20 Park Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 20 Park Avenue by Carter Horsley

This handsome, 19-story rental apartment building was erected in 1939 and designed by Emery Roth.

It was the first apartment building to be erected in Murray Hill after the 1929 Crash and, according to "Mansions in the Clouds, The Skyscraper Palazzi of Emery Roth," by Steven Ruttenbaum, Balsam Press, Inc., 1986, the buff brick structure is a simplified version of those classically inspired buildings Roth designed at the peak of the twenties boom."

"The austerity of the thirties, though, is plainly evident in this high-class building," Mr. Ruttenbaum continued, "for it exhibits no terra-cotta pediments or cartouches. It does, however, have crenellated brickwork and a romantic, stepped-back profile reminiscent of Roth's earlier towers. Soaring above its relatively unadorned surfaces is a square water tower capped by a pyramidal red tile roof. Evidently, both the architect and the builders felt that a Park Avenue building as late as 1939 should still epitomize classical elegance and refinement."

"The typical floors of Twenty Park Avenue," he noted, "originally contained units of one to three rooms. In the upper, setback floors, there were also several four-room apartments with terraces, a five-room unit and a penthouse suite To enhance the marketability of the small one-room units, Roth included dressing rooms and foyers large enough for dining purposes; and to make the two-room A-line apartments more attractive, he equipped each with a circular dining foyer."

The building, which is also known as 45 East 35th Street, has a canopied, one-step-up entrance with a two-story entrance surround. It has a doorman, a 24/7 attended lobby, sidewalk landscaping. It is pet friendly and permits protruding air-conditioners.

Kitchens have stainless steel appliances and granite countertops.

Its façade is distinguished by crenellation bandcourses above the first floor and at three levels near the top and it also has long balconies in the middle of the south and east façades at the 16th floor. In addition, there is a rounded element at the base of the watertower on the south side that is very handsome and the fifth floor has thin bandcourses below and above it to interrupt the mass of the lower part of the building.

Many of the building's 96 apartments were renovated in 2009 and 2010.

The building is close to the Morgan Library on Madison Avenue at 36th Street and not far from the New York Public Library and Grand Central Terminal on 42nd Street. There is good public transportation.

The building was acquired in 2005 by Stonehenge Partners Inc., which is headed by Ofer Yardeni and Joel Seiden, who at the same time bought 41 Park Avenue, 167 East 82nd Street and 10 Downing Street. Its other properties include The Olivia on West 33rd Street and the Ritz Plaza on West 48th Street.