The Capitol, 776 Sixth Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 776 Sixth Avenue by Carter Horsley

This handsome, 39-story building at 56 West 26th Street in Chelsea was erected in 2001 and has 387 rental apartments.

Its lower four floors contain 83,000 square feet of retail and office space.

The building, which replaced the Coogan Building that was erected in the 1870s as a racquet club and served for decades as loft space, has a very attractive mid-block plaza.

It was developed by the Witkoff Group of Manhattan and the Adell Corporation of Greenwich, Conn. That partnership had three parcels at this former Flower District location that was rezoned for residential uses in 1995 and it sold one of them and had plans to develop the third.

Leonard Adell, the founder of the Adell Corporation, started to assemble property in the Flower District in the 1970s but his attempts to get the area rezoned to permit residential units was not successful until 1995 when the corridor from 24th to 31st Street was rezoned.

This burnt orange-and-red-brick building has plum brick and ornamental stone accents and was designed by Costas Kondylis, who told The New York Times that its rounded corners were designed to recall the Flatiron Building nearby on Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street.

It has rounded corners and many of the apartments are wide and boxy and have u-shaped kitchens or kitchen islands.

There are many bay windows and some corner apartments have pie-shaped living rooms.

In the 1870s, Alfred H. Thorp designed a six-story building for the Racquet Court Club and according to an article by David W. Dunlap in the December 10, 1995 edition of The New York Times it was distinguished by its monumental arched windows and fine brickwork" and "had two courts, a gymnasium, a running track, weight and rowing machines, sparring and fencing rooms, billiard tables and a bowling alley." The club moved in 1891 to 43rd Street and eventually settled at its present location on Park Avenue across from the Seagram Building and its former clubhouse on Sixth Avenue was acquired by Harriet G. Coogan.

The building, which is also known as 776 Sixth Avenue, is known as the Capitol at Chelsea.

It has a canopied entrance, a doorman, a garage, a health club, a roof deck and larger apartments have washers and dryers.

The building has an attractive, 50-foot-wide plaza on its east side.