably have had an extra family bedroom or two and at the very least a few more staff bedrooms. Only one maid's room can be seen. I'm trying to figure out where the extra rooms might have been but without much success unless the current compact kitchen is hacked into even smaller bits.

online free said...
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WrteStufLA said...

720 was indeed specifically developed to be "the Jewish building" on Park. One of the initial residents was Jesse Isidore Straus, son of the Macy's co-founder. (The parents went down on the Titanic.) Straus's duplex apartment was sprawling and magnificent enough to rival that of John D. Rockefeller at 740 Park.

Anonymous said...

I've always found New York buldings positively hideous. The exterior. Candela or Carpenter or not. Especially when they try to use an Italian Renaissance palace as a model and build whole 12 floors of it. It is a mockery. It ruins proportion.

Then the lack of balconies. Just visit Paris and see the promise of a balcony... Majestic.

Inside, they might be fabulous, but outside, especially if made from red brick or something, they look no different from Socialist architecture in Albania, Romania, Russia or wherever else.

Anonymous said...

I was wondering why would you buy this 3-bedroom flat for $25m when you can buy that 14-room behemoth for the same price? Floor?

Anonymous said...

We've got an Ed Safra situation here! I guess there's some sort of staircase near the service elevator but I can't figure out how that could be.

Anonymous said...

The interior decoration here doesn't live up to the price tag, that's for sure. Living room and dining room are really lame.

If the names you mentioned are any indication of the religious identification of the rest of the residents, then I'd have to surmise it's still a Jewish building. But then again in New York, I suppose that can be said about almost any high end building.

lil' gay boy said...

A superb Candela plan (even the staff pooper has a window!), and the park-facing terrace is magical, although I wish it was a little more generous.

As for Anon 2:11's critique, while s/he makes a point (the exterior is nothing if not sober), the comparison is flawed by being taken out of context - these were 20th century buildings, many constructed in the Depression era, and many constructed on the sites of vulgar, ostentatious mansions that had fallen out of taste and favor. They may have employed expensively crafted stones & elaborate terracotta, but they certainly lacked the exuberance of their European counterparts (and given the Manhattan geography, were never meant to be viewed by the "unwashed masses" on the street, but rather the high floor neighbors in similar buildings across the way).

Even the most bijou of Parisian flats are indeed lovely, but keep in mind they were built in a much different time, in a different geography (one hardly thinks of Paris as a "high rise" city - a major part of its romance & charm), and many before the advent of the modern elevator.

Although "French flats" had started to appear in NYC at the end of the 19th century, they were rare and not considered "proper" for the Puritanical upper classes, occupied mostly by "artistic" types, bachelors, and the new, upwardly mobile middle class; the Depression changed all that.

But it was apparently slow to change the attitude toward the servants, who were alloted spaces only a narcoleptic fruit bat could find as "generous".

Anonymous said...

You guys wanna see something sad? Compare this to any one of the floorplans of 135 E 79th. It apparently is a "masterful expression of rigorous craftsmanship not seen...in almost a century"
They're mistaken. Check out that penthouse! What a terrible layout.

Anonymous said...

I'm now intrigued. I am a bit embarrassed that I've neglected that part of the story – historical circumstances.

But I do have a question: speaking about Manhattan geography, you mean the size of the river island? Which wouldn't allow such generously low, usually five-level Haussmannian buildings to be built which would be able to pick up that vast amount of rich New Yorkers?

Anonymous said...

As floor plan porn goes, Mama, that is so XXX smokin' hot filthy good I absolutely can't stand it!

Any more of this, and blogger.com is going to have to start warning visitors to your site that they're going to encounter some very adult material.

Anonymous said...

This is nice, this is really really nice. This is definitely going to sell fast, maybe to me if I win the Powerball tonight. lol

WrteStufLA said...

@ Anonymous MARCH 9, 2013 AT 5:02 AM

Good catch! I've been studying the plan, trying to figure out where the apartment's emergency stairwells would be. Codes of the time would have required access to 2 (or 1 interior + 1 exterior fire escape).

Anonymous said...

Could any of you knowledgeable poeple tell me what makes a floor plan excellent and of high quality?

