"Compulsively readable." --Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times
"Jaw-dropping apartment porn." —Fortune
"[A] great read... gossipy... revealing," —People
"As rich as his subjects." --Forbes FYI
"The Lolita of shelter porn." —New York Observer
"Life after folly-filled life flashes forward like Park Avenue canopies viewed from a speeding town car." —New York Times
"The is social history at its finest." —Dominick Dunne
"Finally! A look inside the golden tabernacle of high society." —Kitty Kelley
...

Step Inside:

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

The Latest News From 740 Park

Can’t Buy Me Love

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

Posted on April 23rd, 2008 | Permalink

Vacancy at 740 Park

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

Posted on April 16th, 2008 | Permalink

Co-ops Keep the Faith

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

Posted on April 9th, 2008 | Permalink

Self-Knowledge is a Wonderful Thing

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

Posted on April 8th, 2008 | Permalink

Shabby Chic

The late Brooke Astor’s Park Avenue pad is heading to market, says the New York Observer. Got $46 million?

Posted on March 26th, 2008 | Permalink

Reading is Fundamental

library
I guess Blackstone Group chairman and 740 Park resident Steve Schwarzman has been reading his press after all. Today’s Times announced that he was entering the philanthropic pantheon at the very top, donating $100 million to the New York Public Library to totally transform the 42nd Street main library into a modern facility that will be renamed (albeit discretely) the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building. The gift instantly catapults Schwarzman into the ranks of America’s most generous, alongside Andrew Carnegie, who financed much of New York’s branch library system, and John D. Rockefeller Jr., who used to own Schwarzman’s apartment. And takes off the focus off of Blackstone Group’s falling profits and stock price. But for one day at least, let’s accentuate the positive. Well done, Steve!

Posted on March 11th, 2008 | Permalink

We Are #37???

How the mighty have fallen. The richest New Yorker, per Forbes Magazine, is 740 Park resident David Koch, #37 on the just-released lost of the world’s billionaires (and the tenth richest American)–and profiled in today’s New York Post.

Posted on March 9th, 2008 | Permalink

Steve-a-rino

Someone else is picking on Steve Schwarzman for a change.

Posted on February 29th, 2008 | Permalink

Viva Peru!

The story of 740 Park has made it all the way to Peru, thanks to kajillionaire Ira Rennert.

Posted on February 20th, 2008 | Permalink

I’m Not Goin’ To China/I Say ‘No No No’

Valentine’s Day is battered Blackstone Group Chairman and 740 Park resident Stephen Schwarzman’s 61st Birthday.

In his honor (and certainly not to remind anyone of his fab 60th Birthday blowout), today’s New York Post has an online poll (scroll down, on the right side of the page) about how he should spend the night. Unfortunately, going to China to soothe that nation’s jangled nerves over its underwater investment in his company isn’t on the ballot. Also in today’s Post, Liz Smith says The New Yorker’s James Stewart gave Schwarzman “a fairly free ride” in its profile last week. Tough love, Liz.

Posted on February 10th, 2008 | Permalink

740 Park News Archives

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