New York Songlines: 72nd Street

South:

S <===     RIVERSIDE BLVD

Corner (240 Riverside Blvd): The Heritage, a 31-story ultra-luxury condo building completed in 2005, marking the northern end of Donald Trump's Trump Place development project. Architect Costas Kondylis placed a square tower atop a broadly curved base. Saudi Prince Nawaf bin Sultan put together six units here to form a triplex with three bullet-proof panic rooms that he sold in 2018 for $30 million.

The Chatsworth

344: The Chatsworth, a Beaux Arts landmark built in 1902-03, designed by John E. Scharsmith. It's named for Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, considered one of the finest country houses in England.

Irving Berlin moved in here as a newlywed in 1912; shortly thereafter, his bride died after contracting typhoid in Havana on their honeymoon. Berlin lived on here alone until moving out in 1922. Other famous residents have included Susan Sarandon and Conan O'Brien.

340: The Chatsworth Annex, a companion building connected at the base, built in 1906. Also designed by Scharsmith, it's done in a French Classical style.

338: An 1890 townhouse by Ralph S. Townsend. It's known as the Charles H. Fowler House, after a Methodist bishop (and former Northwestern University president) who lived here from 1904 until his death here in 1908.

334: When Frederica Prentiss, one of the daughters of the family that built and lived in 1 Riverside, married architect John Theodore Hanemann in 1917, they were given a building here as a wedding present from the bride's parents. Replaced by 330.

330: A 16-story building from 1927. Actor Lori Singer has lived here.

310: This was the address (in 1930) of George Sidney, director of classic movie musicals like Annie Get Your Gun, Kiss Me Kate and Viva Las Vegas.

300 (corner): This six-story white-brick building from 1920 is described as having "few redeeming features."

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North:

Riverside Park

Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial

In the southeast corner of the park, serving as a grand entrance, is a statue of and monument to Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962), wife of Franklin Roosevelt (and niece of Teddy) and a prominent advocate for civil and human rights. The statue, by Penelope Jencks, was dedicated in 1996 in a ceremony that included then-First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Earlier on this spot was a 1909 monument to the explorer Henry Hudson, commemorating the tricentennial of his expedition, that was destroyed when a truck hit it in the 1950s.

RIVERSIDE DR     ===> N

Corner (1 Riverside Dr): The Prentiss House, built in 1901 to a C.P.H. Gilbert design, matching the architect's work next door on 72nd Street. This house's bay windows follow the curve of the corner, and the odd lot gives both houses a shared wedge-shaped garden.

After Frederica Lloyd Prentiss, the last surviving member of the family, died in 1955, the property briefly became home to the Nippon Club for Japanese businessmen—replacing a clubhouse seized during World War II—but by 1957 it became home to the Islamic Cultural Center of New York. Since 1991, it's been a satellite to the Center's main mosque on East 96th Street.

311: The Sutphen House, designed in conjunction with 1 Riverside Drive by C.P.H. Gilbert. The Sutphens were a wealthy family that owned the whole first block of Riverside. Today there are 28 rental units in this five-story building.

309: This five-story Renaissance Revival mansion, built in 1901 by William E. Diller to a Gilbert A. Schellenger design, was home from 1901–20 to William D'Alton Mann, publisher of Town Topics and The Smart Set, high-society gossip sheets (he reported that Alice Roosevelt wore “costly lingerie” for the “edification of men”) that seemed to have functioned partially or primarily as extortion rackets. Such notables as John Jacob Astor, Stanford White and Florenz Ziegfield paid at least $1,500—tens of thousands in 21st century money—for a copy of his book-length compilation, Fads and Fancies, with the implicit promise that they wouldn't be in it.

305: A 12-story building from 1913 in Italian Renaissance style.

301 (corner) : (aka 263 West End): Riverside Towers, 22-story co-op from 1929. "One of the most distinguished apartment houses on West End Avenue," says Carter Horsley. Actor James Earl Jones has lived here, as has author Judith Rossner, best known for Looking for Mr. Goodbar, a novel based on a murder that took place a block away.

South:

270 (corner): Also known as 260 West End, this 15-story co-op went up in 1924, designed by Schwartz & Gross, who did the Ghostbusters Building at 55 Central Park West. The neighborhood diner Pier 72 is on the ground floor.

260: Thirteen stories from 1913, designed in 1887 by Rouse & Goldstone.

254: Ashford & Simpson's Sugar Bar was opened by the songwriting couple who crafted "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," among many other hits.

The row houses from 250 to 254 were designed by George F. Pelham in a Gothic style (Daytonian).

250: The Emerald Inn opened in 1942 on Columbus Avenue; skyrocketing rents forced it to relocate here in 2013. Said to have done a good job recreating the atmosphere of its former home, which made an appearance in The Apartment.

Earlier it was briefly PD O'Hurley's, another pub displaced by landlord greed, and before that the Purple Fig. Going back to 1968, it was W.M. Tweed's, the bar where Roseann Quinn met John Wayne Wilson, who went home with her to her apartment across the street and murdered her. The bar appears as Mr. Goodbar in the novel and movie based on Quinn's death. After the killing, the owner renamed it the All State Cafe, under which name it thrived until 2007.

