By Carter B. Horsley
The northernmost of Central Park West's great twin-towered apartment houses, the 28-story El Dorado was completed in 1931 and was designed by Emery Roth, in collaboration with Margon & Holder. Roth also designed the twin-towered San Remo (see The City Review article) and the triple-towered Beresford (see The City Review article), both further south on the avenue
"The El Dorado marked a distinct stylistic shift in Roth's work toward a less plastic modeling of the mass and toward a Modernist sense of detail as applied to an essentially Classical composition," note authors Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins in their monumental book, "New York 1930 Architecture and Urbanism Between The Two World Wars," Rizzoli, 1987.
"Because of its Modernist articulation, which could be most clearly seen in the futuristic belfry-like finials concluding each of its two towers, the Eldorado [sic], even more than the San Remo, offered convincing evidence that Classical compositional principles could rise to the demands of a new building type and a new expressive sensibility," they continued.
"The futuristic sculptural detailing of the El Dorado, as well as its geometric ornament and patterns and its contrasting materials and textures, make it one of the finest Art Deco structures in the city. The towers are terminated by ornamented setbacks with abstract geometric spires that have been compared to Flash Gordon finials," observed Steven Ruttenbaum in his definitive study of Emery Roth: "Mansions in the Clouds, the Skyscraper Palazzi of Emery Roth," Balsam Press Inc., 1986.
Ruttenbaum's book illustrates an earlier design by Roth for the El Dorado that is neo-Classical and has a mini-tower tucked between the two large towers. That abandoned design was quite graceful and unfortunately was not used elsewhere.
With 1,300 rooms, the El Dorado is roughly the same size as the other twin-towered buildings, but its 186 apartments are generally smaller than those in the others. Its base employs cast stone rather than limestone, reflecting the fact that this project was intended for a slightly less affluent clientele than its twin-towered neighbors to the south.
The El Dorado's base is nicely modulated vertically by four sets of darker mullions while the two towers are modulated by three sets of darker mullions. The overall effect is quite rhythmic. Despite the presence of a few rounded balconies and nice geometric patterning and detailing at the base of major setbacks, the building has great élan and the rather awkward finials have a machine-like intricacy appropriate to an age that was experimenting with streamlined machinery on the eve of the age of rockets.
In 1995, the building added a duplex gym in its basement and sub-basement with an elevator for the handicapped, a community room and a basketball mini-court.
The building replaced a hotel, designed by Neville & Bagge, of the same name on the site that was built in 1902 and had a garage with a "charging room for electric automobiles," noted Christopher Gray in a September 14, 1997 article in The New York Times.
A December 31, 2001 article by Gray in The Times, however, noted that the original building on the site was known as the El Dorado and was a 8-story apartment house that was acquired in 1929 by Louis Klosk, "a Bronx-based developer" whose architects, Margon & Holder, filed plans for a 16-story building but subsequently revised it to a 29-story structure with twin towers as "Multiple-Dwelling Law of 1929 allowed such towers where lot sizes were large."
According to Mr. Gray, "on his own, Roth developed a nearly Romanesque design with red tiles on the roof areas, similar to his Oliver Cromwell apartment house at 12 West 72nd Street." Mr. Gray also wrote that the Margon & Holder filed plans for the tower indicated gold leaf for the finials. The building went into foreclosure in 1931 and was reorganized by the Central Park Plaza Corporation. Mr. Gray wrote that "among its earliest tenants were Rex Cole, who made millions marketing General electric refrigerators, sold from his trademark stores built to resemble giant refrigerators." Another early tenant, he continued, was "Royal Copeland, "who served as mayor of Ann Arbor, Mich., from 1901-1902, then senator from New York from 1924-1938. A third early tenant was Dr. Stephen S. Wise, the prominent Reform rabbi and leader of the Free Synagogue, later the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, who was a leading Zionist and a founder of the American Jewish Congress. Another was Barney Pressman, who founded the Barneys clothing store in 1923. In more recent years, the Eldorado has become associated with entertainment figures, like Faye Dunaway, Garrison Keilor, Tuesday Weld and Michael J. Fox, who have had apartments there."
