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

you'll be living within the sumptuous pages of Michael Gross' 740 Park for a while, so don your silken robe, darlings, and get comfortable. Michael knows just how to weave historical fact with what seems fictive magic but is really what I would call rarified real... glimpses of over-the-top lifestyles were never more appealing. Some of my best friends lived in 740 Park and I thought I knew all there was to know, but was wowed nevertheless.

Gross's epic production is a display of diligent and calculated research that results in a truly fascinating examination of edifice and artifice. The granular detail that Gross provides opens a window into the private lives of some of the most public Manhattan socialites and founders of American capitalism. While at times the detail is distracting and deviates from the focus of the narrative, Gross has created a piece that serves both as a history of 740 as well as a reference work of American social history. An overall joy to read.

Michael Gross' new book provides a fascinating social history of a slice of the wealthiest New Yorkers who, over time, have occupied 740 Park Avenue, the "richest apartment building." The impressive research, which provides vignettes of notable characters from a different age gives a great deal of insight on how people met, made decisions, socialized, raised their children and many who mattered from the early 1900's to the present. The book begins after the age of the Robber Barrons and transitions through industrial tycoons to present day captains of finance.The move from private houses to "palaces in the sky" is well documented, but the long hiatus between the depression (when apartment values reached rock bottom) and the point at which owners once again saw a positive value on their original purchase took half a century. The early history is rich in stories of the "establishment" and certain who tried very hard to be viewed as such. The book's focus on "new money" might be more familiar, but offers the authors' unique point of view. Floor plans would have added greatly to an understanding of the architecture. I imagine that photographs of the various apartments over time were out of reach particularly at a time in the social world when wealth sought to protect its privacy. Most informative!

With a story that includes the ten year old Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy sending a Valentine to her just-moving-in upstairs neighbor John D. Rockefeller Jr. - then chronicles the apartment swapping antics of 80's nouvelles Henry Kravis, Ronald Perelman and Saul Steinberg (whose "night of the dueling locksmiths" reads like the Marx Brothers meets Fatal Attraction) - while at the same time letting us into the world of the true aristocrats - those bluebloods who abhor publicity, live quietly, and think of themselves as "just regular folks" (all the while living on the income of their incomes and keeping fourteen live-in servants) 740 PARK: THE STORY OF THE WORLD'S RICHEST APARTMENT BUILDING is an amazing story that would be deemed impossibly over the top as fiction. Yet each savory detail, every word - including the "ands" and the "thes" rings convincingly true. Who knew a history of American capitalism could be so damn juicy!

I loved this book! I live in NYC and frankly, unless I win the lottery, it is unlikely that I will ever end up at 740 Park... however, I loved Mr. Gross' blend of reporting and sociological insight. A great gift book this Christmas, and a real winner.