From 1906–1913, the Hawthorn girls school was located here.

244: Sixteen-story building from 1928, designed by George & Edward Blum. On the ground floor is Sushi Kaito ("Sea Breeze"), a 12-seat restaurant opened in 2017 that was named one of the 100 best restaurants in the US by Open Table diners in 2018.

236: Metropolitan New York Baptist Association; includes the Center for Global Impact, a missionary group. Also houses Kehilath HaDerekh, a congregation of Jewish Christians.

230: Fischer Bros. & Leslie, kosher butcher, founded 1949 by Morris and Louis Fischer. Leslie (Lutzi) Niederman, a Holocaust survivor who joined the partnership, was active in the business until his death in 2008.

228: Gebhard's Beer Culture, a bilevel bar and store with a wide selection. Was Mrs. J's Sacred Cow, a steakhouse with a singing waitstaff.

224-226: The Pet Market

222: Was the Famous Dairy Restaurant, a favorite hangout of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Later Dougie's, kosher barbecue. Now Kolorbar, Citi Driving School.

220: City Veterinary

216-218: 1890s row houses. Joseph Pharmacy, West Side Cafe & Pizza are on the ground floor.

214: Writer Dorothy Parker (born Dorothy Rothschild) lived here from when she was an infant in 1893 until shortly after her mother's death in 1898. The four-story Queen Anne rowhouse, clad in limestone with sharp-angled bays, was torn down in 2019 — a loss to literary history of the sort the Landmarks Commission is supposed to prevent.

200 (corner): The Corner, 19-story apartment building, completed in 2010 with a distinctive cutaway corner design. It replaced the Colonial Club, an 1892 clubhouse designed by Henry F. Kilburn with a distinctive turreted corner. The club, whose name referred to an interest in pre-Revolutionary history, was one of the first in the city to admit women; “One of the elevating purposes of the club was to enjoy the society of pure and honorable women,” the New York Times reported in 1893. They were only able to engage in this activity for a few years, however; the clubhouse was sold in 1903 and the club apparently disbanded.

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North:

271 (corner): The Spencer Aldrich House, called by Daytonian "a Romanesque fantasy of turrets, gables, arches and chimneys," was designed in 1897 by Gilbert A. Schellenger.

269: A 16-story Colonial Revival apartment house by Schwartz & Gross, built in 1924.

265: Master Bike Shop

253: West Pierre, built in 1926 as the Westover Hotel, designed by Louis Kamper, a prominent Detroit architect, for Schwartz & Gross.

On January 1, 1973, teacher Roseann Quinn was stabbed to death here by John Wayne Wilson, whom she had picked up at a singles bar across the street. Wilson committed suicide in jail six months later. Her killing was the basis for the novel and movie Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

251: Sushi Yasaka

247–249: The AIA Guide praises the "excellent eclecti- cisms" of these 1890s Roman- esque brown- stones. My Most Favorite Food, bakery/restaurant, is now on the ground floor.

243: The four-story Renaissance Revival Kate E. Morgan House was designed and built by Lamb & Rich in 1894; only the upper half survives intact, but you can see what a lovely house it must have been. Morgan's son Arthur sued Evening Telegram publisher James Gordon Bennett for calling his ship the "poison yacht" — just because his friend poisoned him and killed another friend on the yacht because they were all flirting with the same woman.

241: The Catherine Bernstein Building houses a senior center and food pantry run by the National Council of Jewish Women; the Council has been here at least since 1975, and the building was renamed for Bernstein, the Council's president from 1973–78, in 1979. The building dates to 1939, designed in a Colonial Revival style by William Shary for the Wood Dolson realty company, here from 1940-56.

239: Cafe Bee

235: Ortiz Funeral Home

233: Westsider Records, home to more than 30,000 LPs.

201 (corner, aka 2085 Broadway): The Alexandria, 25-story apartment building from 1991, by Frank Williams & Assocs. and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.. The AIA Guide calls this "consummate schmaltz" an "insult to ancient Egypt." But Carter Horsley called it "the most attractive new building on the Upper West Side in decades." There's a Bloomingdale's Outlet Store on the ground floor.

In 2003, a painting by Rufino Tamayo was found in the garbage here after being stolen for 20 years. It was later sold at auction for $1 million. AATT

South:

Verdi Square

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North:

Verdi Square

In the 1960s and 1970s, the park's popularity with IV drug users gave it the nickname Needle Park, as featured in the 1971 movie Panic in Needle Park.

In the summer this is home to the Verdi Square Festival of the Arts.

The subway entrance here was added in 2002 to ease congestion on the platforms below. The station serves the 1, 2 and 3 IRT trains.

