1172 Park Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 1172 Park Avenue by Carter Horsley

This attractive apartment building at 1172 Park Avenue on the southwest corner at 93^rd Street is on one the city's most impressive blocks. This 15-story building was erected in 1926 and converted to a cooperative in 1956. It has 52 apartments.

It was developed by Michael E. Paterno, one of the city's leading developers of luxury apartment buildings, and designed by Rosario Candela, the city's leading architect of luxury apartment buildings of his era.

Bottom Line

One of Rosario Candela’s pre-war buildings on the avenue, this has a superb Carnegie Hill location near some of its best mansions, museums, schools and restaurants.

Description

The light tan-brick building has a two-story rusticated limestone base beneath a bandcourse and a plain limestone third story and another bandcourse beneath the fourth floor. The canopied, one-step-up entrance has an arched surround with a handsome tympanum and very fancy, large and lovely flanking light sconces.

There is a bandcourse beneath the top floor, which has very attractive window surrounds, and a nice cornice.

The building permits protruding air-conditioners.

According to the Carnegie Hill Architectural Guide published by Carnegie Hill Neighbors “close inspection – binoculars are suggested – reveals spouts with alternating lions’ and rams’ head, guarding their turf” at the top of the building.

Amenities

The building has a doorman, a live-in superintendent, storage and a gym, but no garage and no balconies.

It is pet-friendly.
 

Apartments

The building has two maisonettes/professional offices with entrances on the avenue.

Apartment 6AC/5C is a five-bedroom duplex with a 17-foot-long entrance gallery that opens onto a 28-foot-long living room with a wood-burning fireplace, a 17-foot-long library/den and a 17-foot-long dining that is next to a 24-foot-long kitchen with a breakfast room and a 14-foot-long recreation room on the lower level that also has an 11-foot-long office and three bedrooms.  The upper level has a 18-foot-long gym/recreation room, a 17-foot-wide play room and two bedrooms.

Apartment 10A is a two-bedroom unit with a 14-foot-wide entrance gallery that leads to a 28-foot-wide living room with a fireplace that opens onto a 19-foot-long dining room next to a large pantry and a 10-foot-long kitchen and 13-foot-long maid’s room.

Apartment 14C is a two-bedroom unit that has an angled 12-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 23-foot-long living room next to an enclosed, 14-foot-long dining room next to a 15-foot-long kitchen.

Apartment 6D is a two-bedroom unit that has a 12-foot-wide dining area next to a 9-foot-square kitchen and a 9-foot-long pantry and the dining area opens onto a 17-foot-long living room.

History

The building originally had only 26 apartments and most were 11 or 12 rooms with five baths.

In his fine book, “Park Avenue, Street of Dreams” (Atheneum, 1990), James Trager noted that “The twelve-room penthouse had fourteen-foot ceilings and a living room thirty-two feet long; its first owner, Mrs. William Amory, sold it in the spring of 1927 to Mrs. Leonard K. Elmhirst, the former Mrs. Willard Straight (nee Dorothy Whitney, sister of Harry Payne Whitney, sister-in-law of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney), who had sold her mansion on the corner of 94th Street and Fifth Avenue subject to a restriction that the house would not be razed."

Mrs. Elmhirst's Fifth Avenue house became the headquarters of the National Aububon Society and then the International Center for Photography and then was converted back to a residence.

She was the youngest child of William C. Whitney and her December 16, 1968 obituary in The New York Times said she was “considered a great beauty and a leading figure in the New York social world,” adding that “she led marches for women’s suffrage and as president of the New York Junior League and later as first president of the National Junior Leagues ‘tried to keep alive in the privileged members of society the sense of responsibility for those less fortunate than themselves.’”

She also headed the Women’s Emergency Committee of the European Relief Council and married Willard Straight and they started The New Republic magazine. Mr. Straight died in 1918 and in 1925 she married Leonard K. Elmhirst and they purchased Dartington Hall, a 2,000-acre estate in England where they ran a school with lectures by Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley. One of her sons, Whitney Straight, became deputy chairman of Rolls-Royce Ltd., and one of her daughters, Beatrice Straight, was a well-known movie actress.

Location

This Carnegie Hill neighborhood is one of the most desirable in the city with many fine schools, museums and religious institutions as well as many attractive restaurants.

The building is directly across 93rd Street from the city's finest Georgian-style mansion and a little to the east of the city's finest Adamesque mansion.

The former was originally built for Francis F. Palmer by Delano & Aldrich and then expanded with a large courtyard and ballroom wing by the same firm for George F. Baker Jr., a leading banker, and is now the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia at 69-75 East 93d Street.

The latter was originally designed by Walker & Gillette in 1932 and was occupied for a while by showman Billy Rose, then the Smithers Alcoholism Center at 56 East 93rd Street and now is part of the nearby Spence School.