2 East 67th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 2 East 67th Street by Carter Horsley

This handsome, limestone-clad apartment building was erected by Michael E. Paterno in 1928 and converted to a cooperative in 1953.

Designed in Italian-Renaissance-palazzo style by Rosario Candela, one of the foremost architects of residential apartment buildings of his era, Warren & Wetmore with Shreve and Lamb as consulting architects, it has only 15 apartments.

When it was built, it had nine simplex apartments of 14 rooms each, two duplex maisonettes and a penthouse duplex of 18 rooms.  Architectural historian Andrew Alpern has noted that "in 1944, the 4th floor apartment was divided in two" and "in 1954, the penthouse duplex was divided into two simplex units."

During construction, developer Paterno got into a legal battle with former Governor Nathan Miller, who lived in the adjoining house, over which of them had the right to the side street address of 2 East 67th Street, Alpern wrote, adding that Paterno won in 1930.

The 13-story building also has an address of 856 Fifth Avenue.

Although its façade is not as finely detailed as some of the avenue's other prestigious pre-war buildings such as 820 and 998, it is one of the city's premier addresses in part because it is close to many of the city's most fashionable boutiques and restaurants along Madison Avenue. It is also a bit removed from major tourist attractions such as the Central Park Zoo.

The building has very fine Central Park views, although its location at an entrance to a Central Park transverse road makes for considerable traffic and noise.

The bottom three floors of the building are rusticated and the center three windows on the floor beneath the cornice on Fifth Avenue are arched.

Apartments have 11-foot ceilings.  The apartment on the third floor has fireplaces in the living room, the library and the dining room, which all face Fifth Avenue, and in the master bedroom suite on the side-street.

According to an 2008 article by Annie Karni in the Page Six Magazine, "chairman and heir to the Estee Lauder fortune Leonard Lauder...lives in the penthouse and for years decided who would live beneath him," adding that "sources say that Arthur Carter, the founder and former publisher of the Observer, now runs the show.  Her article said that "the most recent sale in the building, according to The New York Post, was a ninth-floor aparatment belonging to the late Lee Lehman, the widow of Lehman Brothers founder Robert, which sold for $28 million in April 2007."  Subsequently Jonathan Tisch, co-chairman of the Loews Corporation, bought a 14-room unit from Myrna Ronson, the first wife of the late Howard Ronson, a real estate developer, on the 11th floor for  $48 million in July, 2008, then the most ever paid for a co-operative apartment in the city.

The building replaced the five-story townhouse of Judge and Mrs. Elbert H. Gary and Mrs. Gary subsequently bought an apartment in the new building.

Another prominent resident of the apartment building was Charles Allen Jr., the founder of Allen & Company, an investment firm.