Watch “The Paterno Family: Chronicling a New York Real Estate Legacy” video on YouTube
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1928 Anthony Campagna; 2 East 70th Street (Kelley Paterno page 286)
aka 885 Fifth Avenue
Featured in Andrew Alpern’s book The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter page 214
Located in Upper East Side Historic District designated 19 May 1981
1927
107
$500,000.00
5TH [Fifth] AV, 884 14-sty fireproof apt, 33˙158
OWNER / OWNER ADDRESS
(o) 5th [Fifth] Av. & 70th St. Corp.; Anthony Campagna / (o) 200 W 72d [72nd] COMMENTS
ARCHITECT / ARCHITECT ADDRESS
(a) Rosaroi Candela / (a) 578 Madison av (source)
“Once New York’s elite had become accustomed to the conveniences of apartment living, they began to pursue better and better versions of what they had. The pace of architectural change in the 1920s would strike us as dizzying even today, as mansions rose and fell seemingly with the seasons. In the era before landmark preservation, Fifth Avenue exemplified the city’s rolling evolution as wealthy owners tore down barely finished homes to make way for apartment buildings. Banker C. Ledyard Blair’s neoclassical mansion opposite the Frick Collection, built in 1917, survived just 12 years before Anthony Campagna tore it down to make room for a Candela-designed replacement at 2 East 70th Street.” Rosario Candela and the invention of high-rise luxury His designs were grounded in the confident wealth of Jazz Age New York By Joanna Scutts May 17, 2018, 1:00pm EDT
“Privacy comes at a price, and at the Rosario Candela-designed co-op at 2 East 70th Street, that price is $35 million.” (source)
In My Way of Life (1971) Joan writes: Billy [William Haines] helped me with the home Alfred Steele and I created in New York. It was a very special place, occupying the top two floors and overlooking Central Park. Originally it had eighteen rooms. We broke them down into eight large ones, with huge windows. I wanted to bring a California ambience with me so we picked bright colors and built in lots of the conveniences that aren’t so common in the older buildings in New York. There was a marvelous free-flying staircase, and the wall alongside it was punctuated with large green plants. At the top was a skylight. Sunlight permeated the whole apartment and was refracted by the white carpet. Even the room we called the office was in light, gay colors. There wasn’t a dark nook in the whole place–except possibly the broom closet. New York City: 2 East 70th Street at Fifth Ave. 1957 to 1967
The Concluding Chapter of Crawford (interior shots of apartment)
FIFTH AVENUE between East 69th Street and East 70th Street
Most of this block is taken up by No. 880, a modern twenty-story brick and stone apartment house designed by Emery Roth & Sons and built in 1946-48, on the sites of four town houses. The other apartment building, on the corner of East 70th Street (see 2 East 70th Street), is in a neo-Renaissance style by Rosario Candela. It was erected in 1927 by Anthony Campagna and occupies the site of the Josiah Fiske house, a Victorian Gothic mansion of brownstone (1871-72), designed by Stephen Decatur Hatch. An alley or driveway extended along the rear of the town houses on this blockfront, a very rare amenity in Manhattan. (source)
EAST 70TH STREET South Side No. 2 (1384/69)
Date Architect Owner: Erected 1927 – 1928 by Rosario Candela for 5th Avenue & East 70th Corporation (Anthony Campagna)
ARCHITECTURE
Style: neo-Renaissance
Elements: Thirteen-story apartment house with two-story base faced in limestone and rusticated in the end bays. Upper stories of brick framed by quoins. Flat roof line.
HISTORY: Replaced a town house of 1871-72, designed by Stephen D. Hatch for Josiah Fiske. Anthony Campagna was a major developer of luxury apartment houses in New York.
References: New York City, Department of Buildings, Manhattan, Plans, Permits and Dockets.
Alexandra Cushing Howard, Fifth Avenue and Central Park, Building-Structure Inventory (Albany: Division of Historic Preservation, 1975) (source)
In January, 1926, after just nine years here, Blair pre-empted the demise of Fifth Avenue and sold up to developer Anthony Campagna for $1.25 million – then the highest price ever paid per square foot for a development….Campagna knocked down the Blair Mansion in 1927, just as Mrs Florence Twombly began construction of her Beaux-Arts mansion next door – it never got a chance to stand alongside the Blair House. Campagna’s new 11-story apartment block – the same block that still stands at 2 East Seventieth Street today – was designed by Rosario Candela and the firm of Walker & Gillette. By the time it was finished in 1928 – permanently denying the Frick garden of its southern light – the Blairs had started work on Deepdene. C. LEDYARD BLAIR HOUSE 2 East 70th Street, Manhattan, New York
“The grand building arise at Fifth Avenue. Here, near the Municipal Park [Central Park] and the famous Library donated to New York City by a great king of American industry, Mr. Frick. The lawyer Campagna bought the area – which will result from the demolition of a building that currently exists – at the highest price ever paid in New York, at the rate of $180 per square foot. To others, who hadn’t had his eagle-eye, this excessive price might have seemed inconvenient. But Anthony Campagna never fails. And success is already beginning to smile brightly at him again this time: he has not yet begun the work, and the fame of the building and the builder has already attracted two buyers of apartments, one for one hundred and thirty thousand, the other for one hundred and eighty thousand dollars over the mortgage of one hundred thousand and one hundred twenty thousand dollars respectively for each, which is equivalent to bringing the total price, respectively, to two hundred and thirty thousand dollars and three hundred thousand dollars. [2 East 70th Street]” From “Basilicata nel Mondo” 1926 Anthony Campagna
Architectural Digest: Tour Rosario Candela’s Most Iconic Work, 2018
