By Carter B. Horsley

This attractive, 19-story apartment building was erected in 1938 and converted to a cooperative in 1982. It was designed by Irving Margon, one of the architects of the El Dorado, one of the twin-towered landmarks of Central Park West.

It replaced the 1901 Jacob Schiff mansion that had been designed by Freeman & Thain. The 47-unit building was the first new apartment building on the avenue in the Depression.

"During the 1930’s Park Avenue replaced Fifth Avenue as the highest-status urban address in the nation, and during that decade Fifth Avenue became something of a ghost town. The replacement of the avenue’s townhouses by apartments, which had begun in the 1920’s, took on a new twist in the Depression, when many of the mansions were simply abandoned and boarded up because, without significant demand for new apartments, there was no point in incurring demolition costs. By the late 1930’s the economic situation had changed enough so that some boarded-up mansions were torn down to make way for new apartment houses," observed Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins and David Fishman in their superb book, "New York 1960, Architecture and Urbanism Between The Second World War And The Bicentennial," (The Monacelli Press, 1995).

The building, which has a handsome entrance with some Art Deco embellishments, has a fine, quiet location on the avenue and spectacular Central Park views.