Rosco Mare said...

Fabulous. And I rarely use the "F" word.

lil' gay boy said...

The finite size of the island of Manhattan was definitely a factor, but the grid system put in place in 1811 has a lot to do with it too. Also, when the city started relying on upstate reservoirs for water (instead of local wells), buildings started rising above what conventional wisdom (up until then) deemed safe for firefighting as ready supply, pressure, pump & hose technology (and other methods) advanced.

There's an absolute dearth of winding streets and alleyways above lower Manhattan -- makes for grand vistas down the avenues, but the cross streets tend toward more narrow views (the "concrete canyons") -- hence the setback laws to allow light in once buildings started rising above a dozen or so stories.

Set backs that high aren't really visible from street level unless you're blocks away, where much detail is lost.

Anonymous said...

Not to nitpick, but despite Isidor Straus living at 720, it was actually 730 Park next door that was built as the grand Jewish building. 720 was much harder to get into, and remained restricted until the 80s when reality set in. Virtually no buildings restrict Jews any more. When the selective co-ops turn a prospective purchaser down it is more likely to do with financial or behavioral issues than religious ones.

Anonymous said...

Floor plan notes:

The fire stair is on the north, by the master bath and the third bedroom. There is likely a door not shown in the third bedroom leading to the exterior stair. A second fire stair that serves both lines is located to the west of the dining room, probably accessed through another door not shown, this one in the maid's room closet.

Previous listing (was 9.1 million)

http://www.elliman.com/new-york-city/720-park-avenue-unit-16a-manhattan-vvqvqbm

http://www.elliman.com/new-york-city/720-park-avenue-unit-16a-manhattan-vvqvqbm

Anonymous said...

What about the comment about the view from the street toward these apartments by the "unwashed masses"? I have read many things about Haussmannian Paris, but never that the usually five-level buildings were built so that they can be admired and gawped at from the streets below by the "undeserving" passers-by.

Aren't you sad, you the lover of the Gilded Age mansions, that many of those hôtels particuliers à la New York were destroyed? Including the "architectural abomination" erected by William A. Clark at 962 Fifth Avenue now replaced by a Carpenter building?

Anonymous said...

These buildings were advertisements for the new cache of apartment living during a huge economic boom. The builders wanted the buyers who were living in mansions, so they built massive apartments. Setbacks are required, but it also offered outdoor living, sometimes on a huge scale. It also allowed for variations to floorplates, like the bay windows.
There are many greater losses than the Clark mansion. Like all the original penthouses most of these buildings had.
1107 fifth is one. Rental building but Marjorie Post agreed to sell her beautiful townhouse to the developers only if they built her a triplex of the same size. It was actually bigger, with it's own lobby and driveway. That's a greater loss. The private lobby is some Botox doctor and the triplex is about 7 apartments now.

Anonymous said...

Shavua tov! Good week! Shabbos ended with sweetness and the Rabbi is thrilled to learn from so many of Mama's Kinderlach and to share a few thoughts of her own. Jesse Isidore Straus bought land on Park Avenue, assembled investors, and developed and built 720 after being refused admission into many Park Avenue buildings due to being Jewish. On the other hand, Madame Helena Rubinstein, also Jewish, simply purchased the previously completed 625 Park Avenue, lock, stock and barrel in its entirety, after also being refused admission into similar Park Avenue buildings. 730 Park Avenue later became known as 720's poorer and definitely Jewish cousin.

A couple of years ago a law was proposed that would have terminated the secrecy and reduced the illegal discrimination that continues to be perpetuated by the boards of "exclusive" and "good" New York buildings. The law did not pass; however, similar legislation now governs the small amount of Suffolk County coops.

The Rabbi most definitely enjoys the scale and detail of the great pre-war apartment buildings of Manhattan. She has also seen the enormous Soviet-built housing projects lining the boulevards of several formerly Eastern Bloc and Allied States capitals, and personally feels that these buildings fail in hale when compared to the New York residential grande dames erected with capitalistic optimism during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the Rabbi highly endorses well-designed public and non-profit housing!

