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About 322 East 57th Street
The most elegant of the city's few grand "studio" apartment buildings, this very handsome limestone edifice has duplex apartments with enormous double-height ceilings, about 20-feet tall.
Designed by Harry M. Clawson of Caughey & Evans and erected in 1930, this building has always had one of the city's most prestigious rosters of residents. The doorman building has a canopied entrance and a very sumptuous lobby. One of the city's classiest restaurants, Mr. Chow's, occupies a huge double-height space entered from the street and down a flight of stairs.
If this were on Fifth Avenue, it might well be considered the best apartment building in the city. It has a convenient location close to midtown and good transportation, but, unfortunately, it is quite close to a midblock entrance ramp to the Queensboro Bridge just across 57th Street and it also does not have too many grand views as it is only the equivalent of about a 20-story building. Because of its superb, pre-war construction, however, the magnificent apartments are quite quiet except for the merriment of the residents entertaining within their own apartments.
Despite the palatial size of the living rooms and their double-height windows, many of the apartments only have two or three bedrooms, but the grandeur is unavoidable.
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