50 Madison Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 50 Madison Avenue by Carter Horsley

In 1896, the five-story new headquarters of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals opened at 50 Madison Avenue on the northwest corner at 26th Street overlooking Madison Square Park.

Designed by the architectural firm of Renwick, Aspinwall & Owen, it was one of the most distinguished buildings surrounding the park, which extends south to 23rd Street and west to Fifth Avenue.

In their excellent book, "The A.I.A. Guide to New York City Architecture, Third Edition," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), Norval White and Elliot Willensky described the building as "A proper London club in delicately tooled limestone," advising architecture buffs to "Note the elaborately tooled cornice," and adding that "Even stray mongrels and alley cats deserved distinguished architecture in the 1890s."

That cornice is now gone as the building has been nicely remodeled in 2005 into an 11-story luxury condominium building by Samson Management, of which David M. Kershner is president.

The lower three floors of the old building have been preserved by the project's architects, Platt Byard Dovell White, and eight new, limestone-colored-precast panel-clad floors have been added.

The development was the first of several major residential conversions around the park. Other major projects include the former Gift Building down the block from this handsome project at 225 Fifth Avenue and the great former Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower at 1 Madison Avenue and the former International Toy Center at 200 Fifth Avenue and 1107 Broadway and 15 West 26th Street.

The apartments at 50 Madison Park, as the building is now known, are full-floor units and include a duplex penthouse that was on the market for more than $5 million. Sean Johnson designed the interiors of the three-bedroom, three-and-a-half bath apartments. The building has a doorman, individual storage units and permits pets, perhaps even "stray mongrels."

Madison Square Park was originally a potter s field and the northward expansion of the city reached it just before the start of the Civil War.

It soon became surrounded by hotels and brownstones and began to fill up with statues of Chester Allen Arthur by George Bissell, Admiral David G. Farragut by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and others and an eternal light flagpole that is work of Carrere & Hastings.

Its major transformation came with the erection of the great Madison Square Garden complex and tower designed by Stanford White in the late 19th Century directly across Madison Avenue from this site, and subsequently the completion of the Flatiron Building at 175 Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street in 1903 designed by Daniel H. Burnham, the great clocktower of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company at 1 Madison Avenue in 1909 designed by Napoleon LeBrun & Sons and the New York Life Insurance Company's gilded tower at 51 Madison Avenue in 1928 designed by Cass Gilbert on the former site of Madison Square Garden.

Despite such architectural glories, the park fell into decline. Mr. Kershner bought 50 Madison Avenue, directly across from the great New York Life Insurance Company building, in 2000 for $4.5 million. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, however, put his conversion plans on hold, but at the same time the an extensive renovation of the park began and it now has three popular Danny Meyer restaurants, 11 Madison Park and Tabla, both in the great former MetLife annex building at 11 Madison Avenue, and the Shake Shack, in the park.

Samson Management, based in Rego Park, Queens, owns and manages about 4,600 residences in the New York metropolitan region.

The A.S.P.C.A. moved out of the building in 1950.

Kitchens have cherry cabinetry and appliances by Sub-Zero, Viking and Bosch and a kitchen island with a wine cooler.