South:

Gray's Papaya

Corner (2090 Broad- way): The original location of the iconic bargain hot dog shop, which also features deliciously chalky fruit beverages. Gray's often appears in popular culture—The Warriors, You've Got Mail, Sex and the City, How I Met Your Mother—as a signifier of real New Yorkiness.

176: Grandaisy Bakery, spinoff of a Tribeca bakery.

174: Built in 1886 as a mansion for lard refiner Albert Seeley Roe; architect Arthur Bates Jennings created a Romanesque/Flemish fantasia, in which "no two openings were alike" (Daytonian). There were originally four of these; this is the only survivor.

In 1919, the lower floors were clumsily converted into commercial space—originally the Piccadilly Tea Room. In 1937–38, it was home to Benny Leonard's Restaurant; Leonard, a Jewish boxer known as the Ghetto Wizard, is reckoned as one of the top 10 fighters of all time. When taken to court by a waiter who accused him of punching him for taking a baked potato for his dinner, Leonard told the judge, “If I had hit him, he wouldn’t have been able to come for a summons.”

From 1970–99, the space was the beloved dive bar Donohue's, then from 1999-2012, the slightly more upscale PD O'Hurley's—which lingered briefly up the street when chased out of here by rising rents.

172: Another house by Arthur Bates Jennings was home to Mr. and Mrs. Julian P. Thomas, famous balloon adventurers in the first decade of the 20th century.

170: This Art Deco storefront was built in 1931 as a two-story Horn & Hardart automat, which closed in 1967.

166: A 12-story building from 1911. Had a sign on the north side saying "depression was a flaw in chemistry not character" from the 1990s until 2016. My Pie Pizzeria Romana is on the ground floor.

162: Gartner's Hardware, opened 1947

160: Acker Merrall & Condit, the US's oldest wine merchant, founded in 1820. In 2014 it settled a lawsuit from billionaire William Koch accusing them of selling him counterfeit wine.

158: The Triad, off-Broadway theater built in 1984 best known for the spoof Forbidden Broadway; Brooke Shields, Matthew Broderick and Ryan Reynolds are among the stars who have performed here. "In the 1980s, Christopher Walken, Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Jack Nicholson, Robert DeNiro and many other well-known performers would use the theater for their own weekly private performances," the venue's website asserts. Seven's Turkish Grill is also at this address.

156: Le Petit Kids, children's clothes

154: Dark Bullet Oyster & Sake Bar

146: Divorce Center

142: Zurutto, gyoza & ramen bar

138: Fine & Schapiro, classic kosher deli, opened in 1927 and hasn't changed much since. Said to be the oldest kosher restaurant in the city.

134: Zen Medica Vitamins

130: Milk & Honey

124: Simit + Smith, Turkish sandwiches

118: Thirteen stories built as the Earlton Studios in 1915, designed by Buchman & Fox. The developer, Edward West Browning (whose initials are entwined above the second floor), went on to be the focus of tabloid scandal when he courted and married 15-year-old Peaches Heenan — a May/December romance that lasted from March to October, 1926, from their meeting at a sorority dance at the Hotel McAlpin to their filing for separation on the grounds of cruelty and abandonment.

112: Originally the Hotel Hargrave, completed 1902, designed by Frederick C. Browne ( Daytonian). Jose Santos Zelaya, president of Nicaragua from 1893–1909, hid out here in 1913 after being deposed by an invasion of US Marines. He was smuggled out of the hotel in a trunk. In 1951, James Dean shacked up here with dancer Liz "Dizzy" Sheridan; she later played Jerry's mom on Seinfeld.

Today there's a Ricky's on the ground floor.

100 (corner): Park & Tilford Building, a McKim, Mead & White building from 1893, housed the Park & Tilford luxury grocery store; the Times said of the six-story Renaissance Revival building, "There is no business building more handsome on the West Side." It almost burned down on December 17, 1916, when ammonia tanks for refrigeration in the sub-basement exploded. After Park & Tilford sold the building in 1920, it became known as the Papae building; 150 people were arrested here on March 12, 1935, for "participating in or attending an indecent performance."

At this corner on November 22, 1911, sewer workers in a shed here set off a massive explosion by "toasting" frozen dynamite to thaw it out. One person was killed and several injured.

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North:

175 (corner): The Van Dyck, a 13-story building from 1906 by Mulliken & Moeller, called one of "the grand dames of the Upper West Side." Was the address of Flik's Video to Go, one of the last neighborhood video stores, where what "staff members lacked in enthusiasm, they made up for in surliness."

165: Lin Kumo sushi

161: Aroma Espresso Bar

157: Goodwill

155: Tip Top Shoes. Long's Bedding opened at this location in 1932 before moving down the block in 1962.

145: La Dinastia, Chino-Latino

143: Built as a four-story brick townhouse in 1893 (Daytonian). From 1906-22, this was the home of William Broadus Pritchard, an alienist who testified to the sanity of Harry K. Thaw at his trial for the murder of Stanford White. In 1935 it was given an Art Deco makeover for the Hall Realty Company, which took off the top two floors.

