First published 2007
740 Park Avenue stands as Manhattan's most coveted residential address for seventy-five years. Michael Gross chronicles the building's tumultuous birth during the 1929 stock market crash, when architect Rosario Candela and businessman James T. Lee crafted a monument to luxury that nearly collapsed financially before its first sale. The building attracted America's oldest money dynasties including the Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Bouviers, alongside descendants of Plymouth Colony leaders and executives from Chase Bank and American Express. One apartment boasted 37 rooms and 16 live-in staff members. Another featured his-and-hers saunas and 11 working fireplaces. Behind these gilded walls, residents indulged in spectacular excesses and scandals. The building's restrictive policies gradually relaxed after World War II, admitting Jewish residents while maintaining other exclusions. Today new money mingles with old bloodlines as fresh fortunes buy entry into this rarefied world. Gross reveals how 740 Park mirrors the shifting power dynamics of American wealth, from established families to modern financial titans like Kravis, Koch, and Schwarzman.
Genres: history, 20th-century, business, non-fiction, biography-memoir, 21st-century, architecture, american-history
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-drama
Setting: Park Avenue, Manhattan
Period: 1929, World War II
576 pages · Kindle Edition · Broadway Books