Manhattan House

Manhattan House is located at 200 East 66th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. It occupies a city block bounded by Third Avenue to the west, 66th Street to the north, Second Avenue to the east, and 65th Street to the south. The land lot is rectangular and covers , with a frontage of about on either avenue and about on either street. but the building's developer, the New York Life Insurance Company, had donated a strip of land along 66th Street to the government of New York City prior to Manhattan House's construction. Plane trees were planted on both sides of 66th Street and in the median; a wall of granite blocks separates the two roadways. in foreground, 1936). The Second Avenue and Third Avenue elevated railway lines of the New York City Subway had been constructed in the 1880s, significantly lowering land values in the area between these lines. In conjunction with Manhattan House's construction, New York Life also acquired property on all four sides of the building. The company acquired ten low-rise apartment buildings at 205–227 East 66th Street immediately to the north, then hired Carlisle H. Johnson to redesign the buildings in a modern style in 1951, with gray-green brick and continuous design details. The structures on 66th Street served as a "protective buffer", preserving views for residents of Manhattan House. New York Life also hired Fellheimer & Wagner to design a two-story structure on the east side of Second Avenue between 65th and 66th Streets, which contained the Beekman Theatre and two banks. New York Life had leased the block to the south with plans to build a parking garage and public park there, but the garage and park were never built, and the company ultimately took over the remaining structures on the site in 1958. Finally, the insurance company bought a pair of tenement houses to the west, at 1116 and 1118 Third Avenue, but was unable to acquire additional property on either side of the tenements. New York Life sold off all of these sites to developers between 1960 and 1996. == Architecture ==

Manhattan House was designed in the modernist style by Gordon Bunshaft of architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), in partnership with the firm Mayer & Whittlesey, composed of Albert Mayer and Julian Whittlesey. Bunshaft, the project's lead architect, expressed doubts about the extent of Mayer & Whittlesey's involvement in the project, claiming that New York Life was not "excited about their kind of architecture". Bunshaft's claim conflicts with the fact that Manhattan House has many architectural features in common with Mayer & Whittlesey's design with 40 Central Park South; furthermore, New York Life had acquired the site on Mayer & Whittlesey's recommendation. Form facade with projecting glass balconies. There is a taxi on the road to the left.|thumb|Manhattan House as seen from across the intersection of Third Avenue and 66th Street Manhattan House is a 21-story structure measuring tall. The building occupies the center of the block between 65th and 66th Street The structure measures long from west to east. This contrasted with older apartment buildings in New York City, where the exterior facades extended to the lot line and the gardens were placed within the building's interior. Each section consists of two wings that extend outward from a central "spine", which provided natural light to each apartment without the need for light courts; there are ten wings in total. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) described the floor plan as an elongated "H", The building is flanked by low-rise retail podiums to the west and east; As such, the building rises as a continuous slab to the 18th story; only the penthouses on the 19th and 20th stories are set back. The garden is surrounded by a low granite wall, enabling the public to view the garden while providing residents with privacy. When the building was converted to condominiums in the late 2000s, Sasaki Associates redesigned the garden. Two sculptures by Hans Van de Bovenkamp, known as Trinity and Red Gateway, were installed during the renovation. Facade The facade is made of white brick. Manhattan House was one of the first in New York City to use pale white brick as the primary material in its facade. When Manhattan House was built, the New York Herald Tribune described the building as the first large apartment house to use "full ceramic brick impervious to dirt and stain" on its facade. The brick was glazed, which allowed dirt to wash off in the rain. Each of the building's two main entrances consists of a driveway and sidewalk that curves underneath the building, which in turn leads to a set of glass-and-aluminum doors. There are curved light boxes next to the driveways, as well as recessed lights mounted onto pillars next to the driveways. In addition, there are planted areas with iron fences between either driveway and the street, as well as on either side of both entrances. To the east of the eastern entrance are a stairway and ramp leading to a doctor's office; a storefront facing Second Avenue; and a planting bed with granite-block walls topped by an iron fence. Next to the western entrance is a storefront facing Third Avenue, a granite planting bed, and an iron fence. The residential floors were originally arranged with casement windows and ribbon windows, which one writer described as being 40 percent larger than average windows at the time. The balconies span the entire width of the living or dining rooms; there is also a window next to all bedrooms that are adjacent to a balcony. Each of the balconies has glass railings, which were intended to reduce their visual impact. and apartments with balconies were generally rented out at higher rates than their counterparts without the feature. Features The exterior of Manhattan House resembles a continuous slab, but each of the building's five sections is physically separated to reduce the amount of space required for hallways. Only the basement, lobby, and roof of each section are connected to each other. most tenants chose to operate the elevators themselves, although they could also use a buzzer to summon an elevator operator. Lobby and amenity spaces As planned in 1948, the first floor of the building was supposed to contain a lobby, a restaurant, doctors' offices, and seven apartments. As built, the ground level included several lobbies, a restaurant space, and of storefront space, The Third Avenue side of the building contains of ground-level storefront space and of storefront space in the basement. in addition to an outdoor terrace. Originally, the garage was planned to have 175 parking spaces. In addition, there were loading areas in the basement for delivery trucks and moving trucks, which entered and exited the building from 65th Street. Manhattan House's lobby also contains glass walls on either side, facing the gardens, It was one of the first apartment lobbies in New York City with glass walls on two sides, which allowed pedestrians to see through the lobby. According to a 1952 advertisement for contractor Atlas White Cement, the lobby contains 74 concrete columns. These columns are covered in cast stone cladding with space for heating risers; each column is clad with two U-shaped granite slabs measuring high and thick. The top story contained a roof garden that spanned the building's length. During the condo-conversion project, the roof garden was converted into a rooftop bar. this had increased to 583 apartments by the late 2000s. Each section contained at most six apartments per floor. About 60 of the apartments were equipped with fireplaces, which started above the 12th story. Some of the original rental apartments were combined; for example, two units were merged to create a penthouse with four bedrooms and four fireplaces. The penthouses were redesigned in 2014 by Cuban-born interior designer Vicente Wolf. These apartments included materials such as mica, white oak, and stainless steel, as well as countertops made of Caesarstone quartz. The 21st floor contains a penthouse with nine bedrooms, eight-and-a-half bathrooms, a fireplace, a media room, a private gym, a playroom, and a dedicated service entrance. As part of the condo conversion, Wolf also designed custom stainless-steel fireplace mantels for existing apartments. == History ==

