45 East 66th Street (also known as 777 Madison Avenue) is a cooperative apartment building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It was built between 1906 and 1908 and was designed by the firm of Harde & Short. The building is one of a few luxury apartment buildings that were developed in the surrounding area prior to World War I. It is a New York City designated landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The building, located at the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 66th Street, is ten stories high. The facade is made of red brick with light-colored French Gothic–style terracotta details. The Madison Avenue and 66th Street facades are both divided vertically into three bays and are ornamented with details such as band courses, ogee arches, finials, crockets, and tracery. Over the years, architectural critics such as Paul Goldberger and Christopher Gray have praised the detailing on the facade. Initially, the building had 20 apartments, surrounding a light court at the center; the typical apartment included three to four bedrooms and several family rooms. The ground-story apartments were replaced with retail in 1929, and most of the apartments were subdivided in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
The building was developed by Parkview Real Estate Company, which was led by Charles F. Rogers. The structure was sold in 1912 after going into foreclosure, and it was resold twice more in the next decade. Bing & Bing owned the building from 1929 to 1973, when the racehorse owner Sigmund Sommer bought it. Sommer fired several employees and made other changes to the building, triggering rent strikes and lawsuits. Bing & Bing ultimately repurchased 45 East 66th Street in 1977 and resold it to Martin J. Raynes in 1985. Raynes converted the building into a housing cooperative, and the facade was renovated in the late 1980s. After Raynes ended his involvement with the building in 1990, Classic Properties took over the remaining unsold co-ops, and it sold the retail space. A penthouse structure atop the building was erected in the 2010s.
Site 45 East 66th Street is on the northeastern corner of 66th Street and Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The building has an alternate address of 777 Madison Avenue. The rectangular land lot covers , with a frontage of on 66th Street to the south and on Madison Avenue to the west. The building itself measures approximately across.; Nearby structures include the Sara Delano Roosevelt Memorial House at 49 East 65th Street, on the block to the south, and the Seventh Regiment Armory between 66th and 67th streets, on the block to the east.
Prior to the current building's construction, the site at 777 Madison Avenue had been occupied by a four-story stone house and a brick-and-stone church. When the building was developed in the 1900s, the surrounding area was occupied by rowhouses.; A small number of luxury apartments were built nearby before World War I, including the Verona two blocks south.
Architecture The building was designed by Harde & Short and rises 10 stories.; It contains decorative details inspired by the French Gothic style; the decorations are spread across the entire facade, unlike in other buildings built in New York City before World War I, where the decorations were typically confined to the bottom and top stories. The historian Christopher Gray described the decorations as similar to those of the Leuven Town Hall in Leuven, Belgium.
The decorations at 45 East 66th Street resemble those of several other buildings designed by Harde & Short. Before designing 45 East 66th Street, Harde & Short had designed the Red House at 350 West 85th Street, which also included large amounts of Gothic decoration.; The turret at the building's corner was adapted from another Harde & Short building at West End Avenue and 80th Street; the firm later used a similar rounded corner in the Alwyn Court. The building's decorations also influenced the design of 44 West 77th Street, which was built shortly afterward.
Facade 45 East 66th Street is mostly clad in red brick, with light-colored terracotta details, in addition to pieces of blackened mortar. The facade's two primary elevations—the western elevation on Madison Avenue and the southern elevation on 66th Street—are connected by a rounded turret at the corner. The turret rises the entire height of the building and curves 180 degrees counterclockwise from the northwest to the southeast. Each elevation is divided vertically into three bays. The northernmost bay on Madison Avenue and the easternmost bay on 66th Street protrude slightly from the facade, with twisting engaged columns on either side, and consist of five windows on each story. The other bays on both facades are narrower; the two western bays on 66th Street have three windows per story, while the two southern bays on Madison Avenue have four windows per story.
The building's main entrance is on 66th Street. The original entrance was through a stone doorway at the corner of Madison Avenue and 66th Street, surrounded by leaf motifs and flanked by canopied windows. Above both the first and second stories are horizontal band courses. At the second and third stories, the windows in each bay are surrounded by a round arch with a drip molding, and there are corbels on either side of each bay. All stories above the first floor contain sash windows in a twelve-over-twelve configuration, except for the third floor, which has eight-over-eight windows.; On both elevations of the facade, there is a balustrade with scrollwork in front of the fourth-story windows.;
On the fourth through tenth stories, there are pointed ribs and terracotta key patterns on both sides of each bay. In addition, the windows above the fourth and fifth stories have terracotta spandrels with arch decorations. A Gothic canopy with ogee arches, finials, crockets, and tracery is located above each of the sixth-story windows. The canopies above the narrower bays are connected by trefoil arches with finials. At the seventh through ninth stories, the spandrels above each window consist of arches and corbels. Within each bay, there is an ogee arch above the tenth-story windows, which is decorated with tracery. Above the tenth story is a cornice with arches and vertical grooves, which resemble a partial colonnade. Above the cornice was originally a double-height parapet, which was removed in the 20th century due to extreme deterioration. The top of the roof was originally higher than the top of the facade. A penthouse is placed above the roof.
Features According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the building has a gross floor area of . The original plans for the building called for 41 apartments decorated with hardwood, mosaic, and marble tile. The structure would be outfitted with steam heating and electric elevators. However, the building initially had 20 apartments, with two on each floor. The typical apartment had several family rooms, including a foyer, music room, living room, dining room, and salon, which covered a total of . In addition, each of the apartments had four bathrooms and three to four regular bedrooms, along with some smaller bedrooms for the live-in staff. The apartments had about 12 or 13 rooms apiece, and many were ornamented with elaborate woodwork. Similarly to the later Alwyn Court, the apartments surrounded a light court at the center.
The ground-story apartments were replaced with commercial storefronts as part of a 1929 renovation; the original entrance was moved from the curved corner to 66th Street at that time. Many of the remaining apartments were divided in the late 1940s and early 1950s, increasing the number of apartments to 34. By the late 20th century, some of the apartments on the intermediate floors remained intact, but only the tenth floor retained its original layout. After the building was converted to a housing cooperative, the upper stories have included 33 apartments, while the lower stories have contained several storefronts and offices. The Department of City Planning cites the building as being split into 33 apartments and three non-residential units. At the beginning of the 21st century, the building had about of retail space.
History
Development and early years
The building was developed by Parkview Real Estate Company, which was led by Charles F. Rogers. In early 1906, the firm of Schwartz & Gross was hired to design an 11-story apartment building at Madison Avenue and 66th Street, which was expected to cost $400,000. Parkview Real Estate hired Harde and Short that May to design an apartment building on the site. The next month, Harde and Short submitted plans for a ten-story apartment building on the site, which was to cost $1 million, to the New York City Department of Buildings. The Century Investing Company lent Parkview Real Estate $315,000 to pay for the building's construction. The structure was initially called the Parkview, a tribute to the fact that Central Park was one block west.
777 Madison Avenue was completed in 1908, and the Empire Trust Company lent Parkview Real Estate $115,000 for the property that year. Originally, the building's valuation was assessed at $1 million. In spite of the recent Panic of 1907, many of the building's apartments had been rented out shortly after its completion. Among the building's early residents was the socialite Micaela de Acosta, whose daughter Aida de Acosta was married there in 1908. Other tenants included the socialite Helen Phelps Stokes, as well as the businessman Anson Wood Burchard. In 1910, Albert J. Bodker was hired to add some bathrooms. The structure soon went into foreclosure, and it was auctioned off in May 1912. The Barney Estate Company took over the building.; The new owners obtained a $500,000 mortgage from the Title Insurance Company and a $500,000 mortgage from United States Realty. 777 Madison Avenue was resold in 1919 to I. Randolph Jacobs and Everett Jacobs; at the time, the building was valued at $800,000.
By the early 1920s, the building's tenants paid $130,000 per year in rent. The Jacobses resold the building in November 1921 to Max Loewenthal, and they acquired Loewenthal's 22-room country estate in North Castle, New York, in exchange.; The building had originally been surrounded by a recessed areaway, but this was infilled in the early 20th century as Madison Avenue became more commercial in character. By the 1920s, the building's residents included the businessman Harry F. Guggenheim, former police chief Theodore A. Bingham, the novelist Cosmo Hamilton, and the businessman William Delavan Baldwin.
Bing and Bing ownership
Gresham Realty, led by the real-estate investor Alexander Bing, bought 777 Madison Avenue in February 1928. At this point, the structure was valued at $1.5 million. Bing's firm, later known as Bing & Bing, owned the building for the next 45 years. Due to increasing demand for commercial space, the ground-story spaces were converted to storefronts in 1929 and the entrance moved to 45 East 66th Street. After the commercial space was finished, the Scottish-goods importer MacDougalls of Inverness leased a storefront at the building. The antiques dealer Walter Philipp leased a storefront in 1938. Among the building's residents in the mid-20th century were the singer Morton Downey,; the politician Grafton D. Cushing, and the socialite Nelly Régine Beer (the wife of banking magnate Robert de Rothschild).