New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter

Alan Blattberg

Alpern

David Netto is an independent architectural designer specializing in interior apartment renovations. He has lectured and published on the work of Rosario Candela.

Christopher Gray is director of the Office for Metropolitan History, a research organization, and writes the weekly “Streetscapes” column in the real-estate section of the Sunday edition of The New York Times.

Other books published by Acanthus Press: Great Houses of New York, 1880–1930.

Michael C. Kathrens.

Great Houses of Chicago, 1871–1921.

Susan Benjamin and Stuart Cohen.

Houses of Los Angeles, 1885–1935. 2 volumes.

Sam Watters.

The Main Line: Country Houses of Philadelphia’s Storied Suburb, 1870–1930. William Alan Morrison.

Carrère and Hastings, Architects. 2 vols.

Dream House: The White House as an American Home. Ulysses Grant Dietz and Sam Watters.

The du Ponts: Houses and Gardens in the Brandywine, 1900–1951. Maggie Lidz.

Houses of the Berkshires, 1870–1930. Revised 2011.

Richard S. Jackson Jr. and Cornelia Brooke Gilder.

Rosario Candela has replaced Stanford White as the real estate brokers’ name-drop of choice.

Nowadays, to own a 10- to 20-room apartment in a Candela-designed building is to accede to architectural, as well as social cynosure.”

—Christopher Gray

The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter

Andrew Alpern is an architectural historian, an architect, and an attorney. This book is his fourth about apartment houses of Manhattan. He has also published five other books, the most recent being a fully-illustrated catalogue of the collection of architectural drawing instruments he donated to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University. Alpern has published dozens of articles about architecture and the cityscape and has also published extensively on intellectual property and construction law.

The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter Andrew Alpern with essays by David Netto and Christopher Gray

by Andrew Alpern Foreword by David Netto Preface by Christopher Gray The supreme addresses of choice in New York are on Park Avenue and on Fifth Avenue. But merely living on either of these famous boulevards is not enough. The ultimate aspiration is to dwell in a suite of rooms designed by one of the two masters of apartment-house design—Rosario Candela or James Carpenter. And they understood apartmenthouse construction inside and out.

Working with enlightened builders, these men helped an affluent market understand and appreciate the amenities that separated their buildings from those of ordinary New Yorkers. They created the grand structures and lavish apartments that are now the standard living spaces of New York’s most successful people.

The names Candela and Carpenter have become synonymous with well-proportioned rooms and imaginative layouts. They defined luxury in a way not equalled since their day, and the planning and design principles they developed are still strongly influencing apartment-house architects.

Richly illustrated with 354 period photographs and floor plans, and with factual data and narrative, Andrew Alpern provides us with a fascinating architectural and social history of these great buildings.

Supplemented by interior views, both vintage and recent, including newer interiors by some of the most important New York architecture and interiordesign firms, we are also able to see how people live in these great apartments.

Through this book, Alpern shows us that the work of Candela and Carpenter is a contribution to the architecture of New York as significant as its great office skyscrapers and produced a parallel golden age of apartment-house construction and design.

Front cover photo: 2 East 70th Street, Wurts Brothers, courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Back cover: 770 Park Avenue, 15-room duplex, author’s collection.

The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter

Acanthus Press

With an important Introduction, supplemented by two additional authoritative essays, this delightful and informative book brings richly deserved recognition to two exceptionally talented architects of the early 20th century.

The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter

The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter

By Andrew Alpern

Acanthus Press : New York

Acknowledgments

Published by Acanthus Press 1133 Broadway, Ste. 1229 New York, NY 10010 800.827.7614 www.acanthuspress.com All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in any part (except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publisher.

Copyright © 2001 Andrew Alpern Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alpern, Andrew.

The New York apartment houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter / by Andrew Alpern. p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN 0-926494-20-1 (alk. paper) 1. Candela, Rosario, 1890–1953—Catalogs.

2. Carpenter, J. E. R. (James Edwin R.), 1867–1932—Catalogs.

3. Apartment houses—New York (State)—New York.

4. Interior architecture—New York (State)—New York.

5. Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)—Buildings, structures, etc.

I. Candela, Rosario, 1890–1953. II. Carpenter, J.E.R. (James Edwin R.), 1867–1932. III. Title.

NA737.C256 A4 2001 728'.314'0922—dc21 2001001352 Book design by Mel Byars Printed in China

Thanks are owed to innumerable people who have helped with various aspects of the development and production of this book. Specific appreciation is due to Gil and Stephen Amiaga, Alan Blattberg, Barry Cenower, Robert Friedrich, Michael Garrett, Christopher Gray, Michael Kathrens, Dale Neighbors, David Netto, Eldo Netto, Wendy Shadwell, Roger Whidden, Donald Wrobleski, and others whose lack of inclusion by name in no way diminishes the appreciation for their assistance. These people helped with any merit this book may have; any errors are mine alone.

Andrew Alpern New York City

For Grace and Dwight Alpern and for Kate Netto In remembrance

Contents Foreword by David Netto Preface by Christopher Gray

7

Park Avenue:

11

550 Park Avenue

106

Introduction by Andrew Alpern 15

580 Park Avenue

110

Chronology of Carpenter

610 Park Avenue

112

620 Park Avenue

114

625 Park Avenue

116

630 Park Avenue

120

635 Park Avenue

124

640 Park Avenue

126

655 Park Avenue

128

720 Park Avenue

130

Apartment Houses

28

Chronology of Candela Apartment Houses

29

Catalogue of Candela and Carpenter Apartment Houses Fifth Avenue: 41 Fifth Avenue

34

740 Park Avenue

132

810 Fifth Avenue

36

770 Park Avenue

138

825 Fifth Avenue

38

775 Park Avenue

144

834 Fifth Avenue

40

778 Park Avenue

152

812 Park Avenue

158

856 Fifth Avenue or 2 East 67th Street

48

950 Park Avenue

166

907 Fifth Avenue

54

960 Park Avenue

168

920 Fifth Avenue

56

1021 Park Avenue

170

950 Fifth Avenue

58

1060 Park Avenue

174

955 Fifth Avenue

60

1105 Park Avenue

176

960 Fifth Avenue

62

1172 Park Avenue

178

988 Fifth Avenue

70

1192 Park Avenue

182

990 Fifth Avenue

72

1220 Park Avenue

184

995 Fifth Avenue

74

1030 Fifth Avenue

76

130 East 39th Street

188

1035 Fifth Avenue

78

248 East 46th Street

189

1040 Fifth Avenue

80

455 East 51st Street

190

1060 Fifth Avenue

84

145 East 52nd Street

192

1115 Fifth Avenue

88

135 East 54th Street

194

1120 Fifth Avenue

92

120 East 56th Street

196

1143 Fifth Avenue

95

340 East 57th Street

198

1148 Fifth Avenue

96

447 East 57th Street

200

1150 Fifth Avenue

98

116 East 58th Street

202

1165 Fifth Avenue

100

1 East 66th Street or

1170 Fifth Avenue

102

850 Fifth Avenue

East Side Streets:

204

6 / Contents

4 East 66th Street or

519 West 139th Street

274

559 West 169th Street

275

845 Fifth Avenue

206

40 East 66th Street

210

44 East 67th Street

212

1 Adrian Avenue

278

2 East 70th Street

214

2 Beekman Place

280

19 East 72nd Street

217

30 Central Park South

282

149 East 73rd Street

224

112 Central Park South

284

170 East 79th Street

226

75 Central Park West

286

133 East 80th Street

228

360 Central Park West

288

115 East 82nd Street

230

1 Gracie Square

291

3 East 85th Street

232

173 and 175 Riverside Drive

294

280 Riverside Drive

296

1 East 88th Street or

Other Streets and Avenues:

1070 Fifth Avenue

234

285 Riverside Drive

298

12 East 88th Street

236

425 Riverside Drive

300

14 East 90th Street

238

680 Riverside Drive

302

4 East 95th Street

240

881 St Nicholas Avenue

303

8 East 96th Street

242

56 Seventh Avenue

304

70 East 96th Street

244

29 Spring Street

307

19 East 98th Street

246

1 Sutton Place South

308

4 Sutton Place

312

West Side Streets: 40 West 55th Street

250

14 Sutton Place South

314

127 West 57th Street

252

25 Sutton Place

316

307 West 57th Street

254

30 Sutton Place

318

100 West 58th Street

257

230 West End Avenue

321

150 West 58th Street

258

240 West End Avenue

322

40 West 67th Street

260

246 West End Avenue

324

522 West End Avenue

327

161 West 75th and 174 West 76th Streets

262

607 West End Avenue

330

325 West 86th Street

263

755 West End Avenue

332

332 West 86th Street

264

800 West End Avenue

334

304 West 89th Street

265

820 West End Avenue

336

215 West 92nd Street

266

875 West End Avenue

338

175 West 93rd Street

268

878 West End Avenue

340

315 West 106th Street

270

915 West End Avenue

342

300 West 108th Street

272 Index

345

Foreword

By David Netto The City of New York has a rich legacy of apartment-house architecture. For blocks and blocks along Park and Fifth Avenues and on other avenues and streets of Manhattan there exists a huge body of architectural work designed by two relatively unknown designers. Constructed primarily during the 1920s, these buildings possess a consistent quality that has never been surpassed, yet little has been published about them or the men who created them.

The greatest glory of these buildings is not the face they present to the street. Although they possess beautiful facades in a variety of historical styles and are much-appreciated embellishments to the streetscape, their real accomplishment and contribution to architectural history lies in the ingenuity of their floor plans. The designers of the finest 18th- and 19th-century apartment houses in Paris preserved traditional orderly room arrangements despite the wildly irregular building sites within which they were forced to work. In 20th-century New York, lots are generally rectangular, with the planning problems of a different sort. The high point of this planning was expressed in well over 100 buildings, the product of the efforts of two very different men, each practicing his craft separately from the other during a surprisingly short span of years.

In Mayor Jimmy Walker’s metropolis of the 1920s, James E.R. Carpenter was, in the words of architectural historian Christopher Gray, a “total real estate animal.“ Developer, architect, and realestate speculator, his career could hardly have been possible at any other time. After decades of uncertainty, the societal changes following World War I had finally made apartment living a truly acceptable alternative to private town houses. Carpenter understood the reality that, if this promise was to be fulfilled, the planning of new apartments had to be so skillful that the compromise of “multiple dwelling” status would be obscured.

What Carpenter developed to accomplish that was to become the blueprint for nearly all successful apartment planning. Essentially, he did two things and did them exceedingly well. He developed and perfected the “off the foyer” layout, in which an

entrance hall or gallery is the pivot point of the apartment. In a large unit it is conceived as the fourth room in a suite of reception spaces that includes living room, dining room, and library, providing immediate visual orientation to those rooms. In a small one, it is the circulation hub for the entire apartment. Carpenter also introduced a strict, functional separation of areas for reception, private life, and service. With his 1912 design for 635 Park Avenue, these principles were first made vividly clear, and every apartment thereafter follows this formula, whether designed by Carpenter or by his younger contemporary Rosario Candela.

When it came to designing facades, Carpenter exhibited a restraint which at times approached austerity. The form of many of his buildings is that of an amplified Renaissance palazzo, complete with rusticated base and enlarged stone cornice, as evidenced at 907 Fifth Avenue, completed in 1916.

By the time 4 East 66th Street was built in 1920, the architect had abstracted the details of the palazzo to a minimalist articulation that is almost twodimensional; the rustication and belt courses are there, but they have been so reduced in scale that the form can be read as a skyscraper’s monolithic shaft as much as an extruded historicist mansion facade. By this time in his career, the most intricate part of Carpenter’s architecture is the plan.

The muted dignity of Carpenter’s exteriors makes his buildings serve especially well as units in a larger urban scheme. He seems to have been aware of the role his buildings would need to fulfill in that scheme, for taken together they help to form the continuous building wall along Fifth and Park Avenues—far more harmonious than the eclectic body of private houses they replaced. His buildings, which were built to the lot line as high as was permitted by the New York zoning resolution of 1916, are for the most part 11 or 12 stories tall with flat roofs and classical cornices.

The clarity of Carpenter’s plans and the principles they evidenced provided the foundation which was built upon by a Sicilian immigrant who graduated from Columbia University’s School of Architecture in 1915. Armed with his newly acquired academic knowledge and his native

8 / Foreword

ingenuity, Rosario Candela quickly found work within a community of Sicilian-born apartment house developers who recognized in their countryman an architect of exceptional skill and rapidly emerging potential. Candela’s talents, like those of Carpenter’s, were especially suited to the planning of apartments. At the beginning, his projects generally were relatively modest ventures on the West Side of Manhattan, but by 1925, with real estate and stocks markets booming, Candela attracted patronage that permitted him to express, in buildings like 1 Sutton Place South and 775 Park Avenue, a new level of apartment-house design.

Candela expanded on Carpenter’s planning precepts and added more luxury to the rival architect’s rigorous design formula. Most buildings before Candela had relatively thin exterior walls that were merely sufficient to keep out the weather, with columns and mechanical equipment inelegantly intruding upon the interior spaces.