By 1969, this was The House of Games, described as "the neighborhood center for chess, bridge, backgammon, scrabble and go players." A 1989 makeover gave the building an interesting third story and a weirdly blank fourth floor.

141: Izakaya Ida, Japanese gastropub, is at the address of Cafe Eclair, a Viennese-style bakery here from 1939 until 1996. Isaac Bashevis Singer was a regular customer; cakes were baked here for Ed Sullivan, Bob Hope and Jackie Kennedy.

139: Like its neighbor at 137, this four-story brick townhouse was built in 1886 by architects Thom & Wilson, designers of the Harlem Courthouse, in an eclectic castle-like style (Daytonian). Phineas Chapman Lounsbury, governor of Connecticut from 1887–89, lived here after his term in Hartford until his death in 1925. He is remembered for pushing for a law limiting women and children under 16 to a 60-hour workweek.

Artist Mark Rothko lived here in 1932–33.

137: Another turreted townhouse by Thom & Wilson; there used to be five of these, but only two remain. The bottom two floors were turned into storefronts in 1925–27. In the 1970s there was a seafood restaurant here called Captain Nemo.

121: A 16-story apartment building from 1926. Nobel Prize–winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer lived here from 1959–1962. Long's Bedding was here from 1962 through 2019, moving to the Upper East Side in 2020; it has sold beds to Yoko Ono, John F. Kennedy Jr., Henry Kissinger, James Taylor and Carly Simon, Bette Midler, Marla Maples....

119: Frank Tilford, owner of the Park & Tilford store, built a mansion here c. 1895.

105: SPOT Canine Club

103: Malachy's Donegal Inn was described by Gothamist as one of the "best old man bars in NYC."

101 (corner): Also known as 260 Columbus Avenue. In 1911 this was the address of the Non-Smokers Protective League of America.

South:

58 (corner): The Adrian, six stories from 1920.

50: Ruxton Towers, an 18-story building from 1927; Sugarman & Berger, architects. On the ground floor is is Lilly's, formerly Riposo 72; also Central Park Taekwondo.

44: Lincoln Terrace, five stories from 1927.

42: Unterschatz Building, 1915 by Buchman & Fox. Unterschatz means "underestimate" in German; not sure why that's the name of the building. The developer was Edward West "Daddy" Browning.

40: The Bancroft, 16 stories built as a hotel in 1926, designed by Hyman Isaac Feldman and Emery Roth.

The Franconia

20: Built in 1925 as the Fairfield Hotel, it was owned by mob kingpin Arnold Rothstein, who appears in Damon Runyon's stories as "The Brain" and in The Great Gatsby as Meyer Wolfsheim. He was living here in 1928, with his showgirl girlfriend Inez Norton, when he was gunned down at the Park Central Hotel.

On November 10, 1931, nine members of the Jewish syndicate, including Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and Murder Inc.'s Louis Buchalter, came together here in the Franconia Hotel Conference. Police raided the gathering, arresting the participants under the "Public Enemy" law, but charges were dismissed when Judge Maurice Gotlieb ruled "evil reputation" was not sufficient for a conviction.

Pulp writer Cornell Woolrich (author of The Bride Wore Black and the short story Rear Window was based on) lived here from 1957-1961, after the death of his mother. He was asked to leave after repeatedly getting drunk and running naked through the halls.

Gangster Legs Diamond and Barbara Stanwyck are also said to have been residents here.

On the ground floor is The Ribbon restaurant, opened in 2015 by the Bromberg brothers.

The Oliver Cromwell

12: The Oliver Cromwell, a 30-story building designed by Emery Roth in 1927, has been called "one of Manhattan's finest free-standing towers of the 1920's." Violinist Isaac Stern lived here from 1942-1944, sci-fi writer Isaac Asimov from 1970–1973. Alien star Sigourney Weaver has also been a resident. The crabhouse Sidewalkers was here in the 1970s.

The Majestic

6 (corner): A twin-towered, 29-story Art Deco apartment building completed in 1931, designed by developer Irwin Chanin with Jacques Delamarre. Lindbergh baby kidnapper Bruno Richard Hauptmann was one of the carpenters who worked on the building; legend has it that some of the ransom money is hidden here, though the crime happened a year after the building was finished.

The Majestic was home to numerous mobsters, including Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Louis Buchalter, head of Murder Inc. and the only mob boss to be formally executed for his crimes. Frank Costello, another resident mobster, was shot in the lobby here by Vincent "The Chin" Gigante on May 2, 1957. Costello recovered to die here of natural causes in 1973.

Other residents included Walter Winchell (from 1933–1938), Elia Kazan (who lived here in the early 1960s), Milton Berle, Zero Mostel and Conan O'Brien.

The apartments are named for the Hotel Majestic, which stood on the site from 1893–1929. Dancer Isadora Duncan lived there in 1915, George S Kaufman in 1917, and siblings Fred and Adele Astaire in 1919. Gustav Mahler and novelist Edna Ferber are also said to have called the hotel home.