The Rabbi architecturally experiences 720's exterior as restrained if not precisely sober only up to the twelfth floor cornice: Above rises a visually noisy cacophony of bay windows, set-back terraces, and the requisite enclosed water tower, inducing in her a religious experience, as she now hears the orchestral strains of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

Much has been said by the Kinderlach concerning Penthouse 16A at 720 Park Avenue, including the accurate pinpointing of the two fire stairs. Penthouse 16A originally included two additional maids' rooms and an additional maids' bath, which have been replaced by the current breakfast nook, office, and northwest family/guest bedroom bath; this bedroom's original bath was reallocated to the master suite.

The Rabbi experiences a perfect floor plan as including large public rooms, i.e.; a living room, dining room, and library, all radiating from a central foyer or gallery, a fireplace or maybe two or three, a large kitchen and breakfast area created from former servant quarters, and a few en-suite bedrooms with windowed baths. A guest powder room, terrace, and park or river views provide the strawberry jam on the Rabbi's high-calorie, real estate cheesecake.

The Rabbi finds 720 Park Avenue Penthouse 16A to be s-o-o close to perfect. Multiple eastern exposures orient the prayerful toward Jerusalem. Furthermore, a former loggia designated for the storage and dispensing of Jameson on the rocks is the ne plus ultra of Kabbalistic feng shui; however, the Rabbi would need to add a built-in beer tap to impress her ex-brother-in-law, who the Kinderlach well-know is ensconced in A-minus rated 1040 Fifth Avenue. The Rabbi regrets that the original herringbone floors of 16A have been replaced. Finally, 720 Park Avenue is of course on Park Avenue; the Rabbi prefers Central Park West for its architectural exuberance and Central Park views, and the Upper West Side for its Yiddishkeit and abundance of kosher noshen.

Rabbi Hedda LaCasa
Reminds Mama and the Kinderlach to spring forward!

Anonymous said...

Rabbi, head over to 535 West End Ave. They've got one of those Shabbos(?) elevators and the kitchens have two of everything in case you keep kosher. Two bedrooms in the master suite because apparently women are too gross for men during that time of the month.

Anonymous said...

Who bought the Spielbogel's 7th floor spread?

Anonymous said...

I had no idea Jews were so discriminated against in New York City. That is shocking. It almost makes it seem as if it were en route to Nazi Germany. To forbid them buying flats in upscale buildings?! Awful!

Anonymous said...

Rabbi LaCasa, loved your comments as usual. The explanation of where the additional servants' quarters were, was precisely as I surmised, but you seem to speak with some authority. Have you by any chance seen the original plans, and more to the point, can you tell us where to find the plans of the Straus apartment?
Richard D

Anonymous said...

@5:54, the Rabbi has far too much class for a building like 535 WEA. While quite a respectable building in terms of architecture and floor plans (compared to most new buildings), it's location is not great for the money. For the prices of those apartments you could have a place on Central Park West.

Anonymous said...

Do those "French" flats Lil' Boy talks about still exist? Does he have in mind the Beaux-Arts St. Urban?

Anonymous said...

Confidential to Richard D., Anonymous 11:57 AM, and Anonymous 5:54 AM:

Richard, I apologize for sounding authoritative concerning personal knowledge of 16A. My designation of the location of staff quarters and fire stairs is based in part upon my experiences in similar NY buildings and in part upon my informal study of domestic urban architecture. Unfortunately, I have never seen the plans of the former Straus duplex, which occupied part of the 16th floor and most or all of the 17th floor. The apartment is said to have had a 40 foot long gallery and a 1000 square foot library.

Hedda

Anonymous 11:57 AM, thank you for your artificially high assessment of my level of class!

Hedda

Anonymous 5:54 AM, how very considerate of you to refer the Rabbi to West End Avenue, particularly developed to become known as the Park Avenue for Jewish families. The Rabbi will never be able to adequately express her appreciation for your most sensitive kindness.

Rabbi Hedda Hadassah LaTess LaCasa

Sandpiper said...

Speculation on what an untouched Park Avenue pre-war penthouse floorplan looks like, I recall that Mamma chronicled Brooke Astor's residence extensively back in 2008 after Brooke passed and it went to market. One of the post's commentators mentioned a few modest layout tweaks to her apartment, but not of significance.