Candela thickened those walls to conceal the structural framing and to carry plumbing risers unseen. Deep window reveals that completely enclose the radiator cabinets are the happy result of this revision to conventional construction methods. Instead of pairing windows as was the custom to admit more light, Candela made windows larger and spaced them in majestic single succession, endowing his rooms with a feeling of greater scale and balance. These refinements, along with higher ceilings and carefully considered vistas from one room to the next, made Candela’s a richer architecture than New York apartments had ever known or would see again.

The one’s work could not have existed without the other’s, and at times the dialogue between the two architects is compelling. Carpenter’s A.I.A. Gold Medal-winning design for 812 Park Avenue, a building of multiple duplex units, provides the prototype for Candela’s later and much more elaborate 740 Park Avenue. In his own later buildings such as 625 Park Avenue, Carpenter followed Candela’s example by thickening the exterior walls to conceal the unattractive underpinnings of the building. It is a certainty that in the small world of the Upper East Side the two architects and the

developers who funded their projects were acutely aware of each other, learning from and competing with one another.

If Carpenter’s greatest innovation is his formula for planning apartments, Candela’s is his development of the terraced setback, which first appears in 1927 at the eastern portion of 960 Fifth Avenue and can be seen in its apotheosis on such buildings as 770 and 778 Park Avenue, each designed early in 1929. It is ironic that the most significant architectural imagery of these apartment buildings came in response to zoning restrictions. To construct higher than one-andone-half times the width of the street, the architect was required by the regulations to set back from the lot line above what was usually the 11th or 12th floor. Most Carpenter buildings were built at a time when penthouse living had not yet caught on and roof space was conventionally used for servants’ quarters. By the time Candela had reached the height of his powers in the late 1920s, however, the marketability of penthouses could no longer be ignored, and he developed the prototype of the New York setback penthouse crowned with a roof tower.

Candela’s roofscapes are both romantic and pragmatic. Seemingly designed to exploit maximum silhouette value, upon closer examination the exuberance of the skyline tempietto is rationalized as a water tower enclosure. Arched buttresses that dramatically span terraces contain fireplace flues, carrying them from the floors below to the chimneys above. Candela must have known, as the volume of his commissions grew, that like Carpenter he was erecting a group of buildings which could be perceived as being connected in a community. In contrast to Carpenter’s restrained streetscapes, Candela’s gilded village is most recognizable at skyline level, where the towers of 770 and 778 Park Avenue respond to each other, in critic Paul Goldberger’s words, as “great gateways to Central Park.“ To read the buildings visually is to see an Italian hill town, a second city above the 12th floor possessed of an architectural richness greater than the one below.

Foreword / 9

The work of James E.R. Carpenter and Rosario Candela is as significant a contribution to the architecture of New York as its office skyscrapers, though not yet as well recognized. While the Carpenter buildings are more subtle, those of Candela have an exuberance that delights the eye, and together they form an outstanding body of work with great exterior dignity and superb internal planning. In all probability the buildings of Candela could not have happened without those of Carpenter as the example, and the two architects may be seen as creating a continuing narrative of design, with Candela preserving and embellishing the theories espoused by his predecessor.

Carpenter the developer was unusual in that he was as interested in elevating the design quality of his projects as in maximizing the bottom line. Carpenter the architect was just as quality obsessed in providing a fine product that would attract those with the money to afford it, and he endowed his buildings with a refinement rarely seen in apartment-house architecture of his time. Candela was that rarest of combinations: a sensualist as well as a rigorous, efficient designer. His buildings have a voluptuousness that is in tension with the crisp planning. His personality combined these ele-

ments: he was the severe, crew-cutted, family man with an appreciation of just how much decadence and theater he could put into his projects. Very few architects have combined these opposite forces in their work, and the style is conspicuously a product of the American twenties and thirties.

One cannot help thinking of William Randolph Hearst’s architect Julia Morgan and her work at San Simeon as an example of the sort of schism between personality and product which is so fascinating. Together, Carpenter and Candela created the Architecture of the Age, as definitive of domestic life in New York as the Woolworth and Chrysler buildings were of the city’s commerce.

Furthering their significance is the reality that most of their buildings are unlikely to be taken down. Of their combined output of 126 apartment buildings in New York, only three have been lost.

The large majority of those remaining are within the Upper East Side historic district, protected in 1976 under the city’s Landmarks Preservation law.

Unlike the generation of mansions that were demolished after only a few years to make way for the construction of these apartment buildings, the apartment house architecture of James E.R. Carpenter and Rosario Candela will define the gold coasts of Park and Fifth Avenues indefinitely.

Preface

By Christopher Gray This Preface is all about Rosario Candela. Not that James Carpenter wasn’t a pioneer, an excellent designer, a crusader, a fine planner, and all the things that justify his inclusion in this book. It is just that I find Candela the more interesting person and his accomplishments more notable. Just ask anyone familiar with the loftier rungs of Manhattan’s real estate. That person knows that Rosario Candela has replaced Stanford White as the real estate brokers’ name-drop of choice.

Nowadays, to own a ten- to 20-room apartment in a Candela-designed building is to accede to architectural as well as social cynosure. Which is all the more remarkable when you consider that Candela, who did his best work in the 1920s, died in relative obscurity in 1953. So why is Candela today’s blue-chip architect?

Because, says architecture critic Paul Goldberger, “[Candela’s] stuff was the best. There was a wonderful assurance and solidity to his buildings . . . they don’t display any visible effort, in the greatest traditions of old money.“ Real estate broker Edward Lee Cave says, “I am constantly amazed at the imagination of the man. His name is synonymous with well-proportioned rooms . . . the library is always where it should be, and never in the same place twice.“ Candela was born in Palermo in 1890 and emigrated to the United States in 1909 to work with his father, Michele, a plasterer. Although his obituary states that he was educated at the Institute of Fine Arts in Palermo, immigration records indicate that Candela was a laborer and arrived here with only $20 in his pocket. Nevertheless, he somehow managed to attend the Columbia University School of Architecture, which had produced such socially prominent architects as William Delano, Charles A. Dana, and William Bottomley. While at Columbia, according to his son Joseph, Candela displayed an early high regard for his own talent by placing a velvet rope around his drafting table to prevent other students from copying.

After graduation, he went to work for fellow countryman Gaetano Ajello, who had staked out a profitable practice designing apartment buildings for speculative developers, generally on the Upper

West Side. Although Ajello’s cool, neoclassical designs were 98 percent real estate and two percent design, they were still better than the competition. From Ajello’s firm, Candela moved to Frederick Sterner, who redid town houses for the rich and influential. It was here where Candela probably learned how the other half lived.

By 1920, he was on his own, working out of a row house at 120 East 101st Street. His first known commission appeared in 1922, the tall apartment house at the northeast corner of 92nd Street and Broadway. Later in the same year, he designed his first East Side building, a cooperative at 1105 Park Avenue. Today, a visit to the lobbies of these two buildings reveals the differences between their respective audiences. The Park Avenue lobby is spare and elegant, with understated marble work and plain plaster trim—the old money look. But over on Broadway, the lobby is all gaudy-gilt with a showy coffered ceiling and other accouterments the East Side crowd would have found about as amusing as a trip to Hester Street.

During the next five years Candela designed a number of nicely planned rental buildings on West End Avenue, Riverside Drive, and elsewhere for developers who generally were Italian. These men hired a variety of architects to design their buildings—Ajello was annoyed when he had to compete with his former employee for commissions—and the mass-produced high-rise housing they sold had about as much in common with capital “A“ architecture as LeRoy Neiman has with Rembrandt. Still, in the mid-1920s, a couple of things happened to allow Candela to flower.

First, the speculative developers began to dominate the co-op construction market. Hitherto, the typical cooperative had been organized (or at least centered around) elite families who hired the architects, determined the scheme, and selected their neighbors. They were more likely to hire a social equal.

For example, to design the 1925 building at 39 East 79th Street, Emily Post’s private syndicate hired Kenneth Murchison, a proper beaux-arts man. But, as the market for high-end coops expanded, speculative builders saw a new way to finance construction—by pre-selling the apartments.

12 / Preface

More important, they were selling to a far more sophisticated clientele. By the mid-1920s, the very rich had already lived in apartments, and they wanted not just more rooms, but more intelligent planning and more assured design. It was for these tenants that Candela designed a dozen or so exquisite buildings from 1926 until the crash of 1929, a group of buildings on which his reputation was built and continues to expand.

The earliest of these were 775 Park Avenue and 1 Sutton Place South, both red brick neo-Georgian, located on full-block fronts. Though their exteriors were more elegant than usual, it was their interior features that made the difference. 1 Sutton Place had apartments of 12 to 20 rooms with an elegant drive-through entry and a lobby opening onto a giant lawn overlooking the East River. Each apartment had its own laundry room in the basement—all the better for your private laundress—and at the time of opening, the building promised a deep-water landing for yachts.

775 Park Avenue consists of a complicated arrangement of simplex, duplex, and triplex units of eight to 16 rooms, with a lobby designed by Dorothy Draper to look like an “old London house.“ Proper distance between the living rooms and libraries is provided “to allow two members of the family to entertain at once.“ And, as a further inducement, there was “a fireplace in every room that should have one.“ In 1927 Candela arrived on Fifth Avenue. He designed 2 East 67th Street, which has full-floor apartments of 14 rooms with six baths. And he designed 960 Fifth Avenue, whose developer claimed it as “the greatest cooperative of all time.“ The buyers seemed to agree. Dr Preston Pope Satterwhite paid $450,000 for a 20-room apartment just from a look at the plans. Horace Havemeyer’s four-month alteration to his 12th-floor apartment was so extensive that he had to erect an exterior elevator to accommodate deliveries.

After number 960, Candela made a successful bid to represent the few remaining tenant-sponsored coops, including 720 Park Avenue, which was organized by Jesse Isidor Straus for “a group of

gentlemen“—as Country Life called them. It was around this time that Candela began to pull away from his chief competitors, Warren and Wetmore, and James E.R. Carpenter.

There followed another half-dozen superior buildings, including 834 and 1040 Fifth Avenue, and 740, 770, and 778 Park Avenue. Most were built under the new multiple-dwelling law, which encouraged buildings to have terraced set-backs at the upper floors. The dramatic profiles of 1040 Fifth Avenue and the three Park Avenue buildings certainly contribute to Candela’s reputation, but it was the interiors that sold them: at 834 Fifth, the linen room in each apartment was bigger than two servants’ rooms combined; at 770 Park, there was a third, separate servants’ elevator to eliminate the problems that attend servants using the freight elevator; at 778 Park, steam was provided to clean out garbage buckets.

Most of Candela’s apartments started with the same skeleton—three big entertainment rooms organized off a central foyer with a staircase or a hallway leading to the bedroom section. But in each building, legions of designers and architects customized the interiors, even altering the steelwork. So, at 740 Park Avenue, Judge Clarence Shearn’s modern apartment (with plain wood veneers and Native American textiles) co-existed with Lynde Selden’s high-style neo-Georgian paneling and John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s Art Deco china room. (At the time, Candela told his son Joseph that the commissions from customizing the interiors at 720 Park covered his overhead for the year.)

Ironically, while today’s developers use “name“ architects—Robert Stern, James Polshek, Cesar Pelli, I.M. Pei—to help sell their projects, Candela’s name was barely mentioned in the advertisements of his time.

What happened to make Candela’s name so important when just a generation ago he was hardly known? It began with the interest in architectural preservation sparked by the appointment of Paul Goldberger as architectural critic of The New York Times in the early 1970s. Candela’s name began popping up in his articles and books. Then

Preface / 13

in the 1980s, when apartment values went so high and when prices soared even higher in the late 1990s, it was very logical for people to begin to ask who designed them.

Notwithstanding that Candela’s name is in the forefront today, there are cynics who believe that the Candela craze is just savvy marketing. One East Sider who has methodically gone about looking for a new apartment claims some of Candela’s work is “dramatically inferior.“ About 834 Fifth Avenue, he says, “Major rooms have their short sides facing the park, creating a bowling-alley effect.“ After comparing bedroom sizes in top-end buildings he found there was little difference.

“These architects weren’t working with a lot of variables,“ he concludes. “Candela was as willing to compromise as much as the others.“

But Candela’s critics are in the minority. Clearly, he is considered pre-eminent. And though you can argue all you want about his design capabilities, no one can dispute the fact that he labored to a standard that has never been surpassed.

He was a residential specialist while all the others—including Carpenter—also did office buildings. Most important, Candela’s neo-Georgian style has survived the test of time and remains essentially modern. Art Deco has been degraded by a generation of sleazy coop conversions, and Stanford White’s Victorian rooms seem more antique than alive. But Candela’s work, thoughtful, solid, comforting, remains, even in the age of the Internet, top of the line.

Introduction

By Andrew Alpern The Stuyvesant Apartments at 142 East 18th Street, completed early in 1870, may have been the first middle-class apartment house in New York, but architects and developers would spend another dozen years of tentative experimentation and muscle flexing to create the multiple dwellings that could fairly be described as luxurious. In the early 1880s, a number of large and lavishly appointed buildings were erected for New Yorkers with social standing or aspirations to live in expansive comfort. These families required large reception rooms for entertaining, multiple bedrooms, and extensive service spaces incorporating quarters for a domestic staff of several live-in servants. These ventures established the luxury apartment house as a viable alternative to the ubiquitous row house for wealthy Manhattanites.