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North:

53 (corner): A seven-story building from 1925. The Dakota Bar on the ground floor features a chandelier made from brass band instruments.

49: The Parkway, a 16-story Neo-Renaissance building from 1930. Replaced an 1888 building also known as The Parkway.

41: The Hermitage, a 16-story apartment building from 1926 with a Byzantine motif. It was artist Roy Lichtenstein's childhood home; he moved out in 1941 when he was 17.

37: Fifteen stories from 1929, designed by Harmon & Hart.

Hotel Olcott

27: This 16-story hotel opened in 1930; writer A.J. Liebling lived here from 1930–34. Singer Tiny Tim and actor Martin Balsam have also been residents. Mark David Chapman stayed here in November 1980, shortly before murdering John Lennon a block away.

Swiss Chalet Bar-B-Q opened here in 1978, which became the first Dallas Bar-B-Q, a local chain. This location closed in 2014.

15: Mayfair Towers, a 36-story white-brick apartment building that went up in 1964 on what used to be the Dakota's rose garden. Playwright Tennessee Williams moved in 1965 to "that ghastly high-rise next to the Dakota." He moved out in 1968. Actors Shelley Winters and Farley Granger have also lived here.

The Dakota

1 (corner): This 1884 building, designed by Henry J. Harden- bergh in an eclectic German Renais- sance style, has been called "the city's most legendary apartment building." At the time the neighborhood was still quite rural, leading to speculation that the name referred to how far north and west the address was.

The building has boasted numerous notable residents, most famously John Lennon, who moved here in 1973 and was murdered here on December 8, 1980; his widow, Yoko Ono, still lives there. Leonard Bernstein lived here from 1974 until his death on October 14, 1990.

Other residents were Lauren Bacall (with her second husband Jason Robards), Judy Garland, Rosemary Clooney (with Jose Ferrer), Neil Sedaka, Boris Karloff, Judy Holliday, Carson McCullers, Roberta Flack, Gilda Radner, Joe Namath, Jack Palance, Lillian Gish, Edward R. Murrow, Betty Friedan Rex Reed, Rudolf Nureyev, Rosie O'Donnell, John Madden, Bono and Connie Chung (with Maury Povich). William Inge wrote Picnic, Bus Stop and Splendor in the Grass here.

The list of would-be buyers rejected by the Dakota's board is likewise star-studded: Madonna, Cher, Billy Joel, Carly Simon, Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, Alex Rodriguez, Judd Apatow and Tea Leoni are all said to have failed to make the cut.

The building's exterior famously appears in Rosemary's Baby, which calls the building "The Bramford." The main character of Vanilla Sky also lives here, as does Veronica Lodge before she moves to Riverdale. It features in the novel Time and Again, as well as in Lee Child's The Hard Way and The Babysitters' Club series.

South:

Arguably the greatest work of art in all of human history. I have been known to make that argument, anyway.

An 853-acre expanse of green in the middle of Manhattan, it's the most-visited public park in the world, with 25 million visitors annually. Responding to calls from civic leaders like William Cullen Bryant, the city acquired the land in 1853 and held a design contest in 1857, choosing the Greensward Plan of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux (rhymes with "Walks"). After the moving of 3 million tons of earth and the planting of 270,000 trees and shrubs, the park—almost entirely landscaped, despite its naturalistic appearance—opened to visitors in 1859 (though not officially completed until 1873).

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On this corner on November 27, 1997, the Cat in the Hat balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade blew into a lamppost, injuring Kathleen Caronna and putting her into a coma for nearly a month.

Women's Gate

When the entrances to Central Park were named in 1862, this one was called the Women's Gate—perhaps because of its proximity to the Ladies Pond? It leads to Riftstone Arch, a rustic bridge made from slabs of Manhattan schist quarried from the park itself.

Strawberry Fields

South:

The Falconer

Frisbee Hill

A gentle slope used for tossing the ol' disc around, and for free outdoor movies in the summer.

The Mall

Immortalized with statues on the north end of the mall are Frederich Schiller, Ludwig van Beethoven and Victor Herbert.

Rumsey Playground

When Fiorello LaGuardia became mayor in 1934, he had the place torn down as a symbol of elitist decadence—replacing the area with a playfield named for Mary Harriman Rumsey (1881-1934), a railroad heiress who founded the Junior League. The 1938 statue of Mother Goose near the east entrance to the field, by Frederick Roth (who also did Balto and the dancing goat and bear at the Central Park Zoo) marks its history as one of the Park's first playgrounds.

Since 1990, it's been best known as the site of Summer- Stage—originally a series of free concerts, but now mostly high-priced "benefit" concerts, with lesser names playing a handful of free shows to justify turning over prime Central Park real estate to a commercial concert promoter—in this case, right-wing billionaire Philip Anschutz.

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North:

Daniel Webster

The Lake

This 20-acre body of water was created by Olmsted from a pre-existing swamp—in part by turning the East Drive into an earthen dam. This is where people rent boats to go rowing in Central Park; until 1950, it was used for ice-skating in the winter. It's also home to waterfowl, including ducks, geese and sometimes herons and egrets. (The mute swans who used to nest here are gone, possibly evicted as invasive species.)