Development The Third Avenue Transit Corporation sold off ten plots at auction in November 1946, including the car barn on the block bounded by Second Avenue, 65th Street, Third Avenue, and 66th Street. The New York Life Insurance Company bought the 66th Street site for $1.6 million, beating out bidders that included a film studio. New York Life quickly announced plans for a moderate-income apartment complex on the site; it planned to rent out the rooms for $50 per month. In addition, New York Life leased a site immediately to the south, which it originally planned to use as a parking lot. New York Life took title to the site in August 1947 and immediately began demolishing the car barn, a process that was planned to take four months. Because insurance companies at the time were restricted from developing certain types of housing in the city, New York Life planned a limited-dividend development. New York Life hired SOM and Mayer & Whittlesey as architects for the project. and it was to be flanked by gardens on 65th and 66th Streets. The company also proposed a public parking garage on the block immediately to the south, with 1,400 to 2,000 parking spaces, and it planned to donate some land along 66th Street to the city government, allowing that street to be widened. Mayer & Whittlesley and SOM submitted plans for the development to the New York City Department of Buildings in January 1948, which mayor William O'Dwyer ultimately halted in August 1948. Later the same month, New York Life announced that it had postponed the planned apartment building indefinitely because of rising construction costs; the company would instead use the site as a 500-space parking lot. New York Life announced in April 1949 that the general contractor, Cauldwell-Wingate Company, would immediately begin constructing the building, which was to be known as Manhattan House. The development was originally expected to cost $11–14 million. and workers began pouring the concrete floor slabs that August. but a court subsequently halted these plans. and New York Life displayed a "model apartment" at the building the next month. New York Life ownership The first residents began moving into the building at the beginning of October 1950. The apartments were rented at 22 different prices; the cheapest apartment cost $95 per month, while the most expensive penthouse cost $750 per month. There was even high demand for parking spaces in the building's garage, which cost $35 per month and had a waiting list by 1952. Through traffic on 66th Street began traveling westbound, but the service road in front of Manhattan House still carried eastbound traffic. New York Life extended the service road to cover the entire block, making that segment of 66th Street a two-way road, and installed two U-turns in the median to allow westbound vehicles to access the building's service road. After the New York State Legislature passed the Rent Stabilization Law of 1969, all the apartments were protected by rent regulation or rent control. Manhattan House remained an upscale development in the 1970s; at the time, the average monthly rent was $1,000, and the building employed 132 people. The New York Observer reported that one potential resident during the 1970s, a producer for NBC "recalled wearing white gloves to the interview and answering questions about her parents' background despite having long established her own career—and a years-long wait list". New York Life officials said they were replacing all 6,800 windows to save energy and to prevent them from unintentionally opening due to high winds. Local civic group Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts began advocating for the LPC to designate Manhattan House, as well as two other post–World War II structures on the Upper East Side, as official city landmarks in 2002. At the time, a spokesperson for the group said the three buildings' modern-style designs "did want to stand out. That is what made people hate it. But it is an important part of our collective history." Sale and condominium conversion By mid-2005, New York Life was planning to sell Manhattan House for as much as $600 million amid an increase in real-estate prices during the 2000s United States housing bubble. The company reportedly received offers from investors such as Yair Levy and RFR Holding. Around October 21, 2005, or $625 million. At the time, about half of the building's tenants were protected by rent regulation or rent control and paid $1,800 per month. The remaining residents were paying market rates of up to $20,000 per month; their units had been deregulated because their pre-existing monthly rent had been over the then rent control threshold of $2,000. Kalikow justified the high purchase and conversion price by saying that the East Side contained a shortage of upscale condos. Unlike typical condo conversions, where developers paid for the projects with their own money, the partners raised money for the project from capital calls. and many residents, who were largely rich and elderly, were moving out by early 2006. Existing tenants claimed that O'Connor and Kalikow had refused to renew their leases, had increased their rent significantly, and were harassing them with loud construction noises. These tenants also alleged that the men were offering a lower-than-normal "insider's discount", compared with condos of similar size, to existing residents who wanted to buy condos. One resident claimed that her grandfather had died because of the stress associated with being evicted from the building. Other residents claimed that the building suffered from rat infestations, flooding, and unlawfully high accumulations of asbestos. Revised offering plan O'Connor's company, O'Connor Capital Partners, submitted a revised offering plan in October 2007, The revised offering plan indicated that the condos would be sold for a total of $958 million; in addition, the discount for existing residents was increased from 15 to 25 percent. He obtained a $750 million loan for the building from German bank HSH Nordbank; and sales of condominiums began the next month. O'Connor wished to sell the building's retail space for $100 million by March 2008, and the attorney general's office declared the offering plan to be effective in August 2008. at the time, stores such as Aldo, Club Monaco, Lululemon Athletica, and Staples Inc. occupied all of the retail space. Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group was hired as the project's new broker in early 2009, replacing Prudential Douglas Elliman. By then, 140 buyers had signed purchase contracts, and about 60 buyers had finalized their contracts. Ultimately, O'Connor Capital Partners spent $1.1 billion on the conversion, By 2010, there was again increasing demand for condos at Manhattan House. To accommodate these increases in demand, O'Connor started selling several larger apartments, At the same time, O'Connor was still involved in a lawsuit with 35 holdout tenants, who still occupied rental apartments. In 2014, Madison Capital and JPMorgan Chase sold the retail space to German firm GLL Real Estate Partners for $110 million. The same year, O'Connor began selling the penthouse apartments (which had remained previously unsold) after Vicente Wolf had renovated them. The same year, Manhattan House surpassed $1 billion in total condominium sales, with 69 percent of the units sold. == Notable tenants ==