The most famous of these is the Dakota, still extant, at Central Park West and 72nd Street. Constructed between 1880 and 1884 as a speculative venture by Edward Clark, who had made a fortune from the Singer Sewing machine, the Dakota has long been considered the Dowager Queen of all New York apartment buildings. While it is the grandest of the surviving early ventures, it was merely one of many whose extravagant planning and construction were used to attract a fickle public to an expensive and financially uncertain lifestyle. Following Edward Clark’s death in 1882, the Dakota was owned successively by his grandsons Edward Severin Clark and Stephen Corning Clark. The building during that period reportedly ran consistently at a loss, suggesting perhaps that super-luxury architecture was not compatible with profit-making rental apartments. This premise is supported by the experience of developer Thomas Osborne, who in 1883 built the Osborne Apartments at Seventh Avenue and 57th Street. Osborne over-extended himself by using excessively lavish construction materials and lost his investment.

Builder Juan de Navarro suffered the same fate with his contemporaneous Central Park Apartments a block away. Perhaps in recognition of these financial risks, other builders of the period generally erected less extravagant structures with more modest luxury accommodations. More typical of the 1880s were The Chelsea at 222 West 23rd

Street (subsequently converted to a hotel) and The Gramercy at 32 Gramercy Park East (converted from a hotel in mid-construction). These buildings provided luxury apartments, but the specifics of their design recognized financial reality sufficiently to assure their survival.

The 1890s and early 1900s saw the development of the apartment-house form, with architects of widely varying skill producing buildings of predictable inconsistency. Facades ranged over the entire stylistic gamut, often with outlandish decorative details and enclosing lobbies of disparate design.

Each building attempted to insinuate itself into the public’s attention with an eye-catching appearance and “modern“ features such as direct long-distance telephone connections and central vacuum-cleaning systems. Apartment layouts were generally contrived and procrustean. The market analyses and financial constraints of the developers dictated the sizes and varieties of spaces of the buildings, while myriad municipal regulations restricted how they could be arranged on the site.

An increasing level of expertise and a slowly growing customer base was reflected in improved offerings as time progressed. The market for these ventures was still limited, however, and did not extend to those with significant sums to spend on housing and the discernment to want a better product than was readily available. For these people, there were few suitable apartment houses until McKim, Mead & White’s sumptuous Renaissance palace at 998 Fifth Avenue was completed in 1911.

Arguably the best in the city then, and remaining so now, number 998 boldly provided a prototype for both architects and for developers.

We cannot know whether 998 Fifth Avenue was the dominant force in its market, but its presence and contemporary publicity must have affected architects Rosario Candela and James E.R. Carpenter and the developers for whom they worked.

Those developers were perhaps the most important people in the picture. They were the patrons, the motivating forces, and the ones who hired the architects and paid their fees. The developers bought the properties, ascertained the nature of

16 / Introduction

the market and the limitations of the location, decided upon the target consumer and the design parameters of the product, and determined the construction cost that could be supported by the projected cash flow. Only then would the architect have a commission and the prospect of an income.

An architect would be involved with the preliminary investigations and sketch plans necessary to flesh out the developer’s concepts and help him solidify the project, but from the start the architect was servant to the developer and his profit motive. The building’s steel structure was always subordinate to its financial structure.

The developers who hired the architects were a diverse lot, and they used a diverse group of architects, often with one architect successively serving rival developers. One of the odder developers was Spencer Fullerton Weaver (1879–1939), an architect who trained as an engineer and who designed buildings for other developers but usually eschewed designing for himself. An exception was the Park Lane Apartments (built in 1924, demolished c. 1960), which he designed, built, and owned. In a partnership formed in 1921, Weaver

maintained a design practice with Leonard Schultze (1877–1951). The two men specialized in hotels, designing the Sherry Netherland (1927), Lexington (1929), Pierre (1929), and Waldorf-Astoria (1931) in New York, as well as the Atlanta Biltmore, Los Angeles Biltmore, Palm Beach Breakers, and San Francisco Clift.

Born in Philadelphia (and a collateral descendant of President James Buchanan), Weaver graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1902 with a degree in engineering, after which he came to New York. In 1909 he moved into the Turin, a brandnew, yet decidedly old-fashioned apartment house at 333 Central Park West. The building had been designed by architect Albert Joseph Bodker with large but inefficient apartments of the stretchedout, “long-hall“ variety popular in the 19th century. Its open cage-work elevator shafts with elaborately grilled elevator cabs and uniformed attendants may have been gracious (they have since been replaced), but Weaver must have recognized the shortcomings of the building’s planning.

Bodker was an aesthetically oriented designer whose skills with floor plans were decidedly secondary to his finesse at creating decorative details and facades. As efficient planning is essential to the economic success of any apartment house development project, Weaver may have concluded from the Turin’s wasteful yet presumably up-todate plan that established New York architects did not have the requisite businessman’s mental orientation. For what was apparently his first real estate venture, Weaver at the age of 30 sought an architect with business experience who could assist with project development. James Edwin Ruthvin Carpenter (1867–1932) of Nashville, Tennessee, was his choice.

James E.R. Carpenter (Figure 1) was an established architect in the South who had attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1884 and 1885 and then studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He had already designed the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville; the Ridgely Apartments in Birmingham, Alabama; and the Hurt Building, an office tower in Atlanta, Georgia, that was completed after his arrival in New York and in 1989 was

Figure 1. James E.R. Carpenter, c. 1910.

(Collection of Andrew Alpern)

Introduction / 17

designated an Atlanta historic landmark. With Walter D. Blair, he had designed the Empire Building in Birmingham, the Stahlman Building in Nashville, and the American National Bank Building in Pensacola, Florida—all large office buildings—as well as a more modest library building for Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

With a portfolio of large, important buildings to his credit, Carpenter’s business arrangement with Weaver must have seemed rather insignificant: a nine-story apartment house at 116 East 58th Street with two units per floor, each of which comprised eight rooms of modest proportions, plus three baths. The site was a midblock lot, 57 feet wide, opposite the raucous Liederkranz Hall between Park and Lexington Avenues. To this seemingly inauspicious beginning in New York, Carpenter brought his well-honed skill as a designer, producing a fully glazed white terracotta facade embellished with polychromed decorative details, iron balconies, and a high iron railing separating the building from the sidewalk.

The plan Carpenter produced for each apartment was centered on an axis in which the view from the entrance door was of the symmetrically positioned living-room fireplace. The arrangement of rooms focused on the entrance foyer, which served as a central circulation hub. It was this novel feature that distinguished Carpenter’s planning approach and set him apart from earlier designers. For them, the parlor, library, and dining room were what mattered, with everything else in the apartment subservient. For Carpenter, the starting point was the functional effectiveness of the entire suite of rooms, and the circulation patterns were critical to the result.

This approach, evident at 116 East 58th Street, may have been the sales pitch that netted Carpenter the invitation from Weaver. Plans were filed with the New York City’s Department of Buildings in July 1909, and the new building was completed in September 1910. It was christened the Fullerton, after the maiden name of Weaver’s mother. Carpenter then moved from Nashville and made one of the apartments in the Fullerton his personal residence.

The Fullerton received favorable coverage in the professional journals and appears to have solidified Carpenter’s relationship with Weaver, as Carpenter retained the title of Vice President of the Fullerton Weaver Realty Company that had been formed for the construction of 116 East 58th Street. Weaver was the company’s president; Carpenter’s wife, Marion Stires Carpenter, was Secretary and Treasurer Carpenter’s second apartment house in New York for Fullerton Weaver Realty was the ambitious 13-story building at 960 Park Avenue, on the northwest corner of 82nd Street. For this project he worked in architectural association with D. Everett Waid (1864–1939), who later had several important commissions from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Carpenter devised a compact plan in which the apartment layouts were grounded in his distinctive, functionally-based design approach, and with Waid’s assistance the construction drawings for the fulfillment of that planning strategy were filed on June 9, 1911. Each of the two units on each floor (of 11 and 13 rooms apiece) was entered via a spacious foyer that served as a circulation space for the entertaining rooms and onto which opened a wide hall serving the bedrooms. Each unit was divided into three zones—sleeping, entertaining, and servicing spaces. This tripartite plan permitted the support spaces to remain both physically and acoustically separated from the sleeping and the entertainment rooms, yet able to service both those areas conveniently. Thoughtfully determined room proportions and door locations provided logical places for the expected furniture, and there was an abundance of storage space. Here was a mature residential design for a business venture in which Carpenter provided the architectural services and functioned as part of the development team as well.

Only a few days after the 960 Park Avenue Building was completed in August 1912, Carpenter filed plans for a third venture involving Weaver, at 246 West End Avenue on the northeast corner of 71st Street. For this 13-story project, the owner of record was A.G.M. Realty Company, for which

18 / Introduction

Weaver served as President, Carpenter as Secretary, and George F. Harriman as Assistant Secretary-Treasurer. The typical layout of two apartments per floor was nearly identical to the one used the year before at 960 Park, and the design treatment of the facade was very similar.

The fourth Weaver/Carpenter collaboration was the nine-story, 50-foot-wide, midblock building at 3 East 85th Street. The plans called for a single 11room apartment on each floor, and reflected within a smaller compass the planning skill gained by Carpenter for 960 Park Avenue and 246 West End Avenue. Carpenter continued as Vice President of Weaver’s company and was clearly gaining experience at both the design and development sides of the business. This project was filed in 1912 and completed in December 1913.

Also filed in 1912 but not completed until October 1914 was the 13-story building at 635 Park Avenue.

On a corner plot 75 by 80 feet, it was the site of the six-story 1887 Adelaide Apartments designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh. Perhaps the most compactly efficient and elegantly arranged and detailed of all of Carpenter’s plans, each full-floor, 13-room apartment has a large circular foyer and four working fireplaces, with exceptionally large and well-proportioned rooms.

Hard on the heels of 635 Park Avenue came the still grander and more elegant 640 Park Avenue, on the corner diagonally opposite. Originally planned by Carpenter as an elaborate 18-story palazzo that would have been the tallest apartment house on Park Avenue, the 13-story version that was built was a complete redesign in both plan and elevation, adapting a more restrained but still imposing style. Begun in November 1913, it was completed less than a year later. The single apartment on each floor comprised 17 rooms and six baths plus an entrance gallery 14 by 25 feet with a working fireplace. The building’s original majestic, symmetrically placed, arched entry and grand lobby were completely (and almost imperceptibly) replaced in 1928 with a more modest, off-center entry and a smaller lobby for its thenowner Vincent Astor.

Even before 640 Park Avenue had been completed and its apartments rented, Carpenter felt sufficiently experienced with luxury residential development and construction in New York to venture off on his own without the contributions of S. Fullerton Weaver. 907 Fifth Avenue was a large apartment house project for which the architect Cass Gilbert had provided preliminary design schemes. The project’s development group, headed by Robert D. Knowles and John H. Harris, was evidently dissatisfied with what Gilbert produced.

Carpenter, who had already shown he could provide a suitable product, obliged the developers by producing a completely new design and construction plans for number 907 that were filed on August 27, 1915. The building was completed in December 1916, with its design garnering a Gold Medal award from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

While still involved in the 907 Fifth Avenue project as architect, Carpenter expanded his operation to encompass development as well.

Starting off grandly, he simultaneously formed one company with his wife for a project at 630 Park Avenue and another with his brother John H. Carpenter for a second project, four blocks south at 550 Park Avenue.

At 630 Park Avenue, he created plans early in 1916 for a 12-story stack of 17-room, full-floor residences that would replace five small 19th-century buildings. Each residence included four working fireplaces, a 46-foot entrance gallery, and an 85foot enfilade of library, drawing room, and dining room. The arrangement of rooms was very similar to the one he had devised for 640 Park Avenue three years earlier, but the proportions of the new site permitted a layout of considerably greater grandeur. Although the apartments at 640 Park Avenue still exist as originally built (subject to occupant alterations, of course), the ones at 630 Park Avenue were subdivided in 1953 to accommodate a vastly changed residential rental market.

For the project at 550 Park Avenue, Carpenter and his brother John purchased the antiquated sevenstory Yosemite apartment house at the 62nd Street corner, which had been designed 25 years earlier

Introduction / 19

by the eminent architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White. Demolishing the elegant but economically no-longer-viable building, Carpenter replaced it with a 17-story structure whose height would have been barred by the 1916 Zoning Resolution had the City enacted it more quickly. The typical standard floor plan for the building, which was filed on May 24, 1916, was essentially the mirror image of the layout he had developed for 960 Park Avenue in 1911. The plan delineated two apartments of ten and 12 rooms each, with the extra twist that on floors nine, 16, and 17 he combined the space to create a single, huge unit occupying the entire floor (his selection of these particular floors being a mystery). Although a few years later it would have been expected to have the top-floor apartment duplexed to the penthouse, the roof space at 550 Park Avenue was originally used only for extra maids’ rooms and storage. When the building was completed in December 1917, Carpenter and his wife were among the original complement of residents.

In Spring 1919, Carpenter designed and began construction for his own account of a modest nine-story, midblock apartment house at 115 East 82nd Street. This building demonstrates Carpenter’s skill at both planning and decorative embellishment. The facade of the structure is well articulated and includes a top-floor arcade of arches and colonnettes unique in Carpenter’s work. The plan is H-shaped and includes the four units per floor (each with five or six rooms) that was typical of the genre. Contrasting Carpenter’s layout to a comparable one by the prolific architectural firm Schwartz & Gross, for example, reveals Carpenter’s greater skill. There are no angled walls; room proportions are pleasing and functional; uninterrupted walls are preserved for flexibility in furniture placement, and circulation patterns are effective and efficient. Even in a building for a middle-class market, Carpenter excelled.

