4 Park Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 4 Park Avenue by Carter Horsley

This handsome building with two light courts occupies the southwest corner of 34th Street and Park Avenue and originally was the 22-story Vanderbilt Hotel, was converted to offices and in 1967 was converted to a rental apartment building with 364 apartments.

It is distinguished by a great roofline punctuated by very large terra-cotta busts. It was built in 1913 and designed by Warren & Wetmore, co-architects of Grand Central Terminal, the famous railroad station for the trains that were owned by the Vanderbilt family.

The building is opposite the mixed-use, orange-brick tower that is turned at a 45-degree angle with the avenue, which opens up more views for this building. That tower, 3 Park Avenue, was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon Associates and in 1976 replaced the 71st Regiment Armory that had been designed by Clinton & Russell in 1905.

While there is considerable traffic at this location, the car tunnel under Park Avenue, which goes from 33rd to 40th Streets, has minimized it to a certain extent. The upper end of Park Avenue South is 32nd Street.

Two impressive Art Deco-style office buildings face each other across the avenue on the block to the south of this building. The attractive Murray Hill district is to the north of 34th Street and the wonderful Morgan Library museum is nearby at Madison Avenue and 36th Street and the Empire State Building is just two blocks to the west.

There is excellent public transportation at this location, which is a few blocks north of the very lively Flatiron District.

This gray-brick building has a canopied entrance with a concierge, a large lobby, a bronze sculpture of an eagle at its entrance, but no garage, no balconies, no terraces and no sidewalk landscaping.

A large restaurant has occupied the building's 33rd Street frontage for many years and has changed hands many times. The current tenant is Wolfgang's Steakhouse, run by the Wolfgang Zwiener, who was a famous headwaiter at Peter Luger's steakhouse for 40 years (though he got his start at Luchow's). The space, previously was called Vanderbilt Station and had been famous as the Della Robbia Bar, aka The Crypt. The vaulted Gaustavino ceiling is the big claim to fame.

Christopher Gray devoted his March 9, 2003 "Streetscapes" column in The New York Times to this building.

"THE delicate Adam-style terra cotta decoration of the former Vanderbilt Hotel at 34th Street and Park Avenue received rough treatment in the 1960's -- the lower façade was stripped away and some statues on the parapet were removed. But much terra cotta remained, and it was repaired in a façade alteration that ended last year.

"Part of the building's interior is a landmark, but the exterior is unprotected, and the future of what was once a widely praised work of architecture raises interesting questions for preservationists.

"Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, the great-grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad magnate, built the hotel in 1912. Heir to millions, Alfred Vanderbilt had grown up in the palatial family house at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, where Bergdorf-Goodman now stands. He built his new hotel primarily for permanent residents, to accommodate a new generation of the rich who sought freedom from household cares - including himself. He took two floors at the top of the 22-story building.

"The architects Warren & Wetmore (co-designers of Grand Central Terminal, also build for the Vanderbilt family) designed one of the most widely admired buildings of the period, a slim, high rectangular mass of variegated steel-gray brick and cream-colored terra cotta.

"The building was in fact a showcase for terra cotta. The ground floor boasted huge Adam-style windows with delicate fluted fans; the upper portions had a rich, frothy network of terra-cotta colonettes, helmets, lions' heads and lozenge shapes, all set against a crisscross brick pattern. The roof omitted the usual projecting cornice (by then criticized for casting shadows) for a parapet festooned with lacy decoration with classical heads. To add a whimsical touch, the curving parapet at the top was outlined in electric lights.

"A critic for the magazine Architecture & Building loved the gray brick for its complex undercurrent of ''hidden and indescribable golden browns and blues,'' calling it ''a sight worth crossing a continent to see.'' Susan Tunick, head of the Friends of Terra Cotta, says that the material was the work of the New Jersey Terra Cotta Company.

"The emphasis on permanent residents in the Vanderbilt freed Warren & Wetmore from the usual constraints of hotel design. Since the hotel did not require a large ballroom, the architects were able to make the first floor one huge lounge, with high vaulted ceilings. A portion of the ground floor was set up as a dining room, but the much larger grill room and bar - several fantastical arched spaces covered in polychrome terra cotta - were on the basement floor....

"Amenities like pneumatic tubes that could deliver messages from bottom to top in seven seconds led the magazine American Architect to praise the Vanderbilt as 'a memory of the land of ancient courtesies' in an increasingly hectic age....

"The 1915 census included residents like Duncan Roberts, 62, president of the United States Express Company, a parcel-delivery concern. The census, recorded in June, did not list Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt. He had died a hero in May after giving his life jacket to a woman on the Lusitania, which sank after being torpedoed by the Germans off Ireland.

"Vanderbilt's apartment was taken over by the Women's City Club, whose literary and politically active members came to hear guests like George Kirchwey, warden of Sing Sing prison, lecture on social issues.

"The renowned tenor Enrico Caruso later took the suite. On. Jan. 1, 1921, ill with pleurisy, he was attended by six physicians, who were especially concerned that the noise from New Year's revelers was keeping him awake, even though they were far below. Caruso died in Naples that August.

"The Vanderbilt heirs sold the building in 1925. In 1967, the hotel was converted to apartments on the upper floors, with offices on the lower six. The bar adjacent to the terra cotta grill complex survived fairly intact and is now the restaurant Vanderbilt Station. At the time, one plan was to strip the building to its steel frame. But only the lower floors were modernized, by the architects Schuman, Lichtenstein & Claman. The lower façade was stripped away, replaced with a modern façade of travertine.

"A dozen or more of the terra cotta statues on the parapet were removed to improve the view from several new penthouse apartments. Peter Claman, who worked on the project, says that he took a number of the terra cotta busts for his own use. Others were given to an art dealer, and two wound up at the Brooklyn Museum Sculpture Garden. In 1994 the surviving portion the terra cotta bar was designated an interior landmark. But a 1985 survey by the Landmarks Preservation Commission said that the exterior had less architectural significance, perhaps because of the modernization of the lower section.

"Last year the building's owner, Four Park Avenue Associates, completed a $700,000 façade alteration. The architects, Israel Berger & Associates, did the normal repointing and limited patching of what Mr. Berger describes as ''ordinary deterioration.''

"Stanford Chan, an architect in the firm, said that the terra cotta was in generally good condition, including the remaining projecting busts ringing the parapet, and that the repair is more or less invisible from the street...."