First published 2014
Michael Gross opens the doors to Fifteen Central Park West, Manhattan's most expensive residential tower. The journalist maps how business titans, celebrities like Denzel Washington and Sting, and international oligarchs transformed a neglected neighborhood into new money paradise. Gross chronicles the building's creation from concept through construction, revealing the power plays and massive fortunes behind penthouses costing nearly $100 million. He documents the walnut libraries, private restaurants, and seventy-foot swimming pools that define this vertical city. The building houses Norman Lear, top executives, and Russian and Chinese billionaires who represent a shift in how New York's elite live. Gross weaves together business drama and social comedy, showing how 15CPW became more than luxury housing. The tower signals broader changes in Manhattan's financial and social fabric, where new wealth creates new rules.
Genres: american-fiction, business, non-fiction, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, social-commentary
Setting: Central Park West, Manhattan, New York
Period: 21st Century
416 pages · Hardcover · Atria Books