"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
...

740 Park, The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building

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

I, A Contest. I, A Fashion Spread.

Curbed, the essential New York real estate blog, has just launched a holiday contest with signed copies of 740 Park and Rogues’ Gallery as the prize. You’ve got to be in it to win it. And 20/20, the eyeglass fashion magazine, has just published an online slide show that includes me in some fancy frames and touts Rogues’ Gallery for its “spectacular investigative reporting and a little bit of tittle-tattle,” according to editor James Spina. “Gross always gets to the heart of the story.”

Posted on December 15th, 2009 | Permalink

“Money Makes Money….

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….and the money money makes makes more money,” Benjamin Franklin once said. That’s certainly true of Steven Mnuchin, the banking son of a Goldman Sachs banker, who has put his A-Line apartment at 740 Park on the market–sort of, it’s not on his broker’s web site–for $37.5 million and inspired the New York Times to dip into 740 Park again for accurate background on the building and Mnuchin’s family, which has kept the grand apartment in its clutches since 1963. Mnuchin and wife Heather, a descendent of a pre-Revolutionary War-era family, are moving west to California, where he will run a bank.

Posted on October 10th, 2009 | Permalink

Inflation at The Wall Street Journal

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In late August, the real estate column in the Wall Street Journal (locked behind a firewall, so no link, sorry!) ran a notable sentence about the subject of my penultimate book, 740 Park. It was notable because in a mere twenty words, it contained five errors. As the self-appointed guardian of 740 facts, I penned what I hoped was a wry note (inspired by the one John Lennon wrote to Queen Elizabeth when he returned his MBE to the British Crown “in protest against Britain’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing, against our support of America in Vietnam, and against ‘Cold Turkey’ slipping down the charts”) pointing out the mistakes and expressed a preference that it run as a letter to the editor rather than a correction since, as a former reporter myself, I know how much they hate corrections–and, being thoroughly shameless when selling a new book, I hoped to get Rogues’ Gallery mentioned. But the WSJ is holding firm. “Because my sources won’t contradict the descriptions I’d written, we won’t write it up as a correction,” columnist Sara Lin informs me. So just to set the record straight, here’s that letter:

To The Editor: If repetition by Nexis and Factiva was a firm guarantor of truth, Sara Lin’s latest Private Properties column referencing Stephen Schwarzman would have been beyond reproach, but instead, I fear, it is riddled with errors. Lin writes that the Blackstone boss “owns a 20,000-square-foot triplex apartment at 740 Park Ave. in Manhattan, for which he paid $38 million in 2001.” To give your reporter her due, she got the address right. As the Wall Street Journal has never deigned to take note of my 2005 book 740 Park (let alone my current Rogues’ Gallery, about the wealthy patrons of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), perhaps her errors are unsurprising, but most readers are well aware of and most reviewers (and real estate professionals) have praised the book for its accuracy, so using it as my reliable source, I would note that the apartment (as opposed to the cooperative corporation shares, which were previously owned by George Brewster, John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Saul Steinberg) is a duplex occupying a portion of the building’s 15th and 16th floors with a servants’ mezzanine between floors–not a triplex; that it is somewhat larger than 20,000 square feet (although its exact dimensions, like those of most cooperative apartments in New York City, have never been given); that it changed hands early in 2000, not in 2001, and that Schwarzman paid about $30 million (according to my source, a member of the building’s co-op board), not the oft-mentioned, but seriously inflated figures of $37 million or $38 million. If Ms. Lin would like to avoid such mistakes in future, I suggest she buy a copy of the book, which is still available in most bookstores. Better yet, she could review it–and get a freebie. Better late than never.
Sincerely,
Michael Gross

Posted on September 28th, 2009 | Permalink

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

I scan the real estate sections and the realty blogs daily, hoping for news of more sales, births, deaths, scandals or moments of joy at 740 Park, but here in the Great Recession there are none. So with the publications date of Rogues’ Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Made the Metropolitan Museum fast approaching (eight more days! eight more days!), I am taking this opportunity to retire the 740 Park blog, at least until something, anything!, happens there. I’m sure the last of the widows, prospective parents and pillars of finance there will be happy about that. As am I. Though I’ve yet to receive a commission for helping establish the building’s primacy on New York’s Gold Coast, four years after publication, 740 Park is still selling. I am unbelievably grateful to all concerned for that. Now, we head eleven blocks north and a few block west.

