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1922 Clayton 215 West 92nd Street
– Lucania Realty; Anthony Campagna President; Joseph Paterno Vice President; Armino Campagna Secretary (Kelley Paterno page 285)
– Lucania Realty Corporation (Alpern Acanthus page 266)
Featured in Andrew Alpern’s book The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter page 266
NB 9-1922
Broadway, 2480-2488
15-sty f. p. strs, doctors’ offices apts, 100×165
Cost:
$1,500,000
Owner:
Lucania Rlty. Corp, 200 W 72d [72nd]
Architect:
Rosario Candela, 200 W 72d [72nd]
Address in Real Estate Record:
BROADWAY, 2480-88
“Rosario Candela worked for most of his career with a close-knit network of Italian immigrants, on projects financed either by the developer Anthony Campagna or the Paterno Brothers firm, with whom Candela built some 20 buildings. (Two of the Paterno sisters married Anthony Campagna and his brother.) Candela’s first building, the Clayton, on West 92nd Street, was a joint project with Campagna and Joseph Paterno, a 15-story building on land Campagna had purchased from the William Waldorf Astor estate—a symbolic, as well as literal, transfer of power from the old Gilded Age elite to the modern immigrant strivers of the 1920s.” 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
“Built in 1923, The Clayton consists of 15 floors, made up of 146 apartments, 0 of which are currently for sale, and 1 are available for rent. Located on New York’s Upper West Side (72nd – 96th Street), Upper West Side neighborhood, features of this building include a Playroom, Laundry Room,Bicycle Room and Storage Available.” (source)
By 1920, he was on his own,” Mr. Gray continued, “working out of a row house at 120 East 101st Street. His first known commission appeared in 1922, the tall apartment house at the northeast corner of 92nd Street and Broadway. [This building was the Clayton at 215 East 92nd Street that was developed by Anthony Campagna and Joseph Paterno on land Campagna had purchased from the estate of William Waldorf Astor, according to Mr. Alpern, who noted that Anthony Campagna and his brother Arminio were married to the sisters of the four Paterno brothers.] The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter By Andrew Alpern with essays by David Netto and Christopher Gray Book Review By Carter B. Horsley
“By 1922, he had just completed a grandiose building that commenced construction of an impressive skyscraper at 92 St. on Broadway’s fantastic thoroughfare.
This building, which consists of fifteen floors, one hundred and fifty apartments, two hundred and ten bathrooms, six hundred and fifteen rooms, was sold by him for two million and one hundred thousand dollars and three hundred thousand in annual income. The land tax, which is paid on top of it, is around the staggering sum, for a single building, of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
In this building, the lawyer Campagna, who, as we have said, is a very skilled and daring technician, happily experimented with a new construction system, through which, for the first time in New York – and this primacy also belongs to he – while he kept the statutory height of one hundred and fifty feet for the dwelling houses, and the attics at over nine feet, managed to make fifteen floors instead of the usual fourteen floors of all similar buildings.
The daring of his particular technique, which resulted in the benefit of the tenants: because the income from this additional plan, valued at around twenty-five thousand dollars, allowed the rent price to be significantly reduced in the other plans.
A memorable detail, this mammoth skyscraper, which imposes a meticulous precision of work, because all its apartments are of great luxury, was built in a negligible space of time, compared to the size of the work. Consider: on March 13, 1922 the foundations were laid, the palisades erected, the construction sites formed. On 1 October of the same year, not only was the building finished and finished, down to its most minute decorative details, both inside and out, but it was already inhabited by one hundred and forty-five families and ten new large shops had opened their ten new mouths of light on Broadway’s dazzling uninterrupted blaze.
Woods of workers, relentlessly alternating around the huge work, like the slaves of the Pharaohs around the Pyramids, had accomplished the prodigy. It is estimated that for the construction of such a colossus it took the employment of about two thousand workers per week, among those employed in the factories, in the material preparation workshops and in the construction sites.” From “Basilicata nel Mondo” 1926 Anthony Campagna
Building website: TheClayton215.com
New York Times: A Classic New York Building Celebrates Its 101st Birthday by James Barron