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The attractive, 12-story, mid-block, pre-war apartment building at 823 Park Avenue between 75th and 76th Street is now sheathed in its renovation garments. It is being converted from rental apartments to 10 full-floor condominium apartments and a duplex penthouse unit by Property Management Group.

It is separate from but very similar to 829 Park Avenue on the southeast corner at 76th Street that was erected in 1909 to designs by Pickering & Walker and converted to a cooperative in 1957. 829 has a deep light well on the avenue and it and 823 have protruding window bays in the center of their facades but 823 has two windows on either side of the protruding bay while 829 has only one on either side of its two protruding bays.

829 was built by William J. Taylor, who also erected 925 Park Avenue, designed by Delano & Aldrich, in 1909. 823 Park Avenue was presumably also developed by Taylor and designed by Pickering & Walker and was presumably built in 1910-11.

An article by Alexandra Bandon in The New York Times December 5, 2004 described a recent hearing by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission on rooftop and rear additions to 823 Park Avenue and noted that "a parade of residents from neighboring buildings rose to protest the design, calling the rear addition a 'monolith' and 'tumorlike growth' and saying it would block light to heir homes." The commission, however, the article continued, approved the rear addition but requested a redesign of the roof addition. State Senator Liz Krueger had testified in October that she was opposed to the plan to "construct a roughly twenty-foot by twenty-foot twelve-story addition to the building in the rear yard."

The penthouse duplex at 823 Park Avenue contains 7,500 square feet of interior space and more than 3,000 square feet of terraces. All apartments have been designed by Barry Rice and offer five bedrooms, five-and-a-half bathrooms and two fireplaces. The penthouse is on the market with a price-tag of about $35 million.

The building had been acquired in 1994 by Robert Manocherian, the nephew of Freydun Manocherian, the owner of the New York Health & Racquet Club, for about $4,175,000 when the building was put up at auction by the city, which had taken it over for tax arrears. At the time, the building had about 30 tenants.
Architecture Critic Carter Horsley Since 1997, Carter B. Horsley has been the editorial director of CityRealty. He began his journalistic career at The New York Times in 1961 where he spent 26 years as a reporter specializing in real estate & architectural news. In 1987, he became the architecture critic and real estate editor of The New York Post.