The January 1926 issue of Building Investment and Maintenance did an interview with Dr. Charles V. Paterno on page 31 of Volume 1, Number 5.
FAITH IN NEW YORK PROPERTY
The Fifth Article of a Series Setting Forth the Policies and Ideas of Leading Investors
An Interview with Dr. Charles V. Paterno
Few men identified with building construction in New York City have contributed more to the up-building of residential communities than Dr. Chas. V. Paterno, whose history provides one of the most interesting among the group of daring enterprisers who have contributed to the phenomenal growth of New York City in the last quarter of a century. To those who have wondered why he has always been called Dr. Paterno, it is perhaps timely to note that he is a full-fledged M.D., despite the fact that he won his laurels in a field far removed from the curing of people’s physical ailments. He has crowded many stirring events in a career that has gone through periods of great panic and great prosperity, with equal fortitude; yet if he did nothing else but create the magnificent Hudson View Gardens development, he would belong in the real estate Hall of Fame.
Chas. V. Paterno was graduated from the Cornell School of Medicine in 1899. His father, John Paterno the builder, was then engaged in the erection of an apartment house on West 112th street and his death transferred the responsibility for the completion of the job to the shoulders of the youthful doctor and his brother Joseph. The completed structure was sold, and the Paterno boys took in part payment besides cash, another apartment house site. Chas. V. still had hopes of engaging in the practice of medicine, but he resolved to go ahead with one more building. This turned out to be more successful than the first, and the lure of these profits spurred on the Paterno brothers to further undertakings.
The panic of 1907 found them strong enough to successfully tide over these troubled times, until finally in 1909 Chas. V. decided to go back to the medical profession. He and his brother divided their assets, and went their separate ways. But fate had decreed that Chas. V. Paterno’s destiny lay in the building business. No sooner had he resolved to abandon it than he was offered an exceptional site comprising the entire block front on West 83rd street, between Broadway and West End avenue [possibly the Alameda]. He could not resist the temptation to capitalize this opportunity, and a $2,500,00, twelve-story structure was the result. His next venture was the splendid structure at the southeast corner of Seventh avenue and Fifty-eighth street, which he sold to Benjamin N. Duke.
This was followed by the big building at West End avenue and Eighty-eighth street and a number of smaller projects on the West Side. In 1914 he conceived the idea for the great $10,000,000 apartment house on New York Central Railroad land, bounded by Madison and Park avenues, 47th and 48th streets. The outbreak of the War found him committed to the project, which entailed the solution of so many wartimes construction problems that it was not finished until 1918. Dr. Paterno’s survival through these trying times has been considered one of the most amazing in New York City building annals. He was compelled to travel all over the United States for building material. He encountered on every side labor troubles, embargoes and governmental restrictions. His building material was protected by armed guards.
But, by way of tragic irony, when the War finally ended, and the building was ready for occupancy, he could not find any tenants, and he was compelled to carry the building for another year in the face of circumstances which might well have discouraged ninety-nine men out of one hundred. But the change occurred in the fall of 1919, when the first effects of the cessation of apartment house construction during the previous years became noticeable. Rents began to rise and there were not enough apartments to go around. The Paterno achievement at 270 Park avenue, which in 1919 was returning a gross rental of $900,000, was showing in 1922 an aggregate annual rental of $1,250,000.
Not content with this extraordinary attainment, the Doctor embarked on his master work several years ago, when he transformed in eighteen months a great rocky waste on Washington Heights into one of the greatest cooperative apartment ventures on Manhattan Island. Homes have been provided for 354 families on a tract of seven acres opposite his famous castle, and adjacent to the site of historic old fort Washington, the highest elevation in Manhattan. Fourteen separate buildings comprise the colony which, by virtue of their architectural treatment and service features, constitute a striking achievement.
He is now building a huge apartment house covering the entire Riverside drive block front from 100th to 101st streets [280 Riverside Drive & 285 Riverside Drive]. Dr. Paterno’s apartment activities exemplify his confidence in New York real estate. He expounded this faith to our representative the other day:
“In New York City, as elsewhere, the home is a human necessity, just as essential as food, and this metropolis presents exceptional opportunities for capitalizing this necessity. New York City, by reason of its geographical position, its cultural, social, financial and business supremacy, has become the mecca of people of wealth from all parts of the United States. That is why we find a steady and uninterrupted demand for the best types of residential space that money and initiative can produce.
“I have the utmost faith in the future of New York real estate. I believe that we are making such strides that our present gigantic undertakings will be considered puny in the next quarter of a century. The opportunities here are limitless, they are bounded only by the extent of a man’s inspiration and his desire to work.
“Conditions in some territories may fluctuate for the time being, and the peak in the supply of properties of certain types may be reached, but these occurrences, as in the past, will only be temporary, and we will find as the years go on ever increasing values for real estate.”
