One Sutton Place South

One Sutton Place South
General information
Type	cooperative
Town or city	New York, New York
Country	USA
Current tenants	approx. 46-92 tenants
Construction started	1927
Completed	1927
Technical details
Structural system	Skyscraper
Floor count	14 (46 apartment units)
Design and construction
Architect	Rosario Candela
Architecture firm	Cross and Cross

One Sutton Place South is a 14-story, 46-unit cooperative apartment house in the Sutton Place neighborhood of New York City, overlooking the East River between 56th and 57th streets. The building was designed and completed in 1927 by Rosario Candela and Cross and Cross.^[1]

Its residents have included John Fairchild, publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, designer Bill Blass, and actress Sigourney Weaver,^[2]

Penthouse

The building is topped by a penthouse, a 17-room unit that has 5,000 square feet (460 m²) of interior space and 6,000 square feet (560 m²) of terraces that wrap entirely around it.

The building was built in 1927 by the Phipps family and the penthouse was created originally for Amy Phipps as a duplex. When her son, Winston Guest, the polo player and husband of garden columnist C. Z. Guest, took the apartment over, the lower floor was subdivided into three separate apartments, one of which is occupied by designer Bill Blass. The Guests lived on one side of the penthouse and one of their sons, Alexander, lived on the other side for several years and sold the apartment in 1963 about the time that his daughter, socialite Cornelia Guest, was born.

The apartment was then acquired by Janet Annenberg Hooker, the philanthropist who died in late 1997 and was a sister of Walter Annenberg, the communications magnate and art collector. The apartment was put on the market in early 1998.

Land controversy

The property behind One Sutton Place South was the subject of a dispute between the building's owners and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Like the adjacent park, the rear garden at One Sutton Place South is, in fact, cantilevered over the FDR Drive, a busy expressway at Manhattan's eastern edge that is not visible from most of Sutton Place. In 1939, city authorities took ownership of the property behind One Sutton Place South by condemnation in connection with the construction of the FDR Drive, then leased it back to the building. The building's lease for its backyard expired in 1990,^[3][4] The co-op tried unsuccessfully to extend the lease, and later made prospective apartment-buyers review the legal status of the backyard and sign a confidentiality agreement.^[5] The question of ownership came to a head in 2003 when the state's Department of Transportation began rehabilitation of F.D.R. Drive between 54th and 63rd Streets and had to tear up the garden to fix the deck.^[6]In June 2007, the co-op sued the city in an attempt the keep the land,^[5] and on November 1, 2011, the co-op and the city reached an agreement in which the co-op ended its ownership claim and each side would contribute $1 million toward the creation of a public park on the land.^[7]

References

1. ^ Alperin, Andrew (2002). The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter (2011 ed.). New York: Acanthus Press. ISBN 978-0926494206. 
2. ^ Haddon, Heather. "War for co-opted parkland: City wants it back", New York Post, December 19, 2010
3. ^ Bagli, Charles V. "In Sutton Place's Backyard, Private Oasis on Public Land", The New York Times, December 31, 2003
4. ^ "Sutton Place Private Lawn Going to the Masses", Curbed.com, December 7, 2004
5. ^ ^{a b} Bagli, Charles V., "A Co-op on Sutton Place Sues to Keep Its Backyard", The New York Times, June 19, 2007. Accessed December 27, 2007.
6. ^ http://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/manhattan/1-sutton-place-south/353
7. ^ Flegenheimer, Matt, "Co-op Ends Fight With City Over Its East Side Backyard", The New York Times, November 1, 2011. Accessed November 4, 2011.

External links

• StreetEasy.com Building Info
• CityRealty.com Profile

Coordinates: 40°45′25″N 73°57′38″W / 40.756831°N 73.960476°W / 40.756831; -73.960476