740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building

740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building
- From the author of House of Outrageous Fortune
From the author of House of Outrageous Fortune

For seventy-five years, itâ€™s been Manhattanâ€™s richest apartment building, and one of the most lusted-after addresses in the world. One apartment had 37 rooms, 14 bathrooms, 43 closets, 11 working fireplaces, a private elevator, and his-and-hers saunas; another at one time had a live-in service staff of 16. To this day, it is steeped in the purest luxury, the kind most of us could only imagine, until now.

The last great building to go up along New Yorkâ€™s Gold Coast, construction on 740 Park finished in 1930. Since then, 740 has been home to an ever-evolving cadre of our wealthiest and most powerful families, some of Americaâ€™s (and the worldâ€™s) oldest moneyâ€”the kind attached to names like Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Bouvier, Chrysler, Niarchos, Houghton, and Harknessâ€”and some whose names evoke the excesses of todayâ€™s monied elite: Kravis, Koch, Bronfman, Perelman, Steinberg, and Schwarzman. All along, the building has housed titans of industry, political power brokers, international royalty, fabulous scam-artists, and even the lowest scoundrels.

The book begins with the tumultuous story of the buildingâ€™s construction. Conceived in the bubbling financial, artistic, and social cauldron of 1920â€™s Manhattan, 740 Park rose to its dizzying heights as the stock market plunged in 1929â€”the building was in dire financial straits before the first apartments were sold. The builders include the architectural genius Rosario Candela, the scheming businessman James T. Lee (Jacqueline Kennedy Onassisâ€™s grandfather), and a raft of financiers, many of whom were little more than white-collar crooks and grand-scale hustlers.

Once finished, 740 became a magnet for the richest, oldest families in the country: the Brewsters, descendents of the leader of the Plymouth Colony; the socially-registered Bordens, Hoppins, Scovilles, Thornes, and Schermerhorns; and top executives of the Chase Bank, American Express, and U.S. Rubber. Outside the walls of 740 Park, these were the people shaping America culturally and economically. Within those walls, they were indulging in all of the Seven Deadly Sins.

As the social climate evolved throughout the last century, so did 740 Park: after World War II, the buildingâ€™s rulers eased their more restrictive policies and began allowing Jews (though not to this day African Americans) to reside within their hallowed walls. Nowadays, it is full to bursting with new money, people whose fortunes, though freshly-made, are large enough to buy their way in.

At its core this book is a social history of the American rich, and how the locus of power and influence has shifted haltingly from old bloodlines to new money. But itâ€™s also much more than that: filled with meaty, startling, often tragic stories of the people who lived behind 740â€™s walls, the book gives us an unprecedented access to worlds of wealth, privilege, and extraordinary folly that are usually hidden behind a scrim of money and influence. This is, truly, how the other halfâ€”or at least the other one hundredth of one percentâ€”lives.
Country USA
Brand Broadway Books
Manufacturer Crown
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 9780767917445
Model 9780767917445
Color White
ReleaseDate 2006-10-10
UnitCount 1
EANs 9780767917445

Country	USA
Brand	Broadway Books
Manufacturer	Crown
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	9780767917445
Model	9780767917445
Color	White
ReleaseDate	2006-10-10
UnitCount	1
EANs	9780767917445