737 Park Avenue

1940 rental building, converted 2014, 60 residences across 20 floors.

737 Park Avenue, 10021

737 Park Avenue was built in 1940 to a design by Sylvan Bien, on the corner of 71st Street. It stood as a rental building for seventy years and was converted to 60 condominiums in 2014, the work done by Handel Architects with Moed de Armas and Shannon.

The conversion halved the building. More than a hundred apartments became sixty, so almost every residence here is two former apartments joined, and the plan of each one carries the seam. Party walls came out, kitchens and bathrooms moved to serve a different arrangement, and the window rhythm on the elevation no longer maps to the rooms behind it in the way it did in 1940.

That is the thing to establish first in any apartment: where the original demising line ran, because the risers, the structural walls and the ventilation still follow the 1940 layout even where the partitions do not.

Floors are rift and quartered solid white oak, and the trim throughout is milled rather than stock, so replacement work has to be matched rather than bought.

Within walking distance

Building facts

New York City Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output, version 26v1. Tax lot 1014067504.