Cherry Hill

A gently sloping area where cherry trees, forsythia and azaleas all bloom in spring. It was originally a turnaround for carriages touring the park; there's still a horse trough here with carvings by Jacob Wrey Mould.

Bethesda Terrace

The Roman- esque staircase made of New Brunswick sandstone are decorated with carvings representing the seasons, day and night by Jacob Wrey Mould. The arcade underneath features gorgeous ceiling tiles from England's Minton & Co.—removed in 1983 and finally restored in 2007.

The Terrace was a center of hippie culture, as depicted in the films Godspell and Hair. It's been featured in countless other films and shows, including Enchanted, The Avengers, Home Alone 2 and Doctor Who. The angel makes an appearance in the play Angels in America.

South:

The East 72nd Playground was placed here in 1936 by Robert Moses. It was renovated in 1969, in 2000 and again in 2015. It was voted the best playground in Central Park in 2016.

Inventor's Gate

Nearby is a statue of Samuel Morse, an 1870 work by Byron Pickett, relocated here from the Mall to serve as a representative of the inventing class.

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North:

Pilgrim Hill

Another popular sledding hill, it's named for the statue of a pilgrim by John Quincy Adams Ward, given to the park by the New England Society in 1885. (Ward sculpted Indian Hunter, William Shakespeare and the 7th Regiment Memorial elsewhere in the park, and George Washington and the Stock Exchange pediment, both on Wall Street.)

South:

Corner (907 5th): A 12-story building from 1915 designed by J.E.R. Carpenter. Previously on the site was the 1893 James Burden house, designed by R.H. Robertson; this was the first time that a private house on Fifth Avenue above 59th Street was replaced by an apartment building; neighbors unsuccessfully fought it in court, but Carpenter won the 1916 gold medal from the American Institute of Architects for it. Silent star Pola Negri lived here in the 1950s.

4: A 15-story apartment building from 1929. Henry Luce lived here from 1932-35 — moving out when he left his first wife to marry Clare Booth Luce. Another resident here was Harold Stanley, co-founder of Morgan Stanley.

12: A five-story building from 1935; model Margaux Hemingway lived here in 1973 when she first moved to New York from Idaho. Notorious landlord-from-hell Steven Croman moved to evict all the tenants from this building in 2002, claiming he planned to live there himself.

18: This French-style townhouse, known as the Warburg-Villa House, resembles its neighbors to the east and west, but is the only one to retain its original architectural detail. Residents have included the banker Felix Warburg (from 1895-1908) and Count Alfonso Villa (also a banker). This was briefly in the 2000s the mission of Spain to the UN.

20: Built in 1894, this was the home of Hugh J. Grant (1858–1910), who served as mayor from 1889-92. Inaugurated at the age of 31, he remains the youngest mayor in the city's history. He died here on November 3, 1910.

In 1975, his heirs donated the house to the Catholic Archdiocese, who made it residence of Vatican's permanent observer to the UN. Pope John Paul II stayed here when he visited New York in 1979 and 1995, and Pope Francis in 2015.

Corner (888 Madison): This Beaux Arts mansion (designed by Hut Sachs Studio) was built as a flagship for Ralph Lauren in 2010, but looks like it could easily be a century older — proving that they can build 'em like they used to if they want to. A slump in Fifth Avenue as a shopping district threatened to close this flagship in 2017, but it seems to be still going strong.

A five-story palazzo, designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1894, stood here until 1951.

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North:

Corner (909 5th Ave): Fourteen floors of white brick from 1959.

7: A Beaux Arts landmark topped with a gorgeous mansard roof, originally built for Oliver Gould Jennings, a Standard Oil heir, in 1899; designed by Ernest Flagg & Walter B. Chambers, who cunningly made the Sloane mansion next door look like an extension of their creation. In 1957, this was the temporary home of the Guggenheim Museum as it awaited completion of its Frank Lloyd Wright–designed temple. It shared space here with the Danish mission to the UN; both moved out in 1959.

The Lycee Francais de New York moved in in 1960, buying the property and the adjacent Sloane mansion in 1964. The school was here until 2010, at which time both houses were turned into a mansion for the Emir of Qatar.

9: A Beaux Arts mansion designed by Carrère & Hastings built in 1896 for Henry T. Sloane, scion of the W&J Sloane Carpet fortune, and his wife, the former Jessie Sloane. When Jessie left Henry in 1899 to marry Perry Belmont, the house went back and forth in the divorce, and from 1900–01 publisher Joseph Pulitzer rented it. Banker James Stillman, who turned National City Bank (now Citigroup) into the largest bank in the country, and helped set up the Federal Reserve system, then bought it and lived here until his death in 1918. (His great-grandson is director Whit Stillman.)

Since 1964, the mansion's ownership and interior have been linked to that of No. 7 next door.

