Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Jackie O Slept Here


"740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building" is coming out in October and already it sounds like a must-read:

Of all Manhattan's fabled East Side dwellings of the super-rich, 740 Park Avenue has perhaps the best pedigree. Designed by Rosario Candela and developed by James T. Lee, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' maternal grandfather, as a cooperative haven for the elite, it had the misfortune to open just as the stock market crashed in 1930 and was forced to operate partly as a rental for some decades. The last sale was to Lee himself, for son-in-law "Black Jack" Bouvier, his wife, Janet, and daughters Jackie and Lee (Radziwill).

Among the secrets that author Michael Gross says he found behind the 740 walls:

Liquor mogul Edgar Bronfman Sr. moved out of his 740 Park apartment after his wife, Wall Street heiress Ann Loeb, allegedly left him for their baby sitter, a woman.

Friendly's Ice Cream heir Channing Blake moved his male lover, Everett Fahey, into 740 Park to live with his wife and his son. "I didn't feel at all odd there," says Fahey, a paintings curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Financier Saul Steinberg had his second wife, Italian beauty Laura Sconocchia, arrested and dragged out of their sprawling apartment, fearing she'd slash his paintings. Shortly before that uncoupling, Gross contends, Laura caught Saul with another woman at their weekend house. The girl jumped out a window and was later picked up by police, naked, running down Route 22 in Bedford.

Almost as interesting is the list of people rejected by the 740 Park Co-Op Board: Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Crawford, Barbra Streisand, Neil Sedaka, to name a few.

Sounds like the ultimate in real estate porn.

Full story: A Park Avenue co-op's embarrassment of riches (via The NY Daily News)

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