740 Park Avenue

Built in 1930, 31 residences across 17 floors.

740 Park Avenue, 10021

740 Park Avenue was designed by Rosario Candela with Arthur Loomis Harmon and completed in 1930. It is seventeen storeys of limestone with very little on the elevation, a monolithic entrance flanked by fluted shafts, a bracketed cornice above the second floor, and carved panels and urns near the top with iron railings at the balconies.

Behind that restraint are 31 apartments, nearly all of them duplexes and one a triplex. That is the fact to design around. A duplex is two floors of one household joined by a private stair, so the plan has an internal vertical circulation that a single floor apartment does not, and the stair position governs where everything else can go. Many of these were laid out with a large entrance gallery and a freestanding curved stair rising from it.

Working in a building of this kind means working with an original plan that was drawn generously and is largely intact. The rooms are big, the walls between them are masonry rather than partition, and the limestone facade has punched openings with solid wall between, so there is real wall to build against in every room.

Within walking distance

Building facts

New York City Primary Land Use Tax Lot Output, version 26v1. Tax lot 1013860033.