15: A townhouse built by mining and smelting tycoon Benjamin Guggenheim in 1898; he lived here with his wife and three daughters (including Peggy Guggenheim, the art collector, who moved here as an infant) until 1911, when he went down on the Titanic after giving up his lifeboat seat to a female passenger. After his death, the house was bought by Guggenheim's sister Cora and brother-in-law Louis Rothschild, an investment banker (though no relation to the European banking family). Later this was the home of attorney John Thomas Cahill, a lawyer for NBC, RCA and A&P, and formerly a prosecutor who tried gangsters Legs Diamond and Louis Buchalter, Communist Party USA leader Earl Browder and federal Judge Martin Manton.

Today the house is owned by the kingdom of Morocco.

19 (corner): A 1937 building by Rosario Candela and Mott B. Schmidt. The bas-reliefs at the entrance are by C. Paul Jennewein, who did murals for the Woolworth Tower. Richard Nixon withdrew an offer to buy the penthouse here in 1979 in the face of opposition from other tenants. Kimba Wood, unsuccessful Obama nominee for attorney general, has lived here.

This was, from 1882-1936, the site of the 1885 Louis Comfort Tiffany mansion. Designed by Stanford White in close conjunction with Tiffany himself, the great house was itself a work of art that combined the talents of such artists as Lockwood de Forest, John La Farge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens. "Every sensuous constituent conceivable was enlisted to contribute to an eclectically exotic atmosphere of mystery and delight," wrote historian Michael Henry Adams. Criminally, the mansion was leveled in 1935, two years after Tiffany's death.

South:

Corner (867 Madison): This spectacular French Renais- sance chateau was built, from 1895-98, for Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo, heir to the Rhinelander real estate fortune. It was designed by Alexander Mackintosh of Kimball & Thompson; "Of all the mansions remaining in Manhattan, this is perhaps the most enchanting," says Carter Horsley. After completing this masterpiece, and filling it with crates of art from Europe, Waldo never moved in — instead letting it sit vacant as she lived across the street with her sister for the last 16 years of her life. Deeply in debt, she was urged to sell the building, but walked away from the closing, murmuring, "I don't think I'll sell."

After her death, the Dime Savings Bank took possession, and planned to raze and replace the mansion with an apartment building — dismissing a covenant that restricted the property to private housing by saying, after all, isn't an apartment building just a collection of private houses? Luckily for posterity, a judge rejected that argument.

People finally moved in — to apartments — in 1921. Over the years, it's housed the Christie auction house, Olivotti & Company decorators, and since 1983 a flagship of the Ralph Lauren clothing chain.

30: Sixteen stories from 1924. Clinton spinmeister turned TV host George Stephanopoulos has lived here, as has prisoner advocate Barbara Margolis and her husband David Margolis, who was president of the Colt firearms company. The Margolises were close friends of Mayor Ed Koch, who was sworn in in their apartment here on December 31, 1977.

36: This 15-story building with only 17 apartments was built in 1927. Residents have included ambassador to Spain James Costos and his partner Michael Smith, who redecorated the Oval Office for Obama. Right-wing billionaire Robert Agostinelli, architect Carlos Brillembourg and art historian Olivier Berggruen have also lived here.

Corner (750 Park): This brown-brick 17-floor building was built in 1951, with Horace Ginsbern & Associates as architects.

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31 (corner): A 15-story limestone building from 1917. Criminal lawyer Lloyd Paul Stryker — who served as Alger Hiss's defense attorney, and also popularized the word "boondoggle" — suffered a fatal stroke at his apartment here on June 21, 1955.

An earlier rowhouse at this address was the home of Laura Rhinelander, sister of Gertrude Rhinelander Waldo, with whom Waldo lived rather than move into the spectucular mansion she had built across the street.

35: Central Hanover Bank and Trust Co. hired Cross & Cross to design this three-story bank building in 1930; now a Chase branch.

39: A five-story townhouse from 1881 designed by architect Robert Lynd for his own use. Gloria Vanderbilt (1924–2019) lived here as a baby. Priest, philosopher and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin died here while visiting friends, April 10, 1955.

41: Once part of a set of neo-Grecian brownstones from 39–55, built 1881–82 by Robert B. Lynd; 39 has been largely stripped of its detail and the others have been demolished, while this one alone gorgeously survives. From 1899 until 1988 it was home to the Mayer family; Clara Woolie Mayer (1895–1988), a dean and vice president of the New School, moved in when she was four and lived here until she was 79, having donated the building to the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Today the building is noted for its elaborate Halloween decorations.

49: Gloria Vanderbilt lived here from 1932–36 with her mother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, in another Lynd brownstone, since demolished. During this time the child's aunt, sculptor and art collector Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, successfully sued for custody, and little Gloria spent the rest of her childhood in her care.

Corner (760 Park): A 13-story building from 1924. Actor Tyrone Power (1914–58) was living here in 1954.

