Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39380 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-10
• Released on: 2006-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 576 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780767917445
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Of all Manhattan's fabled East Side dwellings of the super-rich, 740 Park Avenue has perhaps the best pedigree. Designed by Rosario Candela and developed by James T. Lee, Jackie O's maternal grandfather, as a cooperative haven for the elite, it had the misfortune to open just as the stock market crashed in 1930 and was forced to operate partly as a rental for some decades. The last sale was to Lee himself, for son-in-law "Black Jack" Bouvier, his wife and daughters Jackie and Lee. John D. Rockefeller Jr. signed a rental lease in 1936 for a massive apartment (more than 20,000 square feet), and Marshall Field III took another. Gross (Model) has solidly researched the denizens of the building, who they were, what they did, and who and how many times they married. This information, while exhaustive, is also exhausting. Things perk up as we approach the modern era, and the old rich give way to a newer cast of sometimes dubious billionaires. Ron Perelman, Henry Kravis, Steve Ross and Steve Schwartzman are cited among the newer tenants. A bit of a bore for average readers, this will be a useful tome for those interested in New York's social history.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
"A riveting book....It’s a big box of chocolates." -- nysocialdiary.com, October 4, 2005

"Epic...truly, the story of American capitalism...a fascinating glimpse inside...the most fabulous living spaces known to man. -- Hartford Courant, Nov 4, 2005

"Great read...a gossipy history with revealing tales." -- People, November 14,2005

"Jaw-dropping apartment porn." -- Fortune, October 31, 2005

"Life after folly-filled life flashes forward like Park Avenue canopies viewed from a speeding town car." -- New York Times, October 9, 2005

"Lifting brows among the swells." -- Liz Smith, New York Post, August 18, 2005

"Shocking and sometimes tragic." -- Star, October 31, 2005

"The book offers a narrative look at the 20th-century American aristocracy through one legendary residence." -- New York Observer, October 7, 2005

The curb appeal is clear. The reader is designated ogler; the writer's job is to celebrate wealth and savor schadenfreude. -- New York Times, October 17, 2005

Review
“In 740 Park, Michael Gross penetrates the bewitching and private worlds of the privileged and very rich denizens of 740 Park Avenue on New York’s Upper East Side. Gross, a born storyteller, delights in his tales of upstairs and downstairs over the decades in the grand building. This is social history at its best.” —Dominick Dunne

“740 Park is a concrete capsule of American capitalism as seen through the fates, fortunes, and foibles of its inhabitants. This biography of New York’s most magisterial building is an immensely entertaining, dishy, and ultimately serious book.”
—Jane Stanton Hitchcock

“The Lolita of shelter porn . . . 740 Park delves into the rarified world of one of the city’s most exclusive co-ops, where billionaires like Ronald Lauder, Steve Schwarzman, and David Koch rest their heads.” —Michael Calderone, New York Observer

“740 Park is a historical building that is worthy of the comprehensive and fascinating coverage that Michael Gross has devoted to it. This book is as entertaining as it is informative—it’s a terrific story.” —Donald Trump

"Jaw-dropping apartment porn."
–Fortune

"Gobs of real-estate porn."
—The New York Times Book Review

"[A] great read... gossipy... revealing,"
—People

"As rich as his subjects."
—Forbes FYI

“Life after folly-filled life flashes forward like Park Avenue canopies viewed from a speeding town car.”
—New York Times

"Finally! A look inside the golden tabernacle of high society."
—Kitty Kelley

Customer Reviews

Yawn...
Don't be fooled by the exciting sounding "apartment porn" review by Forbes -- this is one tedious book. While there were some very interesting sections (on the building's architect Candela, a brief history of cooperative apartments in NYC, and John D. Rockefeller), they were few and far between. The majority of the text is dull and repetitive. The author was able to get dirt on a number of current and former residents of 740 Park, but he could not get his hands on a floor plan or any decent photos of these luxurious apartments? All in all, quite a disappointing read.

No Photos and Plodding Writing
When I read a book like this one, that describes the history of a building or how the rich are very different from you and I, I want photos to help fill out the story. This book contains two mediocre pictures of two different rooms in the fabled structure on Madison where only the super rich can reside. I pass by this building every day and was naturally curious to see what all the shouting was about. To me, it looks like hundreds of other bland, brick structures that line Park and Fifth Avenue. Perhaps that's the first tip-off that the ultra-rich want to live quietly behind barricades of stone and marble. I wish there were pictures of the some of the residents and the interiors. Word descriptions can only go so far.

A 500+ Page Gossip Column
The author seems to be fond of hyperbole. While it is difficult to quantify social prestige in a republic, the notion that 740 Park is New York's most prestigious Cooperative is laughable at best. There are plenty of other buildings (998 & 960 Fifth, River House, at the risk of being indiscreet) that have a better claim to that title, and it makes one wonder if Mr. Gross turned his pen on the residents of 740 because they were more willing to talk than others.

It's true many of the tales have been told before and Mr. Gross' writing style will never equal the acerbic wit of Andrew Alpern or the folksy storytelling of Jerry Patterson and Stephen Birmingham in their chronicles of the apartment-dwelling rich and the book reads like an extended gossip column, which some may adore and others may loathe. Nevertheless, if you are looking for a gossipy read about the rich and shameless this book will not disappoint.