Among Manhattan House's first residents was Gordon Bunshaft, he displayed art and modern furniture in his apartment. The actress Grace Kelly, who became the Princess of Monaco in 1956, was another early tenant, relocating to Manhattan House from the nearby Barbizon Hotel for Women. Baseball player Jackie Robinson also lived at Manhattan House. After the building was converted to condos, its residents included David Sackler of the Sackler pharmaceutical family. == Impact ==

Reception , with glass windows, and there are balconies on several stories. Prior to the building's completion, New York World-Telegram editor James L. Holton quoted an advisor for New York Life as saying that Manhattan House was "the new Rockefeller Center" in terms of its importance. The next year, the same magazine wrote that Manhattan House "carries out on a large scale, in a big city, an indoor-outdoor synthesis hitherto found mostly in modern country homes". praised the structure as a "paragon of economy, elegance, and utility". calling it "extremely attractive in appearance and beautiful in detailing and materials". Influence on other buildings Although Manhattan House was widely praised, few developments on the Upper East Side followed its lead, largely because of the dearth of available sites in the neighborhood that occupied an entire block. Its design did inspire that of numerous other white-brick structures around New York City, including 2 Fifth Avenue, Washington Square Village, Stewart House, Imperial House, and the buildings at 215 East 68th Street and 500 East 77th Street. By 1994, Manhattan House was one of about 200 white-brick buildings in the city. Historic Districts Council director Simeon Bankoff said that, although white brick had become an overused material, "Manhattan House is an incredibly important building, and it was really the very best of a bad lot." A 1966 New York Times article credited the construction of Manhattan House, along with the Sutton Terrace development on Sutton Place, with having helped revitalize the southernmost part of the Upper East Side. Carter B. Horsley of the Times described Manhattan House as a "pioneer project" among large residential developments on the Upper East Side; according to Horsley, such developments had reached the northernmost part of the neighborhood by the early 1980s. Horsley also attributed Manhattan House, as well as Butterfield House, as having influenced lobby designs in New York City, denoting "the transition from the somewhat modest simplicity of most lobbies since the Depression". == See also ==