40 East 61st Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 40 East 61st Street by Carter Horsley

This handsome apartment building at 40 East 61^st Street is an enlargement of the former 15-story LeRoy Hospital that was erected in 1927.  

The addition added four floors to the top of the building and expanded its width by about a third. 

The conversion was completed in 1983 by Rose-Dorcar 61 Associates of which Jonathan Rose was the partner in charge. 

The architect for the original building was Kenneth Franzheim and the architect for the conversion was Paul Segal and Rothzeid, Kaiserman & Thomson. 

The 21-story building has 36 condominium apartments. 

Bottom Line

This mid-block, Art Deco-style apartment building is very convenient to Hermes, Barney’s, the Metropolitan and Colony Clubs as well as Central Park and Bloomingdales.  It is across 61^st Street from the Regency Hotel that is well-known for its “power breakfasts.”

Description

The original building had a beige-brick façade with piers and spandrels with three vertical elements.  The enlarged building was expanded horizontally by about a third with similar piers but dark brown spandrels with two horizontal bands.  Vertically, three floors were added. 

The building has a canopied, inset, two-story entrance with sidewalk landscaping.  The building has discrete air-conditioners and a fluted two-story limestone base. The setback addition has some balconies on its eastern side facing the side-street. 

The entrance has handsome bronze doors. 

The bottom five floors have medical offices and the top 16 have 36 apartments. 

Amenities

The building has a doorman and canopied entrance but no roof deck, no garage and not fitness center.

Apartments

Apartment 9A is a one-bedroom unit that has a 22-foot-long living/dining area and an enclosed 17-foot-long kitchen. 

Apartment 7A is a one-bedroom unit with a 22-foot-long living/dining room next to an enclosed 7-foot-long kitchen and a 48-foot-long terrace. 

Apartment 5B is a one-bedroom unit with an adjoining 19-foot-wide terrace and it has a 13-foot-square entry foyer that leads past a 13-foot-wide office and a 13-foot-wide pass-through kitchen to an 18-foot-wide living room. 

Apartment 12C is a one-bedroom unit with a 21-foot-long living/dining room next to enclosed 8-foot-long kitchen and a 47-foot-long terrace.

History

Originally called the Professional Building, Alice Fuller LeRoy leased 9 floors and the penthouse in the building for a private sanitarium.  According to item in The New York Times, Mrs. LeRoy, “needing a livelihood, undertook to care for two patients,” adding that “her present move is from 18 West 51^st street, where she supervised fourteen cases.” The new quarters will accommodate seventy-four beds and two operating rooms.  The remaining floors wee devoted to doctor’s offices. 

According to Wikipedia, it was “mainly a private treatment center for wealthy people but was also a maternity hospital.”  “Aristotle Onassis’s daughter, Christina, was born there and celebrities like Judy Garland and Nat King Cole were treated there.  The hospital was renamed Leroy Hospital and later became a center for osteopathic medicine.  It closed in 1980. 

According to an article by Michael Pollak in the November 28, 2004 edition of The New York Times “it was a common practice for new mothers, who back then routinely stayed for as long as a week, to have meals bought in from the fashionable Colony restaurant on the same block.