Posted on April 27th, 2009 | Permalink

Story Without End, Amen

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Forget John Thain and Ezra Merkin and Steve Schwarzman and the meltdown of the economy. The market was up yesterday. And the George David-Marie Douglas divorce circus is still so on. Today, we learn that David is addicted to filing divorce papers and Marie, well, she likes money and wants babies but isn’t having the best of luck conceiving, unless her soon-to-ex is right and she doesn’t really want to, sneaky Miss Thing. Read it and get the creeps. Originally from the [NYP0st]

Posted on March 24th, 2009 | Permalink

Oy, Marie

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Those folks at 740 Park just don’t know when to stop. If this keeps up, I may have to write a sequel. In the latest episode of the slap-happy soap opera of the richest apartment building in the world, the owners of the triplex apartment built for Electra Havemeyer and Vanderbilt heir J. Watson Webb (and later occupied by Edgar Bronfman Sr. and Time-Warner founder Steve Ross, among others), are giving the world its latest peek at how the rich and shameless divorce. Former United Technologies chairman George David and his second spouse, Marie Douglas (above), an impossibly tall and quite winsome I-banking Swedish countess, are engaged in a spitball fight over their post-nup, with Marie demanding (sing along kiddies) More More More personal bailout funds–a figure that reportedly runs s high as $100 million. David, needless to say, is not letting go of his hard-earned bonus baby bucks so easily. So now, Marie has turned to that paragon of reasoned argument and calm negotiation, New York Post spitfire Andrea Peyser. Stay tuned for David’s counterpunch.

Posted on March 23rd, 2009 | Permalink

Go West, Young Man

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Keith Kelly, media columnist of the New York Post (above, right, with David Carr, his counterpart at the New York Times), has the scoop today on my next book for the Broadway imprint at Random House: a 740- Park-like look at the lifestyles and lives of, as he puts it, “the Super-Wealthy in the Estate District of Los Angeles.” Kelly’s annual Kelly Gang fundraiser is coming up on St. Patrick’s Day at the midtown media elite lunchroom, Michael’s.
UPDATE: Curbed LA comments: “Platinum Triangle, it’s time to start paying your help a bit more so they don’t spill your secrets! “

Posted on March 11th, 2009 | Permalink

Whale of a Sale Sale

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So….Max Abelson of the New York Observer reports that Courtney Sale-Ross’s unofficial offer to sell her double duplex (Apt. 12-13 C/D) at the 71 East 71st Street entrance of 740 Park Avenue for $75 million–it was on the market, sort-of, and then off–is back on again. And he quotes the unlisted listing broker Edward Lee Cave asking “Who is Michael Gross?’ after Cave was told that Gripebox had reported the apartment was off the market. Cave’s memory obviously isn’t what it used to be (he did a lengthy face-to-face interview while I was reporting my book on the building), but never mind that. I’m glad to hear Sale (above with her late husband, Steve Ross of Time-Warner) is still thinking about selling the apartment she was never selling and then reaffirmed her desire to not sell. And I still hope for a small crumb of commission from Cave for raising resale values in the building. It’s tough out there for billion-heiress widows, but even tougher for journalist-authors.
UPDATE: This must be crack to crack real estate reporter Abelson. He’s not letting go!

Posted on March 2nd, 2009 | Permalink

A Kinder, Gentler Clawback??

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The image of former Merrill Lynch boss (and 740 Park penthouse owner) John Thain’s wife asking for a plain paper bag when she went shopping at Hermès not long ago–and then being ridiculed for it–highlights the disconnect between the media’s “the sky is falling” reporting on the economy and the real big picture. The big picture is that people need to be encouraged to start spending again, albeit more carefully, not be shunned for it. So herewith a modest proposal. Since, Andrew Cuomo notwithstanding, odds are we’ll never be able to claw back big bonuses from the greedy, grasping former masters, now destroyers, of the universe as we knew it, how about we do the opposite and shame them into putting that money back into the economy. Not by buying yachts or Maseratis or Park Avenue penthouses, but by using the full force of societal persuasion to convince them that every single bonus dollar they received in, say, the last two years, needs to be spent–now–at retail, in America–in easy increments of $50,000 or less–and at full price, not 70% off. Spend for themselves, for their families, for their multitude of victims, on charities, on total strangers for all I care. But spend that money down. Right now. In return, the news media should promise to praise them, not ridicule them for it. Call it the Small Business Hearts Bankers Program. Even bankers’ wives. If that doesn’t work, we can still try tar and feathers.

Posted on February 27th, 2009 | Permalink

Cuomo vs. Thain

Dealbook reveals that NY AG Andrew Cuomo is not taking no for an answer from 740 Park penthouse owner John Thain.

Posted on February 23rd, 2009 | Permalink

740 Park News Archives

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