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Summary:
For seventy-five years, it’s been Manhattan’s richest apartment building, and one of the most lusted-after addresses in the world. One apartment had 37 rooms, 14 bathrooms, 43 closets, 11 working fireplaces, a private elevator, and his-and-hers saunas; another at one time had a live-in service staff of 16. To this day, it is steeped in the purest luxury, the kind most of us could only imagine, until now.
The last great building to go up along New York’s Gold Coast, construction on 740 Park finished in 1930. Since then, 740 has been home to an ever-evolving cadre of our wealthiest and most powerful families, some of America’s (and the world’s) oldest money—the kind attached to names like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Bouvier, Chrysler, Niarchos, Houghton, and Harkness—and some whose names evoke the excesses of today’s monied elite: Kravis, Koch, Bronfman, Perelman, Steinberg, and Schwarzman. All along, the building has housed titans of industry, political power brokers, international royalty, fabulous scam-artists, and even the lowest scoundrels.
The book begins with the tumultuous story of the building’s construction. Conceived in the bubbling financial, artistic, and social cauldron of 1920’s Manhattan, 740 Park rose to its dizzying heights as the stock market plunged in 1929—the building was in dire financial straits before the first apartments were sold. The builders include the architectural genius Rosario Candela, the scheming businessman James T. Lee (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s grandfather), and a raft of financiers, many of whom were little more than white-collar crooks and grand-scale hustlers.
Once finished, 740 became a magnet for the richest, oldest families in the country: the Brewsters, descendents of the leader of the Plymouth Colony; the socially-registered Bordens, Hoppins, Scovilles, Thornes, and Schermerhorns; and top executives of the Chase Bank, American Express, and U.S. Rubber. Outside the walls of 740 Park, these were the people shaping America culturally and economically. Within those walls, they were indulging in all of the Seven Deadly Sins.
As the social climate evolved throughout the last century, so did 740 Park: after World War II, the building’s rulers eased their more restrictive policies and began allowing Jews (though not to this day African Americans) to reside within their hallowed walls. Nowadays, it is full to bursting with new money, people whose fortunes, though freshly-made, are large enough to buy their way in.
At its core this book is a social history of the American rich, and how the locus of power and influence has shifted haltingly from old bloodlines to new money. But it’s also much more than that: filled with meaty, startling, often tragic stories of the people who lived behind 740’s walls, the book gives us an unprecedented access to worlds of wealth, privilege, and extraordinary folly that are usually hidden behind a scrim of money and influence. This is, truly, how the other half—or at least the other one hundredth of one percent—lives.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Facinating read! I couldn't put it down...
Customer Rating:
Usually, I tend to read books that come recommended by friends or acquaintances, or that somehow find me. It seemed that an entire book devoted just to one apartment building was somehow significant, and, I'd seen this pop up in several places. I'm also a real estate agent in Philadelphia, so all the more reason to get it. No regrets...It's a terrific read and I cannot put it down! I was hooked and reeled in from page 1. If you love money, real estate, history, and stories about the rich (and who among us doesn't?!), you'll love this book. It's a great beach or plane read, not too dense but jam-packed with tons of facinating information. I'd give anything to journey back in time to the Gilded Age and see how these people lived and experience these spaces. Some readers have commented about the lack of photos, but the fact that there weren't many just intensifies the allure and increases my curiosity even more! When I arrive, my first phone call will be to a New York real estate agent. Hopefully one of these will be available. Read it enjoy the ride!
740 Park
Customer Rating:
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to live in the most beautiful apartment building in NYC, read this book, it's fascinating. *****
Must Read
Customer Rating:
It's a great book to read if you are interested in the History of New York that most people don't know about. I could not put it down and after reading it I actually went to the building to see what it looked like.
My head is spinning
Customer Rating:
I'm on pg 184, and vow to get to the end, but I don't expect it to be easy. Like the other comments, I agree that pictures would have been wonderful to include, just so I could attempt to keep some of these people straight. This book gets so weighed down with names, and they've become a blur. Junior Rockefeller was interesting, but all the names of each and every lawyer and law firm and decorators and whatnot it just bogs it all down. I'm doing Google searches on the main people, just so I can try to paint a better mental picture.
**edited - I didn't make it through the book. It's not worth my time.
No One Does NY Dish Better
Customer Rating:
Michael Gross has been living in New York City his entire life. That's a nice way of saying that he comes by his real estate obsesssion naturally. All New Yorkers seem to talk about these days is where they live, where they want to live and how much it costs.
That makes 740 Park is a natural subject for Gross who's got a sharp wit and fine sense of what makes his native city's power brokers tick. 740 Park is a great read for anyone wanting a history of one of the city's big name building, one of those places that almost everyone in towns wants to own but only a few - very few - even get to visit.
I liked this book both for its dish and its perpective and that's a hard act to pull off successfully. Gross does a fine job.
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