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1922 1105 Park Avenue
Featured in Andrew Alpern’s book The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter page 176
NB 570-1922
Park Avenue, 1101-1107
14-sty bk apt, 100×123
Cost:
$1,250,000
Owner:
1101 Park Av. Corp, 200 W 72d [72nd]
Architect:
Rosario Candela, 200 W 72d [72nd]
Address in Real Estate Record:
PARK AV, 1101-7
Located in Park Avenue Historic District designated 29 April 2014
1105 Park Avenue at the northeast corner of 89th Street, 1922
– Michael E. Paterno
Designed by Rosario Candela, this pleasant, red-brick apartment building at 1105 Park Avenue on the northeast corner at 89th Street in the heart of the desirable Carnegie Hill neighborhood was erected in 1923 and converted to a cooperative in 1951. The 15-story edifice has 61 apartments. Widely considered to have been the country’s greatest designer of luxury apartment buildings, Candela collaborated with many of the city’s most famous architectural firms.
“The building has a one-story rusticated limestone base and a canopied entrance beneath an attractive, rusticated limestone window reveal on the second floor and a very impressive and ornate limestone window reveal on the third floor flanked by female figures that the “Carnegie Hill Architectural Guide,” which was published by Carnegie Hill Neighbors, observed were “suggestive of expectant caryatids,” adding that they support a broken pediment, in the center of which is a shield bearing the letter P, for Michael Paterno, the developer.
The building, which also has four stringcourses and nice masonry quoins, has inconsistent fenestration and protruding air-conditioners. It has no sidewalk landscaping. The first floor windows sills have nice, curved limestone brackets. In his November 5, 2006 “Streetscapes” column in The New York Times, Christopher Gray noted that “relative to Candela’s later superluxury work, it [1105] was a modest achievement, with lightly variegated brick and abbreviated trim, except for the three-story carved limestone decoration around the main entrance, Paterno’s “P” in the shield at the top,” adding that the “window openings have a deadening regularity.” “The lobby, though, is of some note,” he added, “an elegantly reserved space: polished marble and plain plaster walls, much more tasteful than average at the time.”” (source)
“It was in 1923 that Michael Paterno completed the first at this intersection, 1105 Park, one of the first designs of the legendary Rosario Candela. But relative to Candela’s later superluxury work, it was a modest achievement, with lightly variegated brick and abbreviated trim, except for the three-story carved limestone decoration around the main entrance, Paterno’s “P” in the shield at the top. The window openings have a deadening regularity. The lobby, though, is of some note, an elegantly reserved space: polished marble and plain plaster walls, much more tasteful than average at the time. More often, lobbies were encumbered by the meretricious ornamentation that developers, both past and present, seem to think will attract buyers….Among Park Avenue intersections, this one rates pretty high on the architecture scale, with only No. 1105 (this reporter’s home for the last 18 years) verging on the quotidian….Several years ago, the co-op of No. 1105 cleaned its facade, returning the brick and limestone to the way it must have looked in the 1920s. But the building’s intricate copper cornice was not cleaned, and thus still bears years of a rather lovely oxidation.” STREETSCAPES | PARK AVENUE AND 89TH STREET Intersection Showcases a Quartet Emblematic of New York By Christopher Gray Nov. 5, 2006
Christopher Gray, New York Times Streetscapes reporter, lived in 1105 Park Avenue designed by Rosario Candela and built by Michael Paterno.
