Posted on 12/31/2003 4:32:03 PM PST by blam
Battleground in Manhattan as blue bloods fear losing their urban idyll
By David Usborne in New York
01 January 2004
The posh residents of Sutton Place in Manhattan love to chatter about the wonder of their neighbourhood, which overlooks the East River and is replete with grand apartment buildings erected in the Twenties and Thirties. It is, they whisper, as splendid as Eaton Square, yet as intimate as London mews.
No address along these seven blocks of privilege, located just north of the United Nations, is more sought after than One Sutton Place South, a 13-storey Italian Renaissance monument to wealth and social status. It features a three-arched "port-cochere" at its entrance - a covered mini-driveway - and its exclusive rear garden bordering the river.
Something, however, is amiss in the garden, with its neat lawns, its beds of rhododendrons and its shade-affording trees. If you put your ear to the ground, instead of hearing the scuffling of moles or the labour of earthworms, you will detect the rumble of straining transmissions, of rubber on tarmac and the sirens of police cars.
The garden was built during the 1930s when construction began on the four-lane East River Drive, now Franklin D Roosevelt Drive. To make way for the project, the city seized the land at the rear of One Sutton Place, which used to stretch to the river. But a deal was done. A platform was raised above the traffic and a level garden layered over it.
Thus, peace was preserved. The city got its road and One Sutton Place retained its backyard. The compact, however, had a limited life and the residents of the building fear their garden may soon be taken from them. Heavens to Betsy, it may even be turned into - of all things - a public park.
Such an insult to the environs of Sutton Place, whose apartment buildings have been home to the likes of Henry Kissinger, Greta Garbo and I M Pei, could, surely, never be allowed to happen.
This is a street with history and heritage, and it means to preserve it. Effingham B Sutton, a shipping magnate, first purchased this stretch along the river in the 1870s, when it was home to button factories and a brewery. It rose to prominence in the Depression, when Gotham's well-to-do fled their apartments on Fifth Avenue and migrated to Sutton's enclave. The families that moved in had blue-blooded names like Vanderbilt, Morgan, Delano and Havermeyer.
That the garden at One Sutton Place might one day be in peril has been a closely kept secret among its residents for a while. For the past several years, anyone applying to live in one of the apartments has had to sign a confidentiality agreement promising never to talk about the garden in public.
The original lease, signed with the city in 1939, stated that the building would lease the platform garden for $1 a year, rising to $1.46 by the mid-1980s. However, the man who negotiated the lease, the then president of One Sutton Place, Paul Hammond, was a little short-sighted. The lease would run for only 50 years. By 1990, it had expired.
The building chose not to alert the city of the state of affairs and new residents were asked to keep their lips sealed on the subject. In 1995, the garden technically became the custody of the City Parks Department, but nothing happened to disturb the urban idyll. Until now, that is.
The rumble below the garden has grown to a roar as floating cranes and engineering barges have moved closer to the banks of the river where One Sutton Place stands. The city is engaging in a major overhaul of this section of the Franklin D Roosevelt Drive. The project will mean tearing up the platform above the carriageways - and uprooting those rhododendrons. The question of the garden can no longer be ignored.
For now, the parks department appears committed to restoring it at a cost of some $400,000. However, voices from neighbouring, less privileged, blocks are being raised about the fairness of doing so. Sutton Place is dotted with tiny public parks, and there is a move to have them joined up to create a longer park along the river, which would be open to all.
The parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, toldThe New York Times: "The reconstruction of the Franklin D Roosevelt Drive provides an opportunity for us to consider creating an esplanade and connecting the adjacent parkland." (It hardly helped the residents at One Sutton Place that the newspaper yesterday dedicated acres of column inches to the controversy, beginning on page one.)
Those living at One Sutton Place are starting to panic. Betty Sherrill, a resident and former president of the building, said turning the garden into a public park would "ruin one of the most wonderful buildings in New York". She added: "That would be mean to all the people who live there. It'd be right in front of their windows. They paid a lot of money for those apartments. The city doesn't even keep up the parks on the right and left of us, much less the one in front of us."
Few can dispute that losing the garden would be a sentimental and a financial loss to the residents. The value of their homes would almost certainly go down. This is not an easy building to get an apartment in. Every prospective resident must undergo a rigorous round of interviews and must demonstrate their good standing with references and healthy bank accounts. This is a building where apartments can only be bought with cash. Financing is not considered nice within these walls.
The grandest space of all - the lawn and port-cochere notwithstanding - is the top-floor penthouse which has 5,000 square feet of inside floor and 6,000 square feet of terrace. It was once owned by Janet Annenberg Hooker, the sister of Walter Annenberg. In 1998, it was put on the market for $15m, which was a record price in New York at the time.
Was anyone from One Sutton Place out on their lawn at midnight last night sipping champagne to mark the dawn of 2004? And did they wear a face of worried nostalgia for the privacy and isolation that might be lost before the year is out? Well, who knows. None of us would have been allowed in to find out.
But they didn't pay for the public land. They can pony up some money if they want to keep their private view.
The building chose not to alert the city of the state of affairs
That is there problem. If at the time they had quietly approached the City, I'm sure they could have worked out a reasonable deal. A little 'donation' to the right cause and all would have been well.
Penny wise...
Have a happy and prosperous New Year!
Huh?
Hey! New York City's a great place.
If you're an ant...
Well, if this rendition is at all accurate, no the cannot. It was taken as public domain.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.