25 Beekman Place: Review and Ratings

Review of 25 Beekman Place by Carter Horsley

This 6-story building at 25 Beekman Place was redesigned by Pleasants Pennington with a neo-Classical façade for Van Santvoord Merle-Smith, a diplomat, war hero and banker.

Three years later, Kathleen Cornell, the actress altered the townhouse at 23 Beekman Place and the very elegant apartment building at 1 Beekman Place was erected and in 1934 William S. Paley, the head of CBS, built a seven-story house at 29 Beekman Place and from 1948 to 1989 Irving Berlin, the songwriter, lived at 17 Beekman Place.  In 1978, Paul Rudolph, the architect, enlarged the Katheen Cornell house.

Bottom Line

The rusticated stucco façade on 25 Beekman Place gives no hint of the many broad and angled balconies facing the East River in this doorman building with only 6 condominium residences.

Description

The building is faced with white-limestone-colored, rusticated stucco on Beekman Place with a canopied entrance leading to a mahogany lobby with slate floors.

The river side of the building has many angled balconies overlooking the East River.

A squash court was once installed on the fifth floor by Van Santvoord Merle-Smith who combined 25 and 27 Beekman Place in 1927

The two buildings were renovated in 1998 and converted into 6 apartments. That renovation was designed by Constantine Wickenburg. 

Amenities

The building has a doorman, a garage, a health club and storage and permits pets.

Apartments

The penthouse duplex has a 24-foot-wide living room that is open to a 24-foot-wide dining area with a wood-burning fireplace and both rooms have three-sided balconies with sliding doors.  The lower level has two bedrooms and the upper level has another bedroom and a 40-foot-wide terrace facing the river and a 40-by-30-foot terrace facing Beekman Place.

The 3^rd floor unit has two bedrooms and a 16-foot-long study facing Beekman Place and a 26-foot-long living room with fireplace and an 18-foot-long dining room with fireplace next to a large kitchen and the living and dining rooms share an 8-sided terrace overlooking the river.

The maisonette duplex has a 26-foot-long living room and an 18-foot-long dining room facing multi-level, 38-foot-wide garden terrace with a Japanese rock garden in the rear of the building facing the river, a 12-foot-long kitchen and two bedrooms facing Beekman Place on the upper level and one more bedroom, a 24-foot-long library/family room and lower garden 38-foot-wide terrace on the lower level.  The unit also has a separate one-bedroom accessible from the apartment as well as from the street.

History

Beekman Place gets its name from the Beekman family that erected Mount Pleasant, a mansion, on the site in 1764 and during the Revolution it became the British military headquarters. It was demolished in 1874, 20 years after the Beekman family left because of a cholera epidemic.

In the mid-19^th Century, James Beekman created a new street named Beekman Place from 49^th to 51^st Streets and it was quickly filled with brownstones that would later be turned into boarding houses. In his “Streetscapes” column, Mr. Gray noted that “a riverfront panorama from about 1910 shows laundry hanging out the back windows” of the houses on Beekman Place, which was then “flanked by a coal yard on 49^th street and an ice plant on 51^st Street,” adding that the Beekman family sought unsuccessfully for several years to remove restrictions for industrial uses and finally sold a waterfront parcel. In 1919 Ellen Shipman acquired the house at 19 Beekman Place and soon converted it into a nice Georgian style townhouse designed by Butler & Corse.