Sutton Place and Beekman Place are two of the city’s most sought-after residential addresses. These small enclaves along the East River in midtown have some of the finest buildings in NYC. They have a gracious ambiance that is elegant but not too formal, impressive but not too overwhelming.

Sutton Place is the larger of the two, but both combine apartment buildings and townhouses and the juxtaposition is dramatic and works well urbanistically. Sutton Place benefits from two public parks, one at 57th Street and another at 53rd Street, while Beekman Place has only one. Both have one great apartment building that set the tone of the neighborhood.

One Sutton Place South is one of the city’s premier addresses with a triple-arch driveway. It is the grandest of the apartment buildings, a neo-Georgian style mansion that was designed by Rosario Candela and is notable for a large lobby that opens onto its own large garden.

One Beekman Place is not quite as imposing, but is very handsome and elegant. It was named after the site on the northwest corner of First Avenue and 51st Street of James Beekman’s mansion, Mount Pleasant that was built in 1766 near East 51st Street and used by the British as their military headquarters in the city during the Revolutionary War. The site is now occupied by the Romanesque Revival school building that once served as the United Nations International School.

Sutton Place has two townhouse rows, on the east side between 57th and 58th Streets and all the townhouses here share a large communal garden overlooking the East River. At the end of 58th Street, which is also known as Sutton Square, there is another row on Riverview Terrace, a short private street with several townhouses that stretch to the north and overlook the East River.

The two blocks of Beekman Place were for many years cobble stoned. Many celebrities have made their home on Beekman Place included Irving Berlin, Ethel Barrymore and Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine.

Needless to say that prices, availabilities and requirement levels are stretched to the limits in both areas and compare closely with the finest addresses of 5th Ave. and Central Park West.

Some of the townhouses on Beekman Place are more interesting architecturally, especially the unusual steel-cage-expanded one that belonged for many years at 23 Beekman Place to Paul Rudolph, the great architect who died in 1997. Surprisingly one quite wide townhouse was on the market for many years without a buyer.

One gets a sense in both Sutton Place and Beekman Place and Gramercy Park of how much greater New York could be for these eccentric neighborhoods are refined, comfortable, cozy, and redolent with a sense of peacefulness, respect for the environment, and caring for sane values of good-neighborliness.

Of course, Beekman and Sutton Places have their share of snobs and elitists, and probably parvenus, but non-residents can take comfort in the fact that here at least is a civilized waterfront with some public accessibility and that the residents must endure traveling through less pristine territory to get to their heavens.

Indeed, the blocks between First and Third generally are not the city’s most attractive, both on the long sidestreets and on the avenues. There are numerous surprises, however, as there are some quite impressive other apartment buildings nearby such as Rivertower at 420 East 54th Street, designed by Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman & Efron, and St. James’ Tower, designed by Emery Roth & Sons, at 415 East 54th Street, east of First Avenue, and the buildings along the south side of 52nd Street east of First Avenue and the incomparable River House, perhaps the best apartment building in the city, at 435 East 52nd Street, which straddles, and dominates, the separation between Beekman Place and Sutton Place.

This area, of course, did not always have illustrious history and in the 1930’s, the play and movie, "Dead End", celebrated the tenement youth who frolicked in the East River beside the yachts of those who lived in new, mighty luxury towers.

One Beekman Place does have one important advantage over its Sutton Place neighbors and that is that it not only backs handsomely on the river, but also has a south facade that overlooks the United Nations and its gardens and is separated considerably in elevation from the twin-towered modern buildings of 860 and 870 United Nations Plaza, designed by Harrison, Abramovitz & Harris.

Indeed, one of the gateways to Beekman Place is the Beekman Tower at 3 Mitchell Place. This apartment building was originally the Panhellenic Hotel, designed by John Mead Howells, one of the city’s early Art Deco towers and one of the very few with a roof-top cocktail lounge that is one of the city’s great secrets. The hotel had been designed to be used by women who were members of "Greek letter societies". It is reminiscent of Eliel Saarinen’s famous second-prize entry in the important Chicago Tribune building competition. Howells was the partner of Raymond Hood for the first prize in that competition, a neo-Gothic tower that is now one of Chicago’s most important landmarks.

First Avenue is full of a wide variety of restaurants and services north of 49th Street and although it is often crammed for traffic bound to the Queensboro Bridge its has a lively retail activity that is quite attractive because so much of it services a rather well-to-do clientele.

Beekman Hill is named after the site on the northwest corner of First Avenue and 51st Street of James Beekman’s mansion, Mount Pleasant that was built in 1766 near East 51st Street and used by the British as their military headquarters in the city during the Revolutionary War and was where Nathan Hale was brought when he was captured before he was hung. George Washington visited the house often and the Beekmans occupied it until the 1854 cholera epidemic and it was demolished in 1874. The site is now occupied by the Romanesque Revival school building that once served as the United Nations International School.

Sutton Place is named after a developer, Effingham B. Sutton. It was formerly Avenue A and it becomes York Avenue north of the Queensboro Bridge.

The area is quite far from the nearest subways on Lexington and Third Avenues.

One of the longest running controversies in the area involved the proposed redevelopment of Piranesian spaces beneath the Manhattan end of the Queensboro Bridge into a gourmet food emporium known as Bridgemarket. The project finally received approval and financing after about 20 years in the late 1990’s, only to encounter new controversies between lessees.

A large playing field beneath the bridge is converted to a private enclosed tennis facility/club in the winter, which is a nice amenity for the neighborhood.