The conservatively elegant edifice at 740 Park Avenue on the southwest corner at 71^st Street is muted luxury: its polished granite entrance reeks of the prospects of satin sheets and the promise of the echoes of fine crystal.

The 31-unit, 19-story building also has an entrance on the side-street at 71 East 71st Street.

It was designed by Rosario Candela with Arthur Loomis Harmon, the design partner of Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, which designed the Empire State Building.

It was built in 1930.

740 Park Avenue was developed by James T. Lee on the site of his own private house and a limestone mansion that belonged to George Brewster. Lee had been a major developer whose other projects included 998 Fifth Avenue, designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1910, and the Shelton Hotel on Lexington Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets, designed by Arthur Loomis Harmon in 1924.

In his book, “The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter,” Andrew Alpern noted that Brewster took an apartment in the building that was later acquired by John D. Rockefeller Jr., who expanded it from a duplex to a triplex.  It was later reconfigured as a duplex.

The building, according to Mr. Alpern was “constructed as a co-operative venture but later became a conventional rental apartment house.”  “A reconversion to co-operative ownership was proposed in 1948 at a total price of $3.5 million but was not completed.  In 1952, Rockefeller bought the building from William Zeckendorf, who had held it for only a brief time. The following year Rockefeller resold it to himself and his neighbors as a newly reconstituted co-operative for a total price of $3.8 million,” Mr. Alpern noted.