The Murray Hill section of the East Side is a small area located between Fifth Avenue and the Franklin Delanor Roosevelt Drive (The FDR), and 34th and 40th Streets. It is the nicest residential area closest to the Midtown business district, combining elegant townhouses on the side streets and attractive apartment buildings with some good clubs and a great small museum. The area also has excellent transportation as it is literally in the middle of Manhattan. The residents of the neighborhood are generally in their 30’s and 40’s who like their neighborhood cafés and shops surrounding them at every turn. The nice thing about this community is that once you move in, you will probably not want to move out. Residents have lived in this area for years and have no plans on leaving. The rents aren’t low but they aren’t overbearing either. Most residents in this area own their apartments and you can find anything you want in Murray Hill from a condo to a co-op, to a brownstone.

This area has some of the most spectacular buildings in the city. The jewel and its epicenter is the Morgan Library on the northeast corner of 36th Street and Madison Avenue. The northeast corner at 37th Street and Madison Avenue is occupied by one of the city’s most romantic mansions. Built by Joseph Raphael De Lamar, a Dutch entrepreneur who made his fortune in the California Gold Rush, the Beaux Arts building was designed by C. P. H. Gilbert and is now the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland. This and the Morgan Library provide Murray Hill with considerable elegance and style.

Shopping and entertainment in Murray Hill are tough to find. You will have to walk 10 minutes out of your community into Chelsea for entertainment and another 10 minutes the other way onto Madison Avenue to find your favorite shops. You will never be at a loss for a good restaurant though. Third Avenue between 29th and 36th Streets are packed with restaurants. Each one is worth a trip to at least once.

In the late 1990’s, several important computer retail stores opened in the 30’s on Fifth and Madison Avenues reinforcing the area’s retail strength. Lord & Taylor, of course, continues to have one of the city’s most popular Christmas season department store window displays and also expanded at the same time on Fifth Avenue between 38th and 39th Streets.

J. P. Morgan was the nation’s foremost banker at the end of the 19th Century and became its premier art collector. Unfortunately, much of his fabulous art collection was dispersed after his death before World War I. The Frick Collection, for example, has his fantastic Fragonard room and the Metropolitan Museum now owns many of his great works of European decorative art. The Pierpont Morgan Library, designed by Charles McKim of McKim, Mead & White, however, still retains some of Morgan’s fine Italian Renaissance paintings and sculptures, his incredible collection of rare books and a world-class collection of drawings.

The design was based in part on the attic story of the Nymphaeum of 1555 in Rome. His original office, library and entrance hall are preserved in their very magnificent splendor in the middle of the block. The annex wing at the Madison Avenue corner, designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris, was added for the museum’s many interesting and important exhibitions, mostly of drawings. In 1991, the museum acquired the former Isaac N. Phelps residence that became the Anson Phelps Stokes residence that became the J. P. Morgan Jr. residence and then the Lutheran Church of America quarters at the southeast corner of 37th Street and Madison Avenue on the same block. For many years, the church that resisted landmark designation, which the Morgan library has. The brownstone was sensitively restored and connected to the museum with a lovely, curved glass pavilion, designed by Voorsanger & Mills, that includes a delightful small café.

The northeast corner at 37th Street and Madison Avenue is occupied by one of the city’s most romantic mansions. Built by Joseph Raphael De Lamar, a Dutch entrepreneur who made his fortune in the California Gold Rush, the Beaux Arts building was designed by C. P. H. Gilbert and is now the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland. This and the Morgan Library provide Murray Hill with considerable elegance and style.

At the southwest corner of 37th Street and Park Avenue stands the neo-Georgian Union League Club designed by Morris & O’Connor. This exclusive club was formed by Republicans who quit the exclusive Union Club over its alleged failure to throw out Confederate sympathizers in the Civil War. The Union League Club has a very important collection of 19th Century American paintings that is second only to that of the Century Association, which is located nearby at 1 West 43rd Street, among New York’s clubs.

The southwestern corner of Murray Hill is anchored by the former B. Altman’s store building. The store, widely considered the city’s most gracious department store, went out of business in 1989 and the building was subsequently restored and opened as a mixed-use facility housing the Science, Industry and Business Library of the New York Public Library, and offices for such tenants as the Oxford University Press and the City University of New York Graduate School and University Center. The building was designed by Trowbridge & Livingston for Benjamin Altman, whose great art collection was given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as was that of his nephew, and later president of B. Altman’s, Michael Friedsam. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer and Gwathmey Siegal & Associates were the architectural firms involved in this major conversion.