South:

Corner (755 Park): A 12-story apartment building built in 1914 to an Italian Renaissance design by Rouse & Goldstone. In 1889 the Freundschaft ("Friendship") Club, the city's oldest German club (est. 1879), moved to a five-story brick building here designed by McKim, Mead & White.

114: This 15-story grey-brick building from 1963 is where Jon Voight goes for some afternoon delight with Sylvia Miles in Midnight Cowboy.

132: George Gershwin lived in a 14-room apartment here from 1933–1936, his last New York home; he died in Los Angeles in 1937. This was the first time that he and his brother Ira lived in separate buildings; Ira's apartment was directly across the street. From 1935–1941, this was home to former Mayor Jimmy Walker and his second wife, former showgirl Betty Compton.

Corner (976 Lexington): Twenty-two stories from 1959.

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101 (corner): Also known as 765–775 Park Avenue, this 1927 Rosario Candela building takes up the whole end of the block between 72nd and 73rd. Gray's Anatomy and Scandal showrunner Shonda Rhimes bought the penthouse here for $11.75 million in 2018.

125 (corner): A 15-story red-brick building from 1917. Ira Gershwin moved here in 1933 when his brother George moved across the street.

South:

150 (corner): A 12-story grey-brick building from 1913, designed by Schwartz & Gross. This was the long-time home of actor Arlene Dahl, who had a second career as an astrology columnist.

160: A 15-story red-brown brick building, designed in 1928 by Taylor & Levi for Kingdon Gould, grandson of financier Jay Gould; Kingdon occupied the top four floors. Movie star Joan Fontaine (1917-2013) lived here in the late 1970s and 1980s; she and her sister Olivia de Havilland are the only siblings to have both won lead acting Oscars. Lee Radziwill, Jackie Kennedy's little sister, had a floor here for more than 30 years until her death in 2018.

164: Poet James Merrill lived here, in an apartment once owned by his grandmother. He wrote a well-known poem whose title is the building's address.

176: A modernist townhouse built in 1996 for Jerry Speyer, president of Tishman Speyer Properties. The AIA Guide calls the design, by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien, "a collage of glass, steel and limestone." Two brownstones were sacrificed for its construction.

180: This miniature Greek temple was constructed in 1906 as a branch of the 19th Ward Bank, which was a subsidiary of the Van Norden Trust Co.; the 19th Ward in those days was basically the Upper East Side, from 40th to 86th Street. The design was by William Ralph Emerson, a cousin of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The bank closed down only four years later. In 1913, the building was taken over by the Provident Loan Society of America, a nonprofit pawn broker set up in 1894 with the backing of JP Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, August Belmont and the like. It's still in operation here more than a century later.

190 (corner): The 34-story Tower East, a 1962 apartment building by Richard Roth Jr. of Emery Roth & Sons, was an influential prototype for high-rise luxury construction, taking advantage of new zoning laws that allowed for taller buildings that don't fully occupy their footprints — in this case, the building has a low-rise base rather than a public/private plaza.

Previously on this site from 1932–60 was Loew's 72nd Street cinema, "one of the great movie palace treasures of all time." Seating 2,673, it was designed by Thomas Lamb and John Eberson to resemble an East Indian palace.

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141 (corner): A 16-story brown-brick apartment building, dated 1924. Former Gov. Thomas Dewey, best remembered for not defeating Truman in the 1944 presidential race, lived here from 1955–1971.

145-151: Built in 1882, these townhouses were among the first structures built on East 72nd Street. 149 houses the dog salon Heads to Tails.

155: This handsome, 16-story red-brick building from 1924 housed the office of Dr. Max Jacobson, a protogee of Carl Jung's known as "Dr. Feelgood" for his questionable amphetamine injections. His patients were a who's who that included John F. Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Marlene Dietrich, Alan Jay Lerner, Timothy Leary, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Leonard Bernstein, Yul Brynner, Maria Callas, Montgomery Clift, Rosemary Clooney, Cecil B. DeMille, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, Alan Jay Lerner, Mickey Mantle, Liza Minnelli, Thelonious Monk, Zero Mostel, Anthony Quinn, Paul Robeson, Nelson Rockefeller, David O. Selznick and Billy Wilder. Silent movie star Louise Huff lived here in her later years.

165 (corner): A 21-story building from 1960.

South:

200 (corner): The Wellesley, a 35-story high-rise built in 1983.

206: Writer John Steinbeck moved to a house at this address in 1951, where he died on December 20, 1968.

210: Surviving house that resembles Steinbeck's.

212: Director Elia Kazan lived here from 1955 until the early 1960s.

250: This religious structure, designed by RH Robertson, was built in 1887 as the chapel of the Knox Presbyterian Church, named for the church's Scottish founder. It was going to be an adjunct to a larger church built on the corner of 2nd Avenue and 72nd, but a schism in the congregation scuttled plans. The building was sold in 1904 to a newly established Bohemian Catholic congregation, which renamed the chapel St. John the Martyr Church. (John the Martyr is the patron saint of Bohemia; the story goes that he was drowned when he refused to tell King Wenