With the recent removal of construction barricades on 72nd Street near the southwest corner of Madison at 72nd Street that intersection has become one of the city's most glamorous.
Ralph Lauren, the fashion designer, has ensconced his company on both of the ornate and handsome southern corners, one of which he built from scratch and recently completed expanding to the west.
The two, low-rise, limestone-clad buildings not only complement one another very graciously in scale and visual interest, but also enable the very attractive, pre-war apartment buildings on the north corners to have impressive and expansive views to the south.
The Lauren buildings, of course, are not a formal gateway to the upper reaches of Lenox Hill's main boutique artery as Madison Avenue's shops extend many blocks to the south of the 72nd Street intersection.
The new building does not ape its neighbor but complements it with grace and pomp and in so doing the two buildings dramatically raise the ante urbanistically for the taller pre-war apartment houses on the north corners. The sum here is greater than the parts.
The northwest corner is occupied by 19 East 72nd Street, a graceful, limestone-clad cooperative apartment building notable for its very sensual base of vertical curves, the city's best parenthesis.
One of the most elegant buildings on Madison Avenue, this handsome cooperative apartment building has an undulating base that is perhaps the most attractive in the city as its sinuous curves ripple and soften the building's mass.
The building was designed in 1937 by Rosario Candela and Mott B. Schmidt, two of the city's foremost residential architects, to replace one of the city's most celebrated mansions, McKim, Mead & White's Romanesque-Revival, Charles L. Tiffany mansion.
Unlike most of Candela's pre-war buildings, which share an Italian Renaissance order of architectural juggling, this one is relatively spartan in its detail and more Art Moderne in its temperament.
Its very graceful and subtle arcs of the curves are superbly proportioned and soften the what would otherwise be the traditionally hard edges of the building. The vertical curves, which are limited to the lower three stories, give the otherwise quite formal building an undeniable and memorable air of graciousness.
It is in marked contrast with its older neighbor on the northeast corner, the very handsome but staid, 14-story, 35-unit apartment building at 31 East 72nd Street that was erected in 1916 and converted to a cooperative in 1958. That building also has a limestone facade with large quoins. Its northwest corner on the avenue is a bit unusual because it has double quoins.
It is directly across 72nd Street from the former Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo building that is now the Ralph Lauren store. Of all the mansions remaining in Manhattan, the Lauren store on the southeast corner at 72nd Street is perhaps the most picturesque. It is a deliriously detailed chateau with a myriad of deeply inset windows, arched windows, balconies, statues, and great tall chimneys.
Designed by Kimball & Thompson, it was commissioned in 1895 in 16th Century French chateau style for Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo as one of the largest private residences in the city.
Ms. Waldo, however, never moved into it.
What is extraordinary about the Lauren ventures is that he replaced his quite attractive two-story, modern building with a large, working fireplace in a sunken room on the first floor on the west side of the avenue with a new, four-story building that not only looks like it was transplanted from some Parisian arrondissement but also has been expanded into an adjacent townhouse that was completely gutted. The old building looked new and the new building looks old.
Scaffolding in front of the adjacent townhouse was only removed recently although the interiors have been in use since the store at 888 Madison Avenue opened in November, 2010.
Thanks to the new Lauren building, this intersection has balanced off the loss of the robust and impressive Tiffany mansion and it has significantly lessened the isolation of the Waldo mansion that Lauren took over a generation ago.
Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo's building was completed in 1909 but she never moved in and she died in 1914. Ten years later, the vacant house was converted into stores on the first floor and two upstairs apartments.
Before Lauren took the building over, it had been used by Christie's, the auction house, and Zabar's, the gourmet food store.
In his March 16, 2009 "Streetscapes" column in The New York Times, Christopher Gray noted that "in 1893, Ruth Brown, a widow, hired McKim, Mead & White to design a house at the southwest corner of Madison and 72nd Street. Mrs. Brown's town house was finished in 1894, but for unexplained reasons she never occupied it. She sold it in early 1895 to Alva Vanderbilt, recently divorced from William K. Vanderbilt II....In the year of her arrival, Mrs. Vanderbilt staged one of the most important social events of the decade: the wedding of her daughter, Consuelo, to the Duke of Marlborough....The Vanderbilt house was eventually sold to William Bayard Cutting, a lawyer, reformer and member of another socially prominent family....The Cuttings sold the house in 1941, and 10 years later it was replaced with a two-story-high taxpayer-style building, designed by Boak & Raad with severe simplicity."
Ralph Lauren acquired the old Rhinelander mansion for his flagship store in 1986, and seven years later took over the taxpayer on the site of the Cutting house. He commissioned Weddle Gilmore Architects to design a two-story, neo-Classic retail building on the site as a flagship store for his Polo line.
That 1993 plan led to the abandonment of a 1990 plan by Lawrence Friedland to erect a four-story building in 1990 designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer on the site.
For many visitors the interiors are disconcertingly vast - just one enormous, seemingly unending treasure hunt as each room seemed to lead to more. The disconnect was not so unreal as the interiors of the adjacent building on 72nd Street had been gutted to provide more interior space than might have been assumed from the building's exterior.
The new Lauren building is definitely a very attractive addition to Madison Avenue whose above-the-ground-floor architecture is often less than grand.
Carter B. Horsley
March 8, 2012
Ralph Lauren, the fashion designer, has ensconced his company on both of the ornate and handsome southern corners, one of which he built from scratch and recently completed expanding to the west.
The two, low-rise, limestone-clad buildings not only complement one another very graciously in scale and visual interest, but also enable the very attractive, pre-war apartment buildings on the north corners to have impressive and expansive views to the south.
The Lauren buildings, of course, are not a formal gateway to the upper reaches of Lenox Hill's main boutique artery as Madison Avenue's shops extend many blocks to the south of the 72nd Street intersection.
The new building does not ape its neighbor but complements it with grace and pomp and in so doing the two buildings dramatically raise the ante urbanistically for the taller pre-war apartment houses on the north corners. The sum here is greater than the parts.
The northwest corner is occupied by 19 East 72nd Street, a graceful, limestone-clad cooperative apartment building notable for its very sensual base of vertical curves, the city's best parenthesis.
One of the most elegant buildings on Madison Avenue, this handsome cooperative apartment building has an undulating base that is perhaps the most attractive in the city as its sinuous curves ripple and soften the building's mass.
The building was designed in 1937 by Rosario Candela and Mott B. Schmidt, two of the city's foremost residential architects, to replace one of the city's most celebrated mansions, McKim, Mead & White's Romanesque-Revival, Charles L. Tiffany mansion.
Unlike most of Candela's pre-war buildings, which share an Italian Renaissance order of architectural juggling, this one is relatively spartan in its detail and more Art Moderne in its temperament.
Its very graceful and subtle arcs of the curves are superbly proportioned and soften the what would otherwise be the traditionally hard edges of the building. The vertical curves, which are limited to the lower three stories, give the otherwise quite formal building an undeniable and memorable air of graciousness.
It is in marked contrast with its older neighbor on the northeast corner, the very handsome but staid, 14-story, 35-unit apartment building at 31 East 72nd Street that was erected in 1916 and converted to a cooperative in 1958. That building also has a limestone facade with large quoins. Its northwest corner on the avenue is a bit unusual because it has double quoins.
It is directly across 72nd Street from the former Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo building that is now the Ralph Lauren store. Of all the mansions remaining in Manhattan, the Lauren store on the southeast corner at 72nd Street is perhaps the most picturesque. It is a deliriously detailed chateau with a myriad of deeply inset windows, arched windows, balconies, statues, and great tall chimneys.
Designed by Kimball & Thompson, it was commissioned in 1895 in 16th Century French chateau style for Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo as one of the largest private residences in the city.
Ms. Waldo, however, never moved into it.
What is extraordinary about the Lauren ventures is that he replaced his quite attractive two-story, modern building with a large, working fireplace in a sunken room on the first floor on the west side of the avenue with a new, four-story building that not only looks like it was transplanted from some Parisian arrondissement but also has been expanded into an adjacent townhouse that was completely gutted. The old building looked new and the new building looks old.
Scaffolding in front of the adjacent townhouse was only removed recently although the interiors have been in use since the store at 888 Madison Avenue opened in November, 2010.
Thanks to the new Lauren building, this intersection has balanced off the loss of the robust and impressive Tiffany mansion and it has significantly lessened the isolation of the Waldo mansion that Lauren took over a generation ago.
Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo's building was completed in 1909 but she never moved in and she died in 1914. Ten years later, the vacant house was converted into stores on the first floor and two upstairs apartments.
Before Lauren took the building over, it had been used by Christie's, the auction house, and Zabar's, the gourmet food store.
In his March 16, 2009 "Streetscapes" column in The New York Times, Christopher Gray noted that "in 1893, Ruth Brown, a widow, hired McKim, Mead & White to design a house at the southwest corner of Madison and 72nd Street. Mrs. Brown's town house was finished in 1894, but for unexplained reasons she never occupied it. She sold it in early 1895 to Alva Vanderbilt, recently divorced from William K. Vanderbilt II....In the year of her arrival, Mrs. Vanderbilt staged one of the most important social events of the decade: the wedding of her daughter, Consuelo, to the Duke of Marlborough....The Vanderbilt house was eventually sold to William Bayard Cutting, a lawyer, reformer and member of another socially prominent family....The Cuttings sold the house in 1941, and 10 years later it was replaced with a two-story-high taxpayer-style building, designed by Boak & Raad with severe simplicity."
Ralph Lauren acquired the old Rhinelander mansion for his flagship store in 1986, and seven years later took over the taxpayer on the site of the Cutting house. He commissioned Weddle Gilmore Architects to design a two-story, neo-Classic retail building on the site as a flagship store for his Polo line.
That 1993 plan led to the abandonment of a 1990 plan by Lawrence Friedland to erect a four-story building in 1990 designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer on the site.
For many visitors the interiors are disconcertingly vast - just one enormous, seemingly unending treasure hunt as each room seemed to lead to more. The disconnect was not so unreal as the interiors of the adjacent building on 72nd Street had been gutted to provide more interior space than might have been assumed from the building's exterior.
The new Lauren building is definitely a very attractive addition to Madison Avenue whose above-the-ground-floor architecture is often less than grand.
Carter B. Horsley
March 8, 2012
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.
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