Two other important residential landmarks are the former Advertising Club, originally the J. Hampton Robb residence designed by McKim, Mead & White and now converted to apartments, at 23 Park Avenue and the former Thomas B. Clarke building, designed by Stanford White, which is now the Collectors’ Club, at 22 East 35th Street.

There are several attractive churches in the area including the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation on the northeast corner at 35th Street and the Roman Catholic Church of Our Saviour at 59 Park Avenue, behind which is the very handsome Art Moderne Town House apartment building, designed by Bowdon & Russell. The area’s newest religious structure is the St. Vartan Cathedral of the Armenian Orthodox Church in America on the east side of Second Avenue between 34th and 35th Streets. It was completed in 1967.

There is a small historic district that encompasses ten Romanesque Revival town houses at Sniffen Court at 150-158 East 36th Street that are rather charming.

The dominant landmarks here, of course, are Grand Central Terminal and behind it the MetLife (formerly the PanAm) Building on Park Avenue and the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue, two of New York’s most important Beaux Arts landmarks.

Despite its many attractive low-rise structures, Murray Hill is a mixed-use district with many office buildings, some of which are quite distinguished such as 200 and 275 Madison Avenue and 10 East 40th Street. Surprisingly, many of the city’s most unusual post-war office buildings are in this area such as the rakish, black-glass 101 Park Avenue, designed by Eli Attia who also designed the unusual Republic National Bank Building on the southwest corner of 40th Street and Fifth Avenue across from the very interesting tower at 461 Fifth Avenue designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Also of note is the mixed-use, orange-brick tower at 3 Park Avenue, which is turned on its axis and was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, the same architects who did the nearby Empire State Building, whose presence, of course, cannot be ignored.

There are many superb brick office buildings on Madison Avenue and on 42nd Street such as the Home Savings (formerly Bowery) Bank Building and the Chanin Building, cattycorner to the famous Chrysler Building on Lexington Avenue.

There are numerous hotels in the area, some on Park Avenue and some on Madison Avenue as well as some unusual "sliver" buildings such as Morgan Court on Madison Avenue between 35th and 36th Street and the very attractive building at 52 Park Avenue designed David Kenneth Specter.

The core area of Murray Hill, then, is surprisingly rich in architectural assets and its popularity as a residential area has increased considerably due to the renaissance of the Flatiron District to the south, which abounds in trendy restaurants.

The eastern portion of this area, across Third Avenue, however, was pretty lackluster for decades until three developers decided the market was right for luxury apartment towers on the river side of the Manhattan entrance to the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, whose traffic had previously been considered too horrendous. Donald Zucker built the first major project, Rivergate, on East 34th Street at the river and included an outdoor skating rink as an amenity. Jeffrey Glick of the Glick Organization then erected two very slick and glossy towers with many amenities, Manhattan Place and Horizon, both designed by Costas Kondylis of Philip Birnbaum & Associates, just to the north, and then Bernard Spitzer outdid both them and built the very impressive Corinthian, a tall tower of bunched cylinders with large bay windows, designed by Der Scutt and Michael Schimenti, on the site of the former East Side Bus Terminal. Despite the presence of tall smokestacks in the area and the formidable traffic, these projects have been very successful and form an attractive new residential precinct to the south of the more sedate and smaller Tudor City at 42nd Street across from the United Nations.

Murray Hill is named after Robert Murray who had a house at Park Avenue and 37th Street during the Revolution and whose wife supposedly served tea to General Howe and delayed his troops permitting the Americans to escape to the north.

In the late 1990’s, several important computer retail stores opened in the 30’s on Fifth and Madison Avenues reinforcing the area’s retail strength. Lord & Taylor, of course, continues to have one of the city’s most popular Christmas season department store window displays and also expanded at the same time on Fifth Avenue between 38th and 39th Streets.

All that is really missing to make this area "complete" are some sidewalk cafés and gourmet food stores as its architectural heritage is very impressive, to say nothing of its great convenience.