– 1105 Park Ave, Apt 6C, New York, NY, 10128-1200 (source)
– Christopher Stewart Gray (April 24, 1950 – March 10, 2017) on Wikipedia
The district’s first apartment house to offer [penthouse living] may have been 1105 Park (Rosario Candela, 1922-23), at the northeast corner of 89th Street. This 14-story building was one of Candela’s earliest works. Commissioned by developer Michael E. Paterno, who built at least three subsequent buildings in the district, it featured a seven-room “roof garden apartment” that was described in advertisements as promising a “Beautiful outlook.” Park Avenue Historic District Designation Report April 29, 2014
1105 Park Avenue (aka 1101-1107 Park Avenue; 101-105 East 89th Street)
Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 1518, Lot 1
Date: 1922-23 (NB 570-1922)
Architect/Builder: Rosario Candela
Original Owner: 1101 Park Ave Corp (Michael E. Paterno, president)
Type: Apartment building
Style: Renaissance Revival
Stories: 14 and penthouse
Material(s): Brick; limestone; granite
Significant Architectural Features: Tripartite composition with one-story base, 12-story middle section, and one-story upper section; base clad with rusticated limestone with
granite water table; triple-height entrance enframement features voussoirs, Ionic pilasters, denticulated cornice, and third-story window with broken pediment lintel with cartouche supported by caryatids; most ground-floor windows feature bracketed sills; upper stories feature brick quoins at building corners; window openings with steel lintels and stone sills; some historic four-over-four, six-over-six, and eight-over-eight double-hung windows; limestone beltcourses set every three stories, below fifth, eighth, 11th, and 14th stories; modillioned cornice with dentils and lions-head ornament
Alterations: Many windows replaced; through-wall air conditioners punched through facade below several window openings
West Facade: Designed (historic)
Door(s): Replaced primary door; one historic multi-paned secondary entrance door, one
replaced, both with glass transoms
Windows: Mixed
Cornice: Original
Sidewalk Material(s): Concrete
Curb Material(s): Granite
South Facade: Designed (historic)
Facade Notes: Similar to Park Avenue facade; secondary entrance created out of former window opening, with granite steps and metal handrail; non-historic ground-floor window grilles; concrete curb with metal edging; rear service way accessed through metal fence and gate
East Facade: Not designed (historic) (partially visible)
Facade Notes: Red brick side wall; regular arrangement of rectangular window openings; fire escape (source)
Q. My apartment house at 161 West 75th Street, like a number of others on the Upper West Side, has two intertwined initials over the door, an “A” and something else. Whose initials? And was it the architect or developer? . . . Ivan Berger, Manhattan. A. Your building was built in 1924 to 1926 by Anthony Paterno — they are his initials — and was designed by Rosario Candela. Paterno was one of four brothers, all developers, who generally worked separately. Other brothers also used their initials on buildings they put up. Joseph Paterno’s architect on 905 West End Avenue, at 104th Street, designed an elaborate cartouche with “JP” over the door and annotated the 1917 drawing, “Architect is to approve the plaster model of this ornament before execution.” Other developers, like the Halls, the Campagnas and the Crystals, also left such traces of their ownership. I have never seen written accounts of this practice by developers, but after the turn of the century the architectural press often urged architects to “sign” their creations. However, only a few architects, usually designers of speculative apartment houses, regularly did this. The Paternos started building modest walk-ups around 1900 but by the 1920’s had become one of New York’s reigning builder-families. Joseph Paterno built buildings like 1220 Park Avenue, at 95th Street, and 30 Sutton Place, at 58th Street; Charles put up luxury apartments as well as Hudson View Gardens and Castle Village, north of the George Washington Bridge; Michael built 775 Park Avenue, at 72d Street, and 2 East 67th Street, and Anthony built 1040 Fifth Avenue, at 85th Street. Generally the Paternos’ legible presence on their buildings decreased as their product ascended the economic ladder. On Michael Paterno’s 1105 Park Avenue, built in 1922 at the corner of 89th Street, there is only the letter “P” and even such modest inscriptions largely vanished on their top-grade buildings on Fifth and Park Avenues. This is consistent with the development in the 1910’s of a general upper-class preference for apartment houses known by their street addresses rather than by a name. Streetscapes: Readers’ Questions The Beekman Theater, a French School, Old Initials September 5, 1993
“Penthouse living also became fashionable in the 1920s. In a contemporary essay devoted to Park Avenue, journalist Will Irwin wrote that this type of residence was, a:
Final touch of strange luxury…twenty inhabited stories above ground, the circle swings full turn; the tenant has achieved a detachment and exclusiveness impossible to any dwelling set on the ground. There are no neighbors to right and left; only the tinted air of Manhattan. Though hundreds of strangers dwell just underfoot, his only connection with his 6,000,000 fellow citizens is the opening to his private elevator shaft.33
The district’s first apartment house to offer this amenity may have been 1105 Park (Rosario Candela, 1922-23), at the northeast corner of 89th Street. This 14-story building was one of Candela’s earliest works. Commissioned by developer Michael E. Paterno, who built at least three subsequent buildings in the district, it featured a seven-room “roof garden apartment” that was described in advertisements as promising a “Beautiful outlook.”” Park Avenue Historic District Designation Report • April 29, 2014