Mamma's floorplan take in '08:
http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2008/05/brooke-astors-posh-park-avenue-aerie.html

Jesse said...

That terrace. I'd be happy living there.

Anonymous said...

@Sandpiper
I was actually drooling over floorplans all morning and one of the few I got really involved in was Brooke Astors duplex. I found three floorplans. An original, a current, and a proposed one.
The original shows Brookes as a simplex with no stairs, then slightly altered with the stairs, and then a pretty drastically different proposed one.
I'm pretty confused. I believe what I read said that Brookes mother lived in a duplex on 14/15 and when she died Brooke annexed part of the 15th floor.
I tried to find 14/15s floorplan to see if it was cut into, and I even joined Ellimans website which plainly said '14/15 photos & floorplans' but they tricked me.

West Bourne said...

To append to the Rabbi's cogent discussion of the original location of staff rooms you might refer to the floorplan of the other unit for sale in the building at this price point. While it may not be the original plan, it does show the location of staff rooms which would support the Rabbi's thesis.

http://www.bhsusa.com/manhattan/upper-east-side/720-park-avenue/coop/1259303


Also, the April issue of Architectural Digest has a feature on a one bedroom penthouse with a wrap terrace which, IMHO, is a near perfect Manhattan apartment.

Thank you all for a very interesting and enlightening discussion of high end New York residences.

Anonymous said...

Also, the April issue of Architectural Digest has a feature on a one bedroom penthouse with a wrap terrace which, IMHO, is a near perfect Manhattan apartment.

It's not on the web-site.

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Anonymous said...

the coffee tables and terrace furniture? i don't understand - i realize the settings may be staged, but still i don't understand.

Unknown said...
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lil' gay boy said...

“French flats” — distinguished from tenement houses by modern luxuries such as parlors, dining rooms, servants’ rooms, and indoor plumbing—caught on in the city after 1870.

Although arguably "French" in style, the St. Urban is an apartment house; the term French flat was an attempt to make a new style of living more palatable to prospective tenants:

For much of the city’s history, any New York household that could afford it lived in their own single-family home. The idea of sharing a residence with other people? Very declasse. (...)But in 1870, a developer named Rutherford Stuyvesant tried something new with his Stuyvesant Flats at 142 East 18th Street, near Third Avenue.

Inspired by new multi-family buildings that were all the rage in Paris, Stuyvesant spent $100,000 on his five-story structure, hiring architect Richard Morris Hunt to design 16 apartments and four artists’ studios.

First dubbed a folly, these middle-class rentals near chic Union Square caught on quick. They ushered in demand for more apartment-style dwellings.

Anonymous said...

But there was no love lost between you and houses like the Duke Semans mansion or the James B. Duke house?

You still owe the reply about Parisian buildings being built for the poor to gawp at them from below in the streets.

lil' gay boy said...

I love many of the old mansions that fell to the wrecking ball -- prevailing sentiment at the time was that they were no longer in fashion, and many, although unique & fascinating, simply no longer served their purpose. They couldn't even give the Schwab mansion to the mayor, for example.

The over-the-top exuberance of the Senator Clark mansion is a good case in point; without the outsized ego of the Senator, the house kinda lost its purpose -- even after the family vacated, it was unsuccessfully converted to flats for a while; after taking more than a decade to complete (including the purchase of a quarry for the stone), it barely lasted much more than that:

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2012/02/09/looking_back_at_manhattans_lost_gilded_age_mansions.php

Shame, really -- I would like to have experienced it.

As for the "unwashed masses", that was merely a prevailing sentiment amongst some of the more privileged (and arguably less-educated) wealthy at the time. The layout of Paris was more about the city as an in-toto set piece with grand boulevards & vistas, meant to impress, from all angles near & far.

Anonymous said...

"720 Park Avenue was built so that wealthy Jewish folks who were largely forbidden from acquiring apartments in many of the swankier of the swank apartment houses that line Park Avenue. Of course, those sorts of restrictions aren't legally allowable anymore..."

Actually, I don't think that is quite right. Co-op boards retain the right to veto sales on religious and ethnic grounds, even in New York. In the same way, individual home owners have a perfect and unrestricted right to refuse to sell to a perfectly good buyer on such grounds ... or no grounds at all. Fortunately, few people today are silly enough to exercise such a power. But I have heard that it occasionally does happen, even today.

Petra's said...

The buyer of the Spielvogel's place was Peter Kraus- formerly of Goldman Sachs & Merrill





Anonymous said...

Actually, 12:30, you cannot refuse to sell based on race, religion or ethnicity, in a co-op or even with a private home. Co-ops have no right to do so. The problem, of course, is proving that the refusal to sell or pass the board is based on the protected factor of race or religion-the board can point to some other non=protected factor, such as finances. See the current case going against the board of the Dakota.

Anonymous said...

The New York Times explains the actual (as distinguished from the legally formalistic) this way:

"Co-op boards have the legal right to chose whom they please as neighbors and they may reject buyers for any reason so long as they do not violate the buyer's civil rights. Discrimination may not be based on race, creed, color, age, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, handicaps or families with children, and the City Council may soon add ''lawful occupation'' to the list.
But this is more of an honor system than a legal one because no law requires boards to explain their admissions policy or furnish reasons for rejecting buyers. Boards are not inclined to volunteer such disclosures because buyers could use them as a basis for litigation."

In Simpson v. Berkley Owner's Corp. the Appellate Division of New York stated that unless the plaintiff could submit evidence that the board did not act in the best interests of its shareholders, the court need not review the case. The Simpson case puts a tremendous burden on the prospective purchaser who feels that his or her denial is discriminatory: The buyer must obtain sufficient evidence that the board's actions were predicated on a discriminatory practice, a task that is all but impossible absent a confession from the board.

The reality is that co-op boards and individuals can actually discriminate on the basis of race, creed, color, age, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, handicaps or families with children. The (apparent) law to the contrary is an honor code and window dressing and a sham. The same goes with even more force with respect to individual home sales.



Sandpiper said...

Hey 7:05pm: Regarding the terrace: My bet that furniture and greenery in the distance is intended to pull the eye further back in case prospects would otherwise miss how large that terrace actually is.
Mama has scolded us repeatedly to look at the bones rather than decor because that's what new buyer will get and potentially gut to their taste. But dissecting stager missteps, as our snarky opinions dictate, is still good clean fun!
I'm lovin' the dining room furniture, or lack thereof. Seems dwarfed and in aesthetic opposition to the other rooms. IMHO, that shot should have skipped. I need a respirator. I can smell the dusty, though pricey, area rug from here. Betting stager started with a blank slate. Perhaps their more appropriately-scaled dining room inventory was in use on another project. Meow. The entire place, sans (cough, cough) dining room, may be directed toward a younger demographic. All kidding aside, it’s a beautiful apartment.
LGB, you always offer up the best sidebars to Mama's featured properties.

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Anonymous said...

It is interesting to compare the apartment at 720 with Celeste Bartos' apartment at 778 park which just hit the market. The overlap between the two is remarkable. Rarely can you find two high floor apartments in top buildings that are so similar on the market at the same time. It will be a horse race to see which sells first.

http://streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/832744-coop-778-park-avenue-upper-east-side-new-york

And speaking of penthouses - neither 720 nor 778 is a penthouse. It is silly to call them penthouses. They have setback terraces, but if you get in the elevator at either building (720 has an elevator man, 778 doesn't - I go frequently to both buildings) there are numbers for all floors up to the actual penthouses, which are only the very top apartments. Silly marketing ploy by brokers to call them anything other than their correct apartment designations - the coop shares will read 16A or 17. NYC brokers seem to be trying to change apartment names to defeat searches on streeteasy of previous sales and listings. Still a mystery how the previous sale of 720 park 16a has managed to escape all public records (it sold feb 2004)

Anonymous said...

Did Oliver and Lisa Douglas live in a real, honest-to-goodness, Park Avenue penthouse, or merely in a high-floor, set-back apartment, perhaps at 720 or 778?
Studly Tower

lil' gay boy said...

They lived on a set in Culver City...

;-)

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