In his excellent book, "New York Streetscapes, Tales of Manhattan's Significant Buildings and Landmarks," (Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2003), Mr. Gray has a chapter on the El Dorado in which he observed that "the earliest published version showed fairly simple streamlining on the base and towers but squared-off tops."
The building was converted to a cooperative in 1982 and became an official city individual landmark in 1985.
In 2000, the building launched a $4 million façade restoration program.
In 2007, Moby, the singer, put his penthouse in the south tower on the market with a price of about $7.5 million. (12/30/07)
View to the south from Moby's penthouse
"Moby, the Lower East Side's favorite vegan raver/tea mogul/real estate investor, had a whale of a time unloading his amazing but inconvenient pre-war penthouse in Central Park West's twin-towered El Dorado building. Listed for $7.5 million back in 2007, the four-floor, multi-terraced "castle in the sky" (with a turret all to itself!) on the 31st floor of the south tower can only be accessed by taking an elevator up to the 29th floor and walking up two flights of stairs. Plus, there's the spiral staircase within the apartment itself. Whew, what a workout! Interest was somewhat soft, so Moby started shilling for the place hard, recording video walk-throughs and offering his friends a $75,000 referral fee if they found a buyer. Eventually the place sold for $6.7 million after a previous party was denied by the El Dorano's co-op board. Fast forward two years, and the penthouse's post-Moby owner, listed on the old deed as T.M. Dempsey, has grown tired of the place. Or maybe it's his calf muscles that are calling it quits. And he's taking a big loss on the place, it seems. A Curbed tipster notices that the formerly Mobylicious penthouse was quietly listed for sale in January for just $5.995 million. That asking price has since come down to $4.995 million (Moby paid $4.5 million for the penthouse in 2005), and the 2BR/2.5BA spread with incredible views is now in contract. According to the listing, the turret room is currently set up as a media room, but can be turned into another bedroom. And to prove that the stairs situation is not all that bad, broker Ann Lenane includes a video clip (is it just our screen, or is the video picture cut in half?) of her scaling El Dorado Mountain. Feel the burn!"
On July 16, 2010, The New York Times published a very long article by William Glaberson on disputes involving the Cheney apartment on the ninth floor of the El Dorado, "the apartment was like some cobweb by Miss Havisham version of high-end Manhattan living, with peeling paint, torn furniture and a permanent stink of cigarettes."
In May, 2005, according to the article, the housekeeper, June Gordon found Mrs. Cheney, then 83, in her urine-drenched nightgown, unable to move and "her arm was broken."
"It would be a while before Mrs. Cheney would provide a consistent acccount of what had happened that night, which she spent in the apartment with her 51-year-old daughter, Diane Wells. 'She tried to kill me,' the mother would say, although her daughter was neer charged with anything as serious as that," the article maintaining adding that "at least five court cases chronicle a punishing family battle that has centered on who is to have Apartment 9B - and the troubling things that have taken place between its walls....Mrs. Cheney’s daughter, Ms. Wells, was her first son, Jonathan, before a sex-change operation in the 1970s. The morning that the housekeeper found Mrs. Cheney on the couch was just two days after she had met with lawyers to reconsider her will. Ms. Gordon soon had an ambulance crew wheeling its stretcher across the hardwood floors that are a selling point in the El Dorado’s $4 million co-ops. Ms. Wells did not respond to the ruckus that morning. The clatter of the wheels on wood, the shouts and the banging equipment did not bring her out of her room in the apartment where she had grown up, where she had come home in her 30s and where she was determined to stay. The Cheney family battle over whether she can remain is now headed toward a courtroom finale at a trial this fall in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court....Mrs. Cheney, a South African who came to New York when she was 19, had a long history of severe depression. She was chronically bothered by a back injury from a fall from a horse on her family’s property when she was 14. In time, she would become reclusive, seldom emerging from the El Dorado’s awning-covered entryway, living on a trust fund that her father, a mining engineer, had set up in Johannesburg with money earned in the diamond business.