Concurrent with the 82nd Street project, Carpenter served as architect in association with the firm of Cross and Cross for a dramatically different undertaking for a development enterprise headed

by Adrian Foley and James Regan. At 845 Fifth

Avenue, also known as 4 East 66th Street, Carpenter created a grand 11-story structure with a single expansive apartment on each floor. Behind an ultra-restrained limestone facade, each unit boasts a dining room 22 feet by 30 feet and a dual drawing room and library overlooking Central Park whose combined dimensions are 36 feet by 46 feet. There are six master bedrooms, seven servants’ rooms, five working fireplaces, and ceiling heights ranging from 11 feet to 13 feet. Such grandeur could be rented at the building’s completion in 1920 for annual charges of $20,000 to $30,000. Long since converted to cooperative ownership, the building’s top floor unit was sold in 1996 for $14 million.

Three years after filing the 550 Park Avenue plans, Carpenter again acted as dual architect-developer for the 13-story apartment house at 950 Park Avenue. The layout of each floor is nearly identical to the one at 550 Park Avenue, although the slightly smaller site necessitated planning an eight-room westerly unit in place of a ten-room one. 950 Park Avenue was completed in February 1921.

By this time, Carpenter was firmly established as an apartment-house architect whose additional expertise on the development side of the construction business made him the designer of choice among producers of luxury residential projects.

Commissions came many and fast. On October 2, 1925 alone, he filed plans for four apartmenthouse projects. In total, 45 Carpenter apartment houses were built in New York, and 42 still exist.

As an active participant in the apartment-house development of Fifth Avenue, both as architect and as developer, Carpenter and many of the builders with whom he worked were adversely affected by an amendment to the zoning rules adopted in November 1921. The new rules limited building heights to 75 feet on Fifth Avenue between 59th Street and 96th Street. They had been pushed through by reactionaries who were offended by the proliferation of tall luxury apartment houses and by any change to what they perceived as the “residential“ character of the avenue. To them, residential meant one-family houses, or multiple dwellings that were visually consistent in scale

20 / Introduction

with them. Politicking for the height restriction was spearheaded by the Fifth Avenue Association, which used scare tactics over a period of several years and produced a series of articles that called for the “saving“ of Fifth Avenue from the blight of “big tenements“ and from “ill-advised and selfish interests which would despoil it and reduce it to the level of hundreds of other residence canyons on crowded Manhattan Island.“ Although one small apartment house at 952 Fifth Avenue was built within the limitation in 1923, the restriction made apartment-house construction economically unrealistic. Proving the point after the fact, 952 Fifth Avenue was able to produce an acceptable financial return only after an eventual vertical expansion from seven stories to 11, and its fullfloor apartments were subdivided.

Mrs. Laura A. Palmer had planned to construct a tall apartment house at the north corner of 73rd Street on the site of her own house and four adjoining ones and had sought out Carpenter as her architect when the zoning change thwarted her plans. Encouraged and assisted by Carpenter, Mrs. Palmer brought a lawsuit against the Tenement House Commission for barring her from building what Carpenter had designed. (Until 1929, all apartment houses came within the restrictions of the Tenement House Law). While Carpenter lobbied, the reactionaries pushed back.

Ultimately, reason prevailed, and on April 1, 1924, the state’s highest court affirmed the decisions of two lower courts, throwing out the 75-foot barrier.

The original 150-foot height limitation was restored, and, within three months plans for 15 high-rise apartment houses on Fifth Avenue facing the park had been filed with the Department of Buildings. Despite Mrs. Palmer’s success in court, her project was never constructed, and the five private houses remained within the ownership of their original families until the present apartment house at 923 Fifth Avenue was constructed in 1950.

Carpenter did not limit his design work to New York City apartment houses. In 1910, in association with Walter D. Blair, he designed a near-perfect limestone replica of the Petit Trianon as a grand mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, for Miss

Laura Robinson (c. 1875–1964), the Chicago heiress of both the Diamond Match and Goodyear Tire fortunes. In 1928, Carpenter teamed with architect Kenneth Franzheim for the design of the National Democratic Convention auditorium in Houston, Texas, and also served as consulting architect with Franzheim for an office tower in Houston for the Gulf Oil Company. At about the same time he designed the Barclay on Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia. This was a hybrid structure combining a residential hotel of non-housekeeping apartments with a full-housekeeping apartment house of eight- and 11-room apartments.

Carpenter was responsible for four office buildings in Manhattan, one of which is generally regarded as a major New York skyscraper. For the Pease & Elliman real estate company in 1926, Carpenter designed a 13-story, 36-foot-wide, midblock office building at 660 Madison Avenue, since demolished (Figure 2). In 1928, he designed the 24-story building at 485 Madison Avenue for the Columbia Broadcasting System.

In addition to conventional offices, the structure housed on its upper floors the specialized spaces needed for recording and broadcasting, including studios, control rooms, and spaces for radio transmitting equipment. In 1930, Carpenter designed another office building on a block north of the one for CBS. 515 Madison Avenue was a family investment venture of James and his brother John H. Carpenter that was completed at the end of August 1931 (Figure 3). The building is a 42-story tower whose distinctively designed side-street entrance and lobby have been well maintained.

The most important of Carpenter’s New York office buildings is the 52-story Lincoln Building at 60 East 42nd Street, which contains 1.15 million rentable square feet. It was completed early in 1930 and is a significant visual marker of midtown Manhattan (Figure 4). The organization that developed it was a syndicate led by John H. Carpenter and Louis Bean, an officer of the structure’s contractor, the Dwight P. Robinson Company. Carpenter himself was an investor in the syndicate, and his resulting debt obligation

Introduction / 21

contributed to the insolvency of his estate at his demise. That death followed a sudden heart attack on June 11, 1932, at his office at 598 Madison Avenue. As with so many others who invested in Manhattan real estate in the 1920s and were undone by the fall in values following the Stock Market crash of 1929, Carpenter had an unbalanced ledger. Despite his earlier successes, at his death his assets totaled $148,000 against debts of $910,000.

James E.R. Carpenter is generally credited with having initiated and perfected the “off the foyer“ apartment layout, although he was himself quick to acknowledge that the first steps were taken in that direction by the scholarly architect William Alciphron Boring (1859–1937) about 1906 in the

plans for 520 and 540 Park Avenue. Carpenter had known Boring from his days at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Boring also designed the Ellis Island immigration center in 1895 and became a design professor in 1915 at Columbia University’s School of Architecture and later became its Dean. Carpenter was a significant force in the development and perfection of the luxury apartment house in New York. In 1919, The Architectural Forum published a long article reporting on Carpenter’s apartment-house projects, describing his role in both the design and the business aspects of the ventures. According to the writer of the article, “Success has topped it all—success for the investor, for the architect, and for the tenant. In fact, with no failures charged against him, Mr. Carpenter stands as an

Figures 2-4. Left: 660 Madison Avenue. (Wurts Brothers; courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York) Center: 515 Madison Avenue. (Courtesy of Christopher Gray) Right: Lincoln Building, 60 East 42nd Street. (Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York)

22 / Introduction

unquestioned authority on this special phase of building development, it being the general custom of realty and financial men in the metropolis to first submit for his review any such projected improvement of property.“ Perhaps the most succinctly comprehensive encomium to the impact of Carpenter was the eulogy delivered in a letter to the Real Estate Record and Guide by Lawrence Elliman (head of Pease & Elliman and older brother of Douglas Elliman, whose firm still manages many of Carpenter’s buildings). Elliman wrote, “In the sudden death of J. Edwin R. Carpenter, the real estate fraternity has lost a real friend and a man who, through breadth of vision and initiative, probably had more to do with the development of the modern apartment house than any other single man. Mr. Carpenter brought to this field of activity a technical training and an intimate knowledge of what the better class of New Yorker required in the way of housing. Through his intuitive knowledge of how people wish to live he developed a type of apartment that had not heretofore existed.

His first outstanding success was at 116 East 58th Street, in which was shown for the first time a

Figure 5. Rosario Candela, c. 1930.

(Courtesy of Christopher Gray)

new type, consisting of an entrance gallery instead of the old fashioned foyer hall. This idea was further extended in his next building, at 960 Park Avenue, and was probably best exemplified in his building at 630 Park Avenue, which is generally considered the finest plan that has ever been developed here in New York. His new idea of apartment construction has been largely copied in practically all of the modern constructions; so I think it is fair to state that Mr. Carpenter is the father of the modern large apartment here in New York. Mr. Carpenter has been a very powerful factor for the last 25 years in modern housing of all types here in New York, and his passing probably marks the end of an extraordinary era of highclass apartments.“ Rosario Candela (1890–1953) (Figure 5) established himself in the field of “modern“ New York apartment house architecture already created by James E.R. Carpenter. To a large extent, Candela served a different part of the housing market and tended to work with a different group of developers. Carpenter was often the developer himself or the driving force behind the development group, while Candela was never known to have been involved with the business end of the projects he designed except to the extent necessary to effect those designs. The personal backgrounds of the two architects evidently had a significant impact on the builders with whom they worked. Carpenter, native-born “establishment“ American, worked mostly with Dwight P. Robinson and S. Fullerton Weaver, and the financial syndicates he assembled were grounded in the establishment.

Candela’s clients reflected Candela’s own immigrant and ethnic background. He was virtually house architect to the Paterno family, designing 20 completed buildings for them. He served as architect on 11 buildings for Anthony Campagna plus two joint Paterno/Campagna ventures. (Anthony Campagna and his brother Armino were married to the sisters of the four Paterno brothers.) Candela’s origins are evident in the business relationships he cultivated with the D’Antona family (eight buildings), Ralph Ciluzzi (four), and Joseph Faiella, Andrea Ognibene, and the Ippolito brothers (one project apiece). Repeat clients includ-

Introduction / 23

ed Morris Rothschild and Vincent Slattery with four or five completed projects, Edward Kidansky and Morris Levy with three, and the Phipps Estate with two. In all, Candela was architect for 81 apartment houses in New York, of which one is uncertain and two were designed in collaboration with Paul Resnick. All still exist. He can reasonably be credited also with producing designs and drawings for 14 apartment-house projects during 1929 that were aborted because of the financial crash in October of that year (in addition to the 12 projects he filed in 1929 that were completed). This is an impressive record for an architect whose first known commission was filed in 1922.

Candela was born in 1890 in Palermo, Sicily, and came to the United States in 1909 as a laborer to assist his father, a plasterer. Notwithstanding his minimal finances upon arrival from Italy, he managed to attend Columbia University’s School of Architecture, and upon his graduation in 1915 he apprenticed to Gaetano Ajello, an established apartment house architect and fellow Sicilian. A few years later he moved on to the office of Frederick Sterner who specialized in town house “modernizations,“ and by 1920 he had established himself as an independent architect. Candela’s first major commission came in 1921 from Anthony Campagna and Joseph Paterno, who entrusted him with the design of a large 15-story apartment house they planned as a joint venture to erect on land Campagna had purchased from the estate of William Waldorf Astor. Candela’s drawings for the Clayton at 215 West 92nd Street on the corner of Broadway were filed on January 9, 1922. Construction began at the end of the month, and his first apartment house was completed on October 5 of that year. A stolid and self-assured building with a large entrance lobby of strong visual impact, the Clayton’s floor layouts demonstrate Candela’s early ability to balance effectively the often conflicting requirements of the developer, the city’s building regulations, and the ultimate tenant.

Candela evidently satisfied his client, as he received a second Campagna commission almost immediately. For a small, midblock site on West 169th Street near Broadway, Candela produced a

suitably modest yet elegantly detailed five-story walk-up with 21 units in a building 50 feet wide.

Drawings were completed and filed in 1922 for six more buildings, five of which were on the upper West Side, including two large buildings on West End Avenue. The sixth was his first East Side structure, at 1105 Park Avenue. This project, for Michael Paterno, was filed in October 1922 and completed a year later. Although superficially similar to the Clayton on the outside, its very different lobby and interior planning show Candela’s ability to modify his product to suit his client’s brief. Where the 92nd Street building was a rental venture with small one- and two-bedroom apartments, the one on Park Avenue was designed as a cooperative with large two-, three-, and four-bedroom units.

Other than a project filed in 1923 for a 91-unit building at Fifth Avenue and 11th Street in Greenwich Village, Candela had no more East Side commissions until 1925. During that time his practice was a mix of solid middle-class buildings on West End Avenue, Riverside Drive, and side streets, along with a small five-story walk-up on West 139th Street for an immigrant Italian painting contractor, another at the corner of Spring and Mott Streets, and a much larger walk-up for the youngest of the Paterno brothers in the Marble Hill section of the Bronx (originally attached to Manhattan physically but now only by judicial decision). Even within the financial restrictions of his non-elevator building projects, however, Candela provided considerably more value for the developers’ investments than the architects usually hired for such projects. The facades of these buildings are discreetly embellished in a modestly classical style, and the planning of each of their apartments yielded as much of the amenity of higher-priced units as was practical.

Candela’s return to the East Side in 1925 was in dramatic contrast to his projects of the previous year. In January he filed plans for a grandly expansive (and expensive) building at 1 Sutton Place South. Elaborately embellished and with a grand entrance porte cochere, the building housed elegantly arranged 12- and 13-room simplex and

24 / Introduction

duplex apartments adjoining a riverfront garden.

Under the garden was an indoor tennis court and a private yacht landing directly on the East River.

Candela designed two large buildings on upper Park Avenue in 1925, each including the sort of three- and four-bedroom apartments in whose planning he was becoming increasingly skilled, plus a luxury residential hotel at 985 Fifth Avenue (now the Stanhope) opposite McKim Mead & White’s 998 Fifth that had started the high-rise luxury apartment house trend on Fifth Avenue. He continued with eight more West Side buildings that year. For geographic and stylistic contrast, he designed the neo-Tudor six-story Fox Lane Apartments in Flushing, Queens, for developer Edgar Ellinger and a similar project for Ellinger two years later and two blocks away, called Cambridge Court (Figure 6).

Candela’s work in 1926 included two buildings that were the first of the mature work that forms the basis of his reputation for designing superb ultraluxury apartment houses. 990 Fifth Avenue and 775 Park Avenue showed how Candela could accommodate the needs of those whose desire for lavish living was backed with the money needed to pay for it. For 990 Fifth, Candela collaborated with the more socially prominent architectural firm of Warren and Wetmore, which had designed Grand Central Terminal and many of the apartment houses that the New York Central Railroad erected north of that building on Park Avenue. Candela’s design provided grand four-bedroom duplexes and a triplex, which included penthouse quarters and a rooftop terrace. 775 Park Avenue was a much larger

Figure 6. Cambridge Court, Flushing, Queens.

(Courtesy of Joseph Candela)

project for Michael Paterno that covers the entire easterly block front from 72nd to 73rd Streets. The typical floor has four apartments (one a duplex) of eight to 15 rooms. It originally had five penthouse apartments—four duplexes and one triplex with a private elevator—as well as four duplex maisonettes of 11 to 15 rooms, each with a separate entrance and address. The size of the units and Candela’s attention to detail in the apartment layouts, the amenities, and the decorative embellishments set the building apart from its competition and established a standard of quality that Candela met and exceeded repeatedly in an astounding series of successes over the following three years.

In 1927, again teaming with Warren and Wetmore, Candela produced for Michael Paterno the luxury limestone monolith at 2 East 67th Street (also known as 856 Fifth Avenue). Here, the design was for standard full-floor 14-room apartments, two street-level duplex maisonettes, and a grand 18room terraced duplex penthouse. Again, size, layout, amenity, and detail distinguished the product, which was completed in October 1928.

For Anthony Campagna, in 1927 Candela gave what is arguably his most complex and magnificent performance. At 960 Fifth Avenue, Candela produced an intricate three-dimensional network of interlocking apartments that included simplex units on one level, stacked duplex units, and semiduplex apartments on two levels that permitted extra-height ceilings in the reception rooms with more intimate proportions for the bedrooms. The preponderance of the building comprised huge cooperative apartments, but the structure also encompassed a connected side-street rental section of smaller units, and it included a privately staffed kitchen and suite of dining rooms on the ground floor for the exclusive use of the building’s tenants (remarkably, still operating as originally intended).

More than a mere apartment house, 960 Fifth Avenue was almost a small town. 447 East 57th Street for Edward Kidansky and 25 Sutton Place for Anthony Campagna were two relatively small buildings also designed in 1927 that maintained the high level of quality Candela had then

Introduction / 25

reached. Despite his plethora of commissions in Manhattan, Candela also ventured across the river.

A few years earlier, Candela had designed for Jacob Mark a small apartment house at 39 Plaza Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and in 1927 he produced for Mark plans for a 15-story apartment house at Grand Army Plaza a few yards from the earlier structure (Figure 7). Containing six- and seven-room apartments plus an eight-room penthouse, the building’s chamfered corner resembles the one on James E.R. Carpenter’s building at 173–175 Riverside Drive, which had been completed only a few months earlier.

In 1928 Candela filed plans for nine commissions, including the stylistically distinctive structure at 720 Park Avenue (for a group of owner/residents assembled by Jesse Isidor Straus) that was officially completed the day before the stock market crash of 1929. Straus maintained the huge terraced duplex Candela had designed for him, and his widow remained in it until her death in 1970, after which it was subdivided and sold.

Candela’s six grandest apartment houses were designed and their plans filed with the city in one continuous stretch of creativity between March and October of 1929. 740, 770, 778, and 1220 Park Avenue and 834 and 1040 Fifth Avenue contain among them the most magnificent assemblage of extraordinary apartments ever produced by any architect. They represented the final display of fireworks before the Depression descended, and they were completed only after its effects had begun to be felt. The fat years had ended with a bang.

Avenue and 46th Street built in 1939 and a modest nine-story structure at 40 West 67th Street in 1940 were the last of Candela’s apartment buildings before World War II stopped all nonessential construction. In association with Paul Resnick in 1948, Candela was involved with the design of his two final multiple dwellings: 1 East 66th Street and 135 East 54th Street.

A dearth of apartment-house commissions during the 1930s did not prevent Candela from remaining involved with design and construction work. In 1931 he built for his own family a large southern Italian style house in Harrison, New York, that was offered for sale in 1996 at $4.9 million. It included a tower that served as a design studio for Candela and was serviced by a small elevator. He also designed several other one-family houses, including comparably “Mediterranean“ ones for F.C. Coppicus in Bronxville, New York, in 1924 and for Michael Paterno in Irvington, New York, in 1925. Curiously, in 1928 Anthony Campagna turned not to Candela but to Dwight James Baum for his own Italianate mansion in the Fieldston section of the Bronx.

The plunge in the market for stocks was mirrored in the precipitous fall in Candela’s workload.

From approximately 26 commissions in 1929, he dropped to two in 1930, and a single one in 1931.

By 1936 hints of a recovery were enough to prompt the production by developer John Thomas Smith of a stripped-down, Art Deco limestone apartment project at 19 East 72nd Street that Candela designed in collaboration with Mott Schmidt. Nearby at 955 Fifth Avenue, Candela designed a similarly minimalist apartment house for Anthony Campagna in 1937. A six-story building of small apartments at Second Figure 7. 47 Plaza Street, Brooklyn. (Courtesy Joseph Candela)

26 / Introduction

As the 1930s wore on and little other work came his way, Candela expanded his repertoire of skills and in 1935 teamed with the theater-design specialist Thomas Lamb to produce for Anthony Campagna the Rialto Theater Building (Figure 8) at the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Broadway (demolished in 1999). Again showing his skill at matching design to need, Candela provided a jazzy Art Deco composition in glass block, aluminum fins, and opaque blue glass mottled to look vaguely like marble. Amusingly, he even carried the Art Deco theme through to the lettering style on the building’s construction drawings. The building housed a 750-seat movie theater, stores, offices, and a restaurant on the top floor. At the cornice line was a giant advertising sign with a huge corner pylon and an illuminated strip sign that provided a moving display of local news.

The following year, Candela received a commission from Robert Walton Goelet to design a “tax payer“ project for his block front property on the west side of Park Avenue from 53rd to 54th Streets (Figure 9), that could provide income on a temporary basis until the general economy could support a larger permanent structure. Candela produced plans for two one-story buildings containing shops with an arcade separating them and leading from the avenue to a movie theater in modified Art Deco style that fronted on 53rd Street that would be called the Normandie (the same as the French Art

Deco luxury liner whose maiden voyage was that year). Bowing to pressure from neighboring property owners, the city’s License Commissioner refused to issue a permit for the movie theater.

Goelet went to court and lost but appealed the decision and ultimately won late in 1936. Construction of the project was then completed. The entire assemblage was replaced in 1952 by Lever House, New York’s first glass skyscraper.

Earlier, building on his New York apartmenthouse reputation, Candela became associated with a Chicago architectural firm in the design of the luxury apartment house at 1500 Lake Shore Drive in that city. Farther afield, he designed the upperfloor apartments that were constructed above John Russell Pope’s lower-floor reception rooms and offices of the American Embassy Building in London, England. Later, beyond the field of luxury apartment houses, Candela assisted in the planning of three low-income housing projects for New York City: Gowanus Houses, Fort Greene Houses, and Forest Houses.

During the idle time when architectural commissions were a rarity, Candela kept his design eye sharp by serving as a visiting design critic for New York’s Beaux Arts Institute of Design, which published in its bulletin some of his pointed criticisms of the students’ attempts at architectural planning and design. His critique of a poor showing in a project for low-cost housing brought out

Figures 8-9. Left: Rialto Building, 201 West 42nd Street. (New York Municipal Archives, courtesy of Christopher Gray) Right: Park Avenue, 53rd-54th Streets. (Courtesy of Christopher Gray)

Introduction / 27

an exposition of what he considered the most important factor in the planning of an apartment—privacy. After bemoaning the students’ lack of understanding of the basic principles of privacy, Candela stated, “An apartment, excepting a one-room unit, is composed of two well defined sections depending on which of the 24 hours of one’s daily life it is used; the living quarters and the sleeping quarters, and in the case of luxurious apartments, a third one, the service quarters. An ideal apartment, regardless of its size, must have these two or three sections segregated, not infringing on each other, and easily connected to one another, with the living section nearest to the entrance.“ It was this basic principle that James E.R. Carpenter first articulated and that Candela perfected.

Another spare-time bit of casual activity led to a serious interest that proved of benefit to the United States during World War II. A chance reading of The American Black Chamber, Herbert Yardley’s classic book about cryptography, intrigued Candela and stimulated further study. His spatial skills as an architect related well to the skills needed for understanding the structure of codes and led to his teaching a course in the subject at Hunter College for military personnel. He also served as an expert on secret codes and ciphers for an American intelligence unit during the War and eventually published two books on the subject, Isomorphism and its Application in Cryptoanalytics and The Military Cipher of Commandant Bazeries. At his death on October 6, 1953, at age 63, he was assembling material for a third book on the subject.

In 2001, an architectural tribute to Candela was revealed in the Reuters office tower at Three Times Square, occupying the former site of Candela's Rialto Theater Building. The architects Fox & Fowle incorporated into their design for the new tower a visually-arresting curved corner storefront whose jazzy Art Deco elements echo the design Candela produced for the Rialto 65 years earlier.

The catalogue that follows describes all of the apartment houses in Manhattan of Rosario Candela and James E.R. Carpenter. It is the story of two exceptional architects whose creatively innovative approach to multi-family, high-rise living has defined for all time the ideal of luxury apartmenthouse dwellings. Real-estate developers and designers have attempted to emulate their accomplishments ever since but have never totally succeeded. These two men, each practicing separately, had talent, drive, financial backers, and an economic environment in which their efforts could bear fruit. Their accomplishments were impressive, particularly as the time was brief when the development of truly grand apartments was possible.

Carpenter designed apartment houses in New York for only 20 years, Candela for 27; yet, within that span they built a total of 126 such structures, all but three of which are still standing and still being used as originally intended.

Both men designed not only for tenants of modest means but also for those with virtually unlimited resources. Both men provided across the entire range of their work a vision of good living and thoughtful planning that transcended the economic stratum of any particular project. The grand apartment houses that these men designed for Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue between the two World Wars are synonymous throughout the world with the epitome of luxury. Their apartments command the highest market prices because they are palpably better than the competition.

Even the more middle-class offerings these two men produced are still sought after and still sell at a premium. Despite their disparate backgrounds, Candela and Carpenter used their vision and talent to define and perfect the daily living environments of the residents of the structures they designed.

Ultimately, their work has informed and inspired the way in which all architects approach multifamily building design and, thus, the lives of all who live in apartment houses.

Chronology of Carpenter New York Apartment Houses

Address

Filed

Begun

Completed

07-24-1909 06-09-1911 08-16-1912 1912 10-29-1912 1913 08-27-1915 04-04-1916 05-24-1916 04-08-1919 04-30-1919 08-08-1919 08-19-1919 11-24-1919

— 09-26-1911 08-25-1912 — 12-24-1912 11-14-1913 — — — 06-10-1919 07-24-1919 01-15-1920 03-21-1920 09-23-1920

09-27-1910 08-06-1912 06-24-1913 12-04-1913 10-31-1914 08-15-1914 12-01-1916 05-21-1917 12-11-1917 05-21-1921 1920 02-24-1921 05-20-1921 05-03-1921

920 Fifth Avenue 09-06-1921 1148 Fifth Avenue 11-23-1921 1143 Fifth Avenue 08-15-1922 1060 Park Avenue 08-26-1922 4 East 95th Street 12-04-1922 580 Park Avenue 12-12-1922 620 Park Avenue 05-08-1923 655 Park Avenue 07-31-1923 1150 Fifth Avenue 1923 149 East 73rd Street 04-16-1924 455 East 51st Street (consultant only) 06-06-1924 1030 Fifth Avenue 06-30-1924 1120 Fifth Avenue 10-06-1924 610 Park Avenue 12-04-1924 173-175 Riverside Drive 07-07-1925 1165 Fifth Avenue 07-13-1925 1170 Fifth Avenue 1925 1035 Fifth Avenue 07-25-1925 1115 Fifth Avenue 10-02-1925 988 Fifth Avenue 10-02-1925 810 Fifth Avenue 10-02-1925 112 Central Park South 10-02-1925 170 East 79th Street 01-07-1926 950 Fifth Avenue 04-13-1926 825 Fifth Avenue 08-10-1926 812 Park Avenue 01-11-1927 1060 Fifth Avenue 05-04-1927 14 East 90th Street 1928 625 Park Avenue 11-20-1928 1 East 88th Street (1070 Fifth Avenue) (demolished) — 401 East 58th Street (studio apartments) 1929 120 East 79th Street (13 stories) 1929

11-09-1921 08-28-1922 10-09-1922 02-13-1923 03-15-1923 02-27-1923 12-15-1923 10-16-1923 1923 09-09-1924 07-24-1924 09-15-1924 11-10-1924 02-18-1925 09-21-1925 09-14-1925 1925 10-28-1925 12-02-1925 12-08-1925 12-17-1925 11-24-1926 — 05-13-1926 12-10-1926 02-08-1927 08-02-1927 1928 02-28-1929 — not built not built

10-11-1922 1923 07-31-1923 02-29-1924 02-27-1924 10-29-1923 07-10-1924 09-03-1924 1924 07-11-1925 12-30-1924 10-15-1925 08-18-1925 10-08-1925 02-09-27 10-06-1926 1926 10-25-1926 10-13-1926 1926 1926 10-25-1927 10-15-1926 01-05-1927 10-05-1927 10-04-1927 08-28-1928 09-1929 09-19-1929 1929

116 East 58th Street (demolished) 960 Park Avenue 246 West End Avenue 3 East 85th Street 635 Park Avenue 640 Park Avenue 907 Fifth Avenue 630 Park Avenue 550 Park Avenue 115 East 82nd Street 4 East 66th Street (845 Fifth Avenue) 950 Park Avenue 30 Central Park South 145 East 52nd Street (demolished)

Chronology of Candela New York Apartment Houses

Address

Filed

Begun

Completed

215 West 92nd Street 559 West 169th Street 915 West End Avenue 881 St Nicholas Avenue 878 West End Avenue 304 West 89th Street 1105 Park Avenue 680 Riverside Drive 29 Spring Street 300 West 108th Street 875 West End Avenue 522 West End Avenue 41 Fifth Avenue 332 West 86th Street

01-09-1922 02-21-1922 04-10-1922 04-25-1922 05-24-1922 06-10-1922 10-26-1922 12-26-1922 03-28-1923 09-08-1923 11-07-1923 11-23-1923 12-04-1923 12-14-1923

01-31-1922 03-16-1922 08-28-1922 04-29-1922 10-26-1922 09-18-1922 03-12-1923 01-18-1923 09-06-1923 11-12-1923 01-18-1924 01-19-1924 — 02-26-1924

10-05-1922 07-19-1922 03-24-1923 09-22-1922 05-18-1923 05-16-1923 10-30-1923 08-23-1923 07-07-1924 07-09-1924 10-07-1924 09-20-1924 10-10-1924 09-18-1924

240 West End Avenue 519 West 139th Street 40 West 55th Street 1 Adrian Avenue, The Bronx 425 Riverside Drive 755 West End Avenue 161 West 75th and 174 West 76th Streets 1 Sutton Place South (with Cross & Cross) 800 West End Avenue 315 West 106th Street 1172 Park Avenue 280 Riverside Drive 1192 Park Avenue 285 Riverside Drive 325 West 86th Street 607 West End Avenue Fox Lane Apartments (38th Avenue and Bowne Street, Flushing, Queens) 995 Fifth Avenue 120 East 56th Street 820 West End Avenue 100 West 58th Street 39 Plaza Street, Brooklyn 150 West 58th Street 130 East 39th Street 990 Fifth Avenue 775 Park Avenue 230 West End Avenue 2 East 70th Street Cambridge Court (37th Avenue and Bowne Street, Flushing, Queens) 856 Fifth Avenue (2 East 67th Street)

12-19-1923 03-04-1924 03-08-1924 03-26-1924 05-16-1924 07-25-1924 10-06-1924 01-28-1925 04-25-1925 07-28-1925 1925 08-07-1925 08-19-1925 08-20-1925 08-29-1925 09-03-1925

02-26-1924 04-08-1924 06-24-1924 — 06-23-1924 12-04-1924 12-15-1924 — 07-10-1925 02-04-1926 1925 10-09-1925 01-29-1926 10-09-1925 11-05-1925 10-19-1925

09-24-1924 08-28-1924 01-13-1925 09-25-1924 1925 09-15-1925 11-05-1925 01-27-1926 01-22-1926 07-29-1926 1926 07-06-1926 10-08-1926 06-01-1926 06-25-1926 04-30-1926

— 10-21-1925 10-28-1925 11-21-1925 01-18-1926 — 02-17-1926 04-27-1926 08-30-1926 09-16-1926 02-16-1927 03-09-1927

1925 — 01-21-1926 01-27-1926 — — 05-17-1926 09-18-1926 11-04-1926 11-15-1926 03-01-1927 04-16-1927

1926 09-20-1926 10-19-1926 07-29-1926 10-28-1926 1926 03-14-1927 05-16-1927 10-14-1927 10-18-1927 10-07-1927 02-18-1928

— 08-03-1927

— 10-10-1927

05-1928 10-04-1928

30 / Chronology of Candela New York Apartment Houses

Address

Filed

Begun

Completed

960 Fifth Avenue (with Warren & Wetmore) 447 East 57th Street 25 Sutton Place 307 West 57th Street 47 Plaza Street, Brooklyn 30 Sutton Place 8 East 96th Street 19 East 98th Street 70 East 96th Street 720 Park Avenue 40 West 67th Street 360 Central Park West 175 West 93rd Street 75 Central Park West 1 Gracie Square 40 East 66th Street 4 Sutton Place 1025 Park Avenue 14 Sutton Place South 127 West 57th Street (attributed to Candela) 770 Park Avenue 778 Park Avenue 740 Park Avenue 1220 Park Avenue 834 Fifth Avenue 1040 Fifth Avenue 340 East 57th Street 133 East 80th Street

08-22-1927 10-09-1927 11-01-1927 11-14-1927 12-1927 11-28-1927 12-15-1927 01-11-1928 02-15-1928 02-21-1928 06-26-1928 08-09-1928 08-25-1928 10-19-1928 12-18-1928 12-18-1928 01-03-1929 01-05-1929 01-09-1929 02-11-1929 03-11-1929 03-13-1929 03-13-1929 09-10-1929 09-18-1929 09-24-1929 10-03-1929 10-30-1929

09-20-1927 12-07-1927 12-25-1927 12-08-1927 — 01-11-1928 12-22-1927 02-16-1928 11-20-1928 — 08-31-1928 10-30-1928 11-23-1928 01-26-1929 01-16-1929 01-22-1929 — 03-12-1929 02-04-1929 09-26-1929 10-14-1929 08-29-1929 11-11-1929 09-23-1929 10-21-1929 01-04-1930 12-05-1929 01-04-1930

11-28-1928 10-04-1928 08-02-1928 10-11-1928 Fall 28 08-29-1928 10-06-1928 10-02-1928 07-15-1929 09-28-1929 06-06-1929 10-04-1929 07-23-1929 09-25-1929 08-19-1929 08-30-1929 04-17-1930 09-26-1929 11-27-1929 07-30-1929 09-15-1930 07-08-1931 09-16-1930 10-03-1930 05-09-1931 10-08-1930 09-25-1930 08-19-1930

450 East 58th Street (14 stories, 14 units) 225 East 69th Street 1 East 79th Street 333 East 79th Street 160 West 80th Street (16 stories, 160 units) 537 East 82nd Street 510 East 86th Street(15 stories, 62 units) 120 East 89th Street (12 stories, 109 units) 1074 Fifth Avenue (14 stories, 14 units) 750 Park Avenue (18 stories, 35 units) 799 Park Avenue (18 stories, 25 units) 1245 Park Avenue 222 Riverside Drive (15 stories, 109 units) 225 West End Avenue (15 stories, 153 units) Watergate Apartments (East River and 48th and 49th Streets) 12 East 88th Street 56 Seventh Avenue 2 Beekman Place

1929 1929 1929 1929 1929 1929 1929 1929 1929 1929 1929 1929 1929 1929

not built not built not built not built not built not built not built not built not built not built not built not built not built not built

1929 11-08-1930 11-19-1930 01-08-1931

not built 12-19-1930 03-17-1931 02-26-1931

06-04-1931 11-19-1931 12-16-1932

Chronology of Candela New York Apartment Houses / 31

Address 530 Park Avenue (design by Candela) 530 Park Avenue (design by G.F. Pelham Jr., architect) 19 East 72nd Street 955 Fifth Avenue 248 East 46th Street 44 East 67th Street 1 East 66th Street (850 Fifth Avenue) (with Paul Resnick) 135 East 54th Street (with Paul Resnick)

Filed

Begun

Completed

1934

not built

— 09-29-1936 10-22-1937 1939 07-03-1940

— — 01-06-1938 05-16-1939 09-06-1940

1941 09-25-1937 07-21-1938 10-26-1939 06-20-1941

01-28-1948 12-02-1948

07-28-1948 10-26-1949

11-17-1951 12-05-1950

Fifth Avenue

41 Fifth Avenue Southeast corner 11th Street; block 68, lot 6 Architect: Rosario Candela Builder: 41 Fifth Avenue Corporation; Attilio D’Antona, president; Louis D’Antona (son), secretary.

Filed: December 4, 1923 Completed: October 10, 1924 Replacing a three-story, one-family residence from the 1840s, 41 Fifth Avenue is a 91-unit apartment house with six modest one- and two-bedroom suites per floor. Compactly efficient planning provided windowed bathrooms and kitchens and

good closet space. The Tuscan-style facade motifs may have been prompted by the ethnic antecedents of the structure’s immigrant developer. An article in the Real Estate Record and Guide for March 29, 1924, reported that the building’s 7,668-square-foot site was part of Henry Brevoort’s 40-acre farm bought two centuries earlier and proportionately cost Mr. Brevoort $6.50. By comparison, the 1924 assessed value of that $6.50 property—with the new 15-story apartment building on it—was $1,250,925. In 1997, a two-bedroom unit sold for $440,000 with a monthly maintenance of $1,400.

Figure 10. Prior house on the site of 41 Fifth Avenue.

(Courtesy of Emery Roth & Sons)

Figure 11. 41 Fifth Avenue, pre-construction publicity rendering. (Courtesy of Christopher Gray)

41 Fifth Avenue / 35

Figure 12. 41 Fifth Avenue: typical floor.

810 Fifth Avenue Northeast corner 62nd Street; block 1377, lot 1 Architect: James E.R. Carpenter Builder: 810 Fifth Avenue, Inc., 300 Madison Avenue; Abraham Bricken, president; J. Freedman, treasurer.

Filed: October 2, 1925 Begun: December 17, 1925 Completed: 1926 This 13-story apartment house with 13 units, most of 13 rooms, was built on the site of the house of Mrs. Hamilton Fish. In April 1924, architect F. Burrall Hoffman, Jr. filed plans for an apartment building on the site to obtain certain tax advantages before they expired, the actual plans for the structure being filed 18 months later by James E.R.

Carpenter. In 1937, architect Wallace K. Harrison filed plans to combine the 12th floor simplex with the 13th floor/penthouse duplex, creating the triplex in which Nelson Rockefeller lived until he divorced his first wife and married Mrs. Margaretta Fitler Murphy. Rockefeller then severed the 12th floor space and added it to a full-floor apartment in the new apartment building adjoining at 812 Fifth Avenue, leaving the restored penthouse duplex to his ex-wife, the former Mary Todhunter Clark (following her death, in 2000 sold for $16 million). In 1963, former Vice President Richard Nixon bought the fifth floor apartment, and five years later Nixon was battling his upstairs neighbor for the presidency of the United States.

Figure 13. 810 Fifth Avenue: lobby rendering.

(Collection of Andrew Alpern)

Figure 14. 810 Fifth Avenue.

(Wurts Brothers; courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York)

810 Fifth Avenue / 37

Figure 15. 810 Fifth Avenue: typical floor.

825 Fifth Avenue Between 63rd and 64th Streets; block 1378, lot 70 Architect: James E.R. Carpenter Builder: Paterno Brothers, 601 West 115th Street; Joseph Paterno, president; John A. Paterno, assistant treasurer.

Filed: August 10, 1926 Begun: December 1, 1926 Completed: October 5, 1927 Apartment hotel with restaurant (still operating); 23 stories; typical floor with five small apartments; top two floors duplexed with roof as 15-room unit for Owen S. Roberts (divided into two apartments

in 1951); one-and-one-half-floor duplex for J. Dennison Lyon. The facade originally was proposed in a medieval castellated form but was revised to a more conventional classical facade.

The building is topped with an exceptional steeply pitched roof clad in mission tiles.

From 1947-50, service pantries legalized as cooking spaces, effectively converting this apartment hotel to an apartment house.

In 1994, a four-room unit was advertised at $1.15 million.

Figure 16. 825 Fifth Avenue.

Figure 17. 825 Fifth Avenue as first proposed.

(Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York)

(New-York Herald Tribune, April 11, 1926)

825 Fifth Avenue / 39

Figure 18. 825 Fifth Avenue: typical floor

834 Fifth Avenue Northeast corner of 64th Street; block 1379, lot 1 Architect: Rosario Candela Builder: 833 Fifth Avenue Corporation, 551 Fifth Avenue; Anthony Campagna, president; Michael Campagna, vice-president.

Filed: September 18, 1929 Begun: October 21, 1929 Completed: May 9, 1931 Of the six houses on the block front between 64th and 65th Streets, Campagna had been able to acquire only the four central ones after two years of negotiating. As a result, the plans he originally filed were for a symmetrical, 120-foot-wide structure on the mid-block site of those houses. After construction work was well along using that first design, the holdout house at the 64th Street corner was acquired from owner Margaret V. Haggin. In April 1930, the plans were changed to accommo-

date the larger site and the building was asymmetrically extended southward. Mrs. Haggin was the second wife and widow of James Ben Ali Haggin, who had died in his 90s about 1915. She moved into a duplex apartment in the newly completed 834 Fifth Avenue, and remained there until her own death in 1965. The original complement of apartments included two duplex maisonettes and an unusually large number of duplex units on the upper floors. Seeking even more space, Laurance Rockefeller retained architects Harrison & Abramovitz in 1948 to create a spacious penthouse triplex at the top of the building and never thought it necessary to move anywhere else. In 1997, an upper-floor apartment in the building sold for $11.9 million, and the 5,000-square-foot north duplex maisonette sold for $4.3 million to the son of Bing Crosby (monthly maintenance of $5,000).

Figure 19. 834 Fifth Avenue.

(Wurts Brothers; courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York)

625 Park Avenue / 119

Figure 108. 625 Park Avenue: penthouse ballroom, triplex of Charles Revson. Decoration by McMillen, Inc., c. 1969.

630 Park Avenue Southwest corner 66th Street; block 1380, lot 39 Architect: James E.R. Carpenter Builder: James E.R. Carpenter Filed: April 4, 1916 Completed: May 21, 1917

Twelve stories, originally one apartment per floor of 17 rooms. Annual rentals in 1919 ranged from $10,000 to $13,000. In 1953, the building was subdivided into three apartments per floor of four and seven rooms each plus a new penthouse of nine rooms, and then it was converted to a cooperative in 1954.

Figure 109. Entrance to 630 Park Avenue. (Collection of Andrew Alpern)

630 Park Avenue / 121

Figure 110. 630 Park Avenue. (Collection of Andrew Alpern)

122 / 630 Park Avenue

Figures 111-112. 630 Park Avenue. Top: typical floor as originally built (compare with typical floor at 640 Park Avenue). Bottom: typical floor as rebuilt in 1953.

630 Park Avenue / 123

Figure 113. 630 Park Avenue: penthouse newly constructed in 1953.

635 Park Avenue Southeast corner 66th Street; block 1400, lot 69 Architect: James E.R. Carpenter Builder: Fullerton Weaver Realty; S. Fullerton Weaver, president; James E.R. Carpenter, vice-president.

Filed: October 29, 1912 Begun: December 24, 1912 Completed: October 31, 1914

Thirteen stories, with one apartment per floor (13 to 16 rooms), with circular foyer. In 1929, a 14-room apartment was listed for rent at $12,000 per year. Later that year, a 21-story replacement building was proposed, to have cost $1.2 million and to have contained 40 apartments.

Figure 114. 635 Park Avenue. (Courtesy of The New-York Historical Society)

635 Park Avenue / 125

Figure 115. 635 Park Avenue: typical floor.

Index Acker, Charles I., 78 Adelaide Apartments, 18 A.G.M. Realty Company, 17, 324 Ajello, Gaetano, 11, 23 American Architect [magazine], 202 American Embassy building, London, 26 American Institute of Architects, 8, 18, 54, 158, 202 American National Bank, 17 Andrea Ognibene & Son, 274 apartment houses (not by Candela or Carpenter), 39 East 79th Street, 11 333 Central Park West [Turin], 16 420-430 Park Avenue, 197 998 Fifth Avenue, 15, Adelaide Apartments, 18 Central Park Apartments, 15, 256 Chelsea, 15 Dakota, 15 Fifth Avenue Apartments, 78 Gramercy, 15 Mayfair Apartments, 196 Osborne, 15, 256 Palacio, 114 Park Lane, 16 Sunnyside, 152 Yosemite, 106 apartment hotels, see hotels Architectural Forum [magazine], 21 Astor, Vincent, 18, 126 Astor, William Waldorf, 23, 266 Atlanta Biltmore, 16 Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, 198 Atwood, Kimbell C., 189 Barclay [hotel in Philadelphia], 20 Barnum, William Henry, 206 Baruch, Bernard, 206 Baum, Dwight James, 25 Baumgarten, Harold S., 244 Baumgarten, William M., 244 Bean, Louis H.,, 20, 110, 128 Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, 26 Begrish, Frank, Jr., 78 Biltmore, Atlanta, 16 Biltmore, Los Angeles, 16 Blair, C.Ledyard, 214 Blair, Walter D., 17, 20 Blumenthal, George, 128 Bodker, Albert Joseph, 16 books, written by Candela, 27 Boring, William Alciphron, 21

Bottomley, William Lawrence, 11, 291 Brady, Nicholas F., 70 Breakers, Palm Beach, 16 Brevoort, Henry, 34 Brewster, George, 132 Bricken, Abraham, 36 Bridgham, Samuel, 60 Bronx, 23, 25, 278 Bronxville, 25 Brooklyn, 25, 294 Brown Harris Stevens, 72 Brown Wheelock, 316 Buchanan, President James, 16 Building Department, see Department of Buildings Burden, James A., 54 Calvary Baptist Church, 252, 253 Calvin-Morris Corporation, 228 Cambridge Court, 24 Campagna, Americus, 294 Campagna, Anthony, 22, 23, 24, 25, 40, 60 , 62, 88, 92, 170, 194, 264, 266, 302, 327, 342 Campagna, Armino, 22, 62, 88, 92, 266, 275, 294, 302, 327 Campagna Construction Corporation, 194 Campagna, Joseph, 194 Campagna, Michael A., 40, 62, 88, 92, 272, 274, 275, 300 Campbell, Jasper A., 260 Candela, Joseph [son of Rosario], 11, 12 Candela, Michele [father of Rosario], 11 Capps, Bertrand, 95, 96, 192, 240 Carder Realty Corp., 236 Carelton, Robert A.W., 236 Carrère and Hastings, Carpenter, John H. [brother of James], 18, 19, 20, 56, 84, 100, 102, 106, 112, 238 Carpenter, Marion Stires [wife of James], 17, 126, 168, 232 Cashman, Louis, 332 Cave, Edward Lee, 11 C.C. Corporation, 192 Central Park Apartments, 15, 256 Cerabone, Vito, 272 Chambers, Walter B., 96 Charlton, 272 Chelsea [222 West 23rd Street], 15 Chicago, 26 Chrysler Building, 9 Chuckrow, Charles M., 286

346 / Index

churches, Calvary Baptist, 252, 253 Metropolitan Methodist Temple for Aggressive Christianity, 304 Protestant Episcopal Church of the Strangers, 254 Second Scotch Presbyterian, 288 Church Engineering Corporation, 252 Ciluzzi, Ralph, 22, 321, 329, 338, 340 Ciluzzi, Samuel, 329 Clark, Cyrus, 294 Clark, Edward, 15 Clark, Edward Severin, 15 Clark, Mary Todhunter, 36 Clark, Stephen Corning, 15 Clark, William A., 54, 62 Clark-Potter mansion, 294 Clayton, 23, 266 Clews, James B., 80 Clift, San Francisco, 16 Colony Capital, 112 Columbia Broadcasting System, 20 Columbia University School of Architecture, 7, 11, 21, 23 Coppicus, F.C., 25 Country Life [magazine], 12 Craw, Harvey, 196 Creekman, Alexander, 192 Crosby, Bing, 40 Cross, Eliot, 130 Cross & Cross, 19, 62, 130, 206, 308, 312, 316, 320 cryptography, 27 Dakota [1 West 72nd Street], 15 Dana, Charles A., 11 D'Antona, Attilio, 34, 182, 198, 242, 246, 265, 303, 316, 340 D'Antona family, 22 D'Antona, James, 198 D'Antona, Louis, 34, 182, 242, 246 Davis, Frederick W., 48 Dieterich, Charles F., 62 Delano, William, 11 Delano & Aldrich, 128 Department of Buildings, 17, 20, 100, 212, 342 Distillator, Abner, 80 Doelger, Peter, 296 Douglas L. Elliman & Company, 128 Dowling, Robert, 130 Draper, Dorothy, 12 Draper, Mrs. George, 40, 62, 144, 214, 226

Dwight P. Robinson Company, 20, 58, 70, 76, 84, 100, 102, 110, 112, 128, 158, 234, 238 École des Beaux-Arts, 16, 21 Edgar A. Levy Construction Co., 138 Edward Kaye Construction Company, 200, 304 Elliman, Douglas, 22 Elliman, Douglas L., & Company, 128 Elliman, Lawrence, 22 Ellinger, Edgar, 24, 260 Ellis Island , 21 Emanuel, Temple, 206 Empire Building, 17 Faiella, Joseph F., 22, 322 Fairfax [hotel], 196 Feldman, H.I., 196 Ferguson, John B., 224 Ferguson, Robert, 224 Fifth Avenue Apartments, 78 Fifth Avenue Association, 20 Fieldston [Bronx], 25 Fish, Mrs. Hamilton, 36 Flagg, Ernest, 204 Flushing, Queens, 24 Foley, Adrian, 19, 206 Forest Houses, 26 Forman, Charles E., 226 Forman, George Lisle, 226 Forman, Gertrude, 226 Fort Greene Houses, 26 Fox & Fowle, 27 Fox Lane Apartments, 24 Franzheim, Kenneth, 20 Fred T. Ley & Company, 72, 236, 286 Freedman, J., 36 Frelinghuysen, Adeline H., 204 French cultural attachÊ, 96 French Government, 96 Frick mansion, 214 Fullerton [116 East 58th Street], 17, 202 Fullerton Weaver Realty Company, 17, 124, 126, 168, 232 Gary, Judge Elbert H., 48 Geisinger, Harry, 196 Gilbert, Cass, 54 Gilbert, C.P.H., 72 Ginsbern, Horace, 78 Ginsburg, Moses, 228 Glover, Julius and Minnie, 194

Index / 347

Goelet, Robert Walton, 26, 314 Goldberger, Paul, 8, 11, 12 Goldstein family, 98 Gourielli-Tchkonia, Princess Artchil, 116 Gowanus Houses, 26 Gramercy [32 Gramercy Park East], 15 Grand Army Plaza [Brooklyn], 25 Grand Central Terminal, 24, 196 Grant, Frederick, 70 Gray, Christopher, 7, 11 Green, Colonel Edward, 70 Green, Hetty, 70 Greenwich, Connecticut, 20 Greenwich Village, 23 Guest, Frederick, 308 Guest, Mrs. Winston, 308 Guggenheim Museum, 234 Gulf Oil Company, 20 Gwathmey, Charles, 90, 91 Haggin, James Ben Ali, 40 Haggin, Margaret V., 40 Hahnemann Hospital, 128 Halpern, Nathan, 228 Hammersley, Louis Gordon, 76 Harby, Abrams & Melius, 130 Hardenbergh, Henry Janeway, 18 Harding, J. Horace, 60 Harlem River, 278 Harmon, Arthur Loomis, 132 Harriman, George F., 18, 324 Harris, John H., 18, 54 Harrison & Abramovitz, 40 Harrison, New York, 25 Harrison, Wallace K., 36 Hastings, Thomas, 215 Havemeyer, Henry Ogden, 204 Havemeyer, Horace, 12, 204 Hearst, William Randolph, 9 Hegeman-Harris Company, 204, 218 Hemingway, Hugh S., 196, 250 Henderson, Roy M., 128 Hermitage [hotel], 16 Hess, Nathaniel J., 112 Hester Street, 11 Hickey, James H., 258 Hoffman, F. Burrall, Jr., 36 Hooker, Janet Annenberg, 308 hotels and apartment hotels, 30 Central Park South, 282 100 West 58th Street, 257

112 Central Park South, 286 825 Fifth Avenue, 36 Atlanta Biltmore, 16 Barclay [Philadelphia], 20 Chelsea, 15 Des Artistes, 250 Fairfax, 196 Gramercy, 15 Hermitage, 16 Inter-Continental, 284 Los Angeles Biltmore, 16 Mayfair House, 112 Midtown, 258 Navarro, 284 Palm Beach Breakers, 16 Park Lane, 16 Peter Cooper, 188 Pierre, 16 Salisbury, 252 San Francisco Clift, 16 Sherry Netherland, 16 Stanhope, 74 Van Dorn, 258 Waldorf-Astoria, 16 house, for Rosario Candela, 25 house, for F.C. Coppicus, 25 house, for Michael Paterno, 25 housing, public, 26 Houston Properties Company, 112 Howard, Mrs. Elizabeth F., 291 Howells and Stokes, 168 Hunter College, 27 Hurt Building, 16 Hyland, Thomas, 258 Inter-Continental Group, 284 Ippolito, Gennaro and Vincenza, 23, 307 Iran, sister of the Shah of, 116 Irvington, New York, 25 James, Arthur Curtis, 128 Jardine, Hill & Murdock, 252 Jennewein, Carl P., 218 Jennings, Mary Brewster, 96 J.H.C. Corporation, 100, 102 Judis, Irving, 332 Kaufman, Louis, 116 Kaye, Edward, Construction Company, 200, 304 Kensington Flats, 196 Kentucky Holding Company, 152

348 / Index

Kidansky, Edward [Kaye], 23, 24, 210 Knott, David, 196 Knowles, Robert D., 18, 54, 56 Kozlowski, Dennis, 58 Kravis, Henry, 116 K.T.B. Realty Corp., 240 Lamb, Thomas, 25 Lamb & Rich, 196 Layman, David T., 308, 312 Leary, Countess Annie, 76 Lee, James T., 114, 130, 132 Lenox, Robert, 130 Lever House, 26 Levy, Edgar A., Construction Co., 138 Levy, Morris, 23, 210, 304 Ley, Fred T., 286 Ley, Fred T., & Company, 72, 236, 286 Liederkranz Hall, 17 Lincoln Building, 20, 21 library, for Vanderbilt University, 17 Lion Brewery of New York City, 70, 98 London, England, 26 Lowry, John, 258 Los Angeles Biltmore, 16 Lucania Realty Corporation, 266 Lyon, J. Dennison, 38 MacInnis, James G., 110 Macklowe Organization, 250 Marble Hill [Bronx], 23, 278 Mark, Jacob, 25 Markle, John, 84 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 16 Mayer, Charles, 282 Mayer, Francis R., 282 Mayfair Apartments, 196 Mayfair House, 112 McDonald, Thomas, 342 McKim, Mead & White, 15, 19, 24, 106 McRae, Alexander, 338 Montelenox Corporation, 130 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 17 Metropolitan Methodist Temple for Aggressive Christianity, 304 Midtown [apartment hotel], 258 Miller. Governor Nathan, 48 Minskoff, Jerome, 204 Minskoff, Samuel, 204, 284 Montelenox Corporation, 139 Morgan, Julia, 9

M. Reid & Company, 314 Multiple Dwelling Law of 1929, 12, 152, 184 Murchison, Kenneth M., 11, 170 Murphy, Mrs. Margaretta Fitler, 36 Murray Hill Association, 186 Murray, Hugh A., 70 Muzak, 174 National Democratic Convention Auditorium, 20 Navarro [apartment hotel], 284 Navarro, Juan de, 15 Neiman, LeRoy, 11 Netto, David, 7 Nevelson, Louise, 307 New York Central Railroad, 24 New York Court of Appeals, 76 New York Life Insurance Company, 106 New York Times [newspaper], 12, 54, 84 New Yorker [magazine], 72, 130, 138 Newmark, Charles, 152 Nixon, Richard, 36 Nolavia Corporation, 265 Normandie Theater, 26 office buildings, 60 East 42nd Street [Lincoln Building], 20, 21 485 Madison Avenue [CBS Building], 20 515 Madison Avenue, 20, 21 660 Madison Avenue, 20, 21 American National Bank, 17 Chrysler Building, 9 Columbia Broadcasting System, 20 Empire Building, 17 Gulf Oil Company, 20 Hurt Building, 16 Pease & Elliman, 20 Lever House, 26 Lincoln, 20 Reuters, 27 Stahlman Building, 17 Woolworth Building, 9 Ogle, H.Lane, 280 Ogle, Nellie Lane, 280 Ognibene, Andrea, 23, 274 Onretap Corporation, 334 organ loft, 94 Osborne Apartments [205 West 57th Street], 15, 256 Osborne, Thomas, 15 Palacio [apartment house], 114 Palermo [Sicily], 11, 23

Index / 349

Palm Beach Breakers [hotel], 16 Palmer, Laura A., 20 Parish, Mrs. Henry, 56 Park Lane Apartments, 16 Park Lane [street name], 250 Park Slope [Brooklyn], 25 Paterno, Anthony, 80, 262, 268, 278, 291, 316, 334, 336 Paterno Brothers, 38, 263, 270 Paterno family, 22 Paterno, Charles V., 296, 298 Paterno, Dorothy V., 316 Paterno, Francis, 238, 294 Paterno, John A., 38, 263, 268, 318 Paterno, Joseph, 23, 38, 184, 263, 264, 266, 268, 300, 318, 342 Paterno, Mrs. Jule H.Z., 342 Paterno, Michael E., 23, 24, 40, 144, 176, 178 Paterno-Sciubba Contracting, 278 Peabody, Wilson & Brown, 318 Pease & Elliman, 20, 22, 100 Pei, I.M., 12 Pelham, George Fred, Jr., 31 Pelletier, John, 262, 316, 334, 336 Pelli, Cesar, 12 Peter Cooper Hotel, 188 Petit Trianon, 20 Philadelphia, 20 Phipps, Amy, 308 Phipps Estate, 23, 308, 312 Phipps, Henry, 84, 308 Phipps, John S., 308 Pierre [hotel], 16 Pinchot, Amos, 170 Platt, Charles A., 126 Platt, Harold, 128 Plaza Street [Brooklyn], 25 Polshek, James 12 Pope, John Russell, 26 Posner, Harold, 95 Post, Emily, 11 Pratt, Herbert L., 54 Presbyterian Hospital, 130 Presbyterian Hospital Nurses Home, 132 Protestant Episcopal Church of the Strangers, 254 Pyne, Percy, 128 Queens, 24 Rau, John, 196 Real Estate Record and Guide, 22, 34

Realty Managers, 78 Redford, Robert, 60, 76 Regan, James S., 19, 206 Rego Park, Queens, 98 Reid, M., & Company, 314 Rembrandt, 11 Resnick, Paul, 23, 25, 31, 194, 204, 286 Reuters, 27 Revson, Charles, 116, 119 Rhodes, T.E., Co., Inc., 226, 250 Rialto Theater, 26, 27 Rice, Sylvester N., 56 Ridgely Apartments, 16 Roberts, Owen S., 38 Robinson, Dwight P., 22 Robinson, Dwight P. & Company, see Dwight P. Robinson Company Robinson, Laura, 20 Rockefeller Center, 218 Rockefeller, John D. Jr., 12, 132-135 Rockefeller, Laurance, 40 Rockefeller, Nelson, 36 Rogers, Frank, 72 Romagna, Anthony J., 322 Ross, Steven, 58 Rothschild, Morris H., 23, 74, 186, 252, 254, 288 Rubinstein, Helena, 116, 118 Rudolph, Paul, 190 Rushman, Gertrude V., 138 Russell, Walter, 250 Salisbury [hotel], 252 San Francisco Clift [hotel], 16 San Simeon, 9 Satterwhite, Preston Pope, 12, 62, 64, 65, 68 Schaefer, Joseph A., 80 Schiff, Henry, 284 Schiff, Leo, 284 Schmidt, August and Pauline, 70, 98 Schmidt, Mott B., 25, 128, 218 Schreiber, Imre Von, 189 Schultze, Leonard, 16 Schuyler Square Realty Company, 284 Schwartz & Gross, 19, 244, 324 Schwarzman, Stephen, 58, 132 Sciubba, Louis, 278 Seabury, Raymond M., 72 Second Scotch Presbyterian Church, 288 Seidman, Bernard, 250 Seigel & Green, 54 Selden, Lynde, 12

350 / Index

Selisberg, Alfred, 130 Shah of Iran, sister of, 116 Shearn, Judge Clarence, 12 Shelton Holding Corporation, 132 Sherpich, Eugene A., 189 Sherry Netherland, 16 Shreve and Lamb, 48, 200, 291 Shroder, Millard, 212 Shroder and Koppel, 212 Singer Sewing, 15 Slattery, Vincent J., 23, 74, 188, 252, 254, 288 Sloane, William, 128 Smith, Ethel, 258 Smith, John Thomas, 25, 218, 223 South Kensington Flats, 196 Sparrow, Robert G., 100, 102 Stahlman Building, 17 Standard Oil Company, 54 Stanhope, 16, 24, 74 Starrett Brothers, 114, 116, 130 Steichen, Edward, 190 Steinberg, Saul, 58, 132 Stern, Robert, 12 Sterner, Frederick, 11, 23 Stettinius, Mrs. Edward R., 170 Straight, Mrs. Willard, 178 Straus, Jesse Isidor, 12, 25, 130 Stuyvesant Apartments, 15 Sullivan, Louis, 138 Sunnyside [apartment house], 152 Swanson, Gloria, 56 Taylor, Henry A.C., 110 T.E. Rhodes Co., Inc. Temple Emanuel, 206 Tenement House Commission, 20 Tenement House Law, 20 theaters, Normandie, 25 Rialto, 25 Thomas, Joseph B., 190 Tiffany, Charles, 218 Tiffany, Louis Comfort, 218

Tirozzi, Giuseppe, 265 Tomasulo, Giuseppe, 265, 303 Treanor & Fatio, 190 Trumbauer, Horace, 80 Trump, Donald, 112 Turin [333 Central Park West], 16 University of Pennsylvania, 16 Van Dorn [hotel], 258 VanWart & Wein, 190 Vanderbilt University, 17 Vinmore Building Corporation, 254 Vinross Realties, 288 Von Schreiber, Imre, 189 Waid, D. Everett, 17, 168 Waldorf-Astoria, 16 Walker, Keitt P., 110 Walker, Mayor Jimmy, 7 Walker & Gillette, 214 Warren and Wetmore, 12, 24, 48, 62, 72, 196 Watergate Apartments, 30, 320 Weaver, Spencer Fullerton, 16, 17, 22, 120, 126, 168, 196, 202, 232, 324 Wellston Buildings, 262 Wells Brothers, 54 White, Stanford, 11, 13 Wilks, Matthew Astor, 70 Wilks, Sylvia Green, 70 Woolworth Building, 9 Woolworth, Frank W., 72 Yosemite [apartment house], 19, 106 Zeckendorf, William, 132 zoning, amendment of November 1921, 19 mandamus action, 96 resolution of 1916, 8, 19 restrictions, 8 Zuckerman, Mortimer, 58

Alan Blattberg

Alpern

David Netto is an independent architectural designer specializing in interior apartment renovations. He has lectured and published on the work of Rosario Candela.

Christopher Gray is director of the Office for Metropolitan History, a research organization, and writes the weekly “Streetscapes” column in the real-estate section of the Sunday edition of The New York Times.

Other books published by Acanthus Press: Great Houses of New York, 1880–1930.

Michael C. Kathrens.

Great Houses of Chicago, 1871–1921.

Susan Benjamin and Stuart Cohen.

Houses of Los Angeles, 1885–1935. 2 volumes.

Sam Watters.

The Main Line: Country Houses of Philadelphia’s Storied Suburb, 1870–1930. William Alan Morrison.

Carrère and Hastings, Architects. 2 vols.

Dream House: The White House as an American Home. Ulysses Grant Dietz and Sam Watters.

The du Ponts: Houses and Gardens in the Brandywine, 1900–1951. Maggie Lidz.

Houses of the Berkshires, 1870–1930. Revised 2011.

Richard S. Jackson Jr. and Cornelia Brooke Gilder.

Rosario Candela has replaced Stanford White as the real estate brokers’ name-drop of choice.

Nowadays, to own a 10- to 20-room apartment in a Candela-designed building is to accede to architectural, as well as social cynosure.”

—Christopher Gray

The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter

Andrew Alpern is an architectural historian, an architect, and an attorney. This book is his fourth about apartment houses of Manhattan. He has also published five other books, the most recent being a fully-illustrated catalogue of the collection of architectural drawing instruments he donated to the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University. Alpern has published dozens of articles about architecture and the cityscape and has also published extensively on intellectual property and construction law.

The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter Andrew Alpern with essays by David Netto and Christopher Gray

by Andrew Alpern Foreword by David Netto Preface by Christopher Gray The supreme addresses of choice in New York are on Park Avenue and on Fifth Avenue. But merely living on either of these famous boulevards is not enough. The ultimate aspiration is to dwell in a suite of rooms designed by one of the two masters of apartment-house design—Rosario Candela or James Carpenter. And they understood apartmenthouse construction inside and out.

Working with enlightened builders, these men helped an affluent market understand and appreciate the amenities that separated their buildings from those of ordinary New Yorkers. They created the grand structures and lavish apartments that are now the standard living spaces of New York’s most successful people.

The names Candela and Carpenter have become synonymous with well-proportioned rooms and imaginative layouts. They defined luxury in a way not equalled since their day, and the planning and design principles they developed are still strongly influencing apartment-house architects.

Richly illustrated with 354 period photographs and floor plans, and with factual data and narrative, Andrew Alpern provides us with a fascinating architectural and social history of these great buildings.

Supplemented by interior views, both vintage and recent, including newer interiors by some of the most important New York architecture and interiordesign firms, we are also able to see how people live in these great apartments.

Through this book, Alpern shows us that the work of Candela and Carpenter is a contribution to the architecture of New York as significant as its great office skyscrapers and produced a parallel golden age of apartment-house construction and design.

Front cover photo: 2 East 70th Street, Wurts Brothers, courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Back cover: 770 Park Avenue, 15-room duplex, author’s collection.

The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter

Acanthus Press

With an important Introduction, supplemented by two additional authoritative essays, this delightful and informative book brings richly deserved recognition to two exceptionally talented architects of the early 20th century.