"Her husband, Joseph, a radiologist, had a bad heart since he was 11 and was destined for an early death, in 1977....Diane Wells came home to Central Park West in 1989, when she was 36, calling from somewhere she did not name and saying she was out of money, Mrs. Cheney would testify....After Ms. Wells moved back in, the mother and daughter, who did not work, each had her own locked room facing a short hallway that led to a book-lined foyer....Their mother had given James and Jennifer, both single and in their 40s, hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy Manhattan apartments, Diane Wells wrote. “Fear of what will happen to me,” she wrote. “Worse because of no money to live, + see you getting old + it upsets and scares me.” From the mid-1990s on, numerous million-dollar insurance policies were purchased on Mrs. Cheney’s life, arranged for by Ms. Wells but paid for by Mrs. Cheney with premiums of $45,000 and up that strained even a trust-fund budget. They named Ms. Wells as the sole beneficiary. James Cheney said in court filings that Diane convinced their mother she would need the money to pay the apartment maintenance and other costs of staying there after Mrs. Cheney died.
"Lawyers for Ms. Wells have said the claims against her were lies invented by James and fed to his mother because he wanted the apartment for himself. In January 1999, Mrs. Cheney spoke by phone to Richard Laurie, a cousin in South Africa and a former president of the Johannesburg stock exchange. He looked after her $12 million trust. As he often did, like some Cheney-family Greek chorus, the cousin wrote soon after, summarizing the high points: a plan she had described to him to give Diane half of the apartment and full ownership upon her death made no sense and would cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes.
“'If you intend to beggar yourself to satisfy Diane’s importunities,' he wrote, 'it’s your funeral.' Mrs. Cheney wrote to the building management around that time that Ms. Wells should be listed as co-owner of the apartment. Phone calls from 9B to Mr. Laurie and others could be gloomy. Her mail was being opened and Diane had spit at her, Mrs. Cheney was quoted as saying in a phone call. 'She did hit me, you know.'
"James Cheney later discovered more than 25 cassette recordings, labeled by Ms. Wells, his lawyers said. There had been a tape recorder hidden in an empty bedroom that captured Mrs. Cheney’s calls, they said. 'She told me she hears everything I say to anybody,' Mrs. Cheney said, according to the lawyers. She was not making decisions anymore.'“Diane’s kind of the boss now,' Mrs. Cheney is quoted as saying....In July 2002, Mr. Laurie wrote again from Johannesburg: 'I was shocked to hear from you, that Diane keeps shouting at you, ‘Why don’t you die?’
"....As in so many New York apartments, family milestones were marked in 9B. Diane Wells was arrested there on June 23, 2005, on a misdemeanor assault charge. Under a court order, she moved out, and a year later, went on trial. James Cheney had the place fixed up. Ms. Wells was convicted of assault and sentenced to 60 days on Rikers Island. On April 26, 2007, Joyce Cheney died of cancer in Apartment 9B....The next month, Ms. Wells was arrested on a charge of solicitation of murder. On the day her brother had refused her entry into the apartment, court filings say, she asked the car-service driver several times whether he knew anyone she could hire to kill her brother. She denied the charge. A year later, the prosecutors dropped the charges, saying they could not prove the case. This March, an appeals court overturned the assault conviction, ruling that the judge at Ms. Wells’s assault trial had instructed the jury improperly. Manhattan prosecutors said this month that they intended to retry the case. The other trial, over who owns the Cheney family apartment, is scheduled to begin Sept. 21 before Judge Kristin Booth Glen. It was filed in 2005 by James Cheney and his mother to contest Diane Wells’s claims of being an owner of Apartment 9B, arguing that she got it through coercion while, essentially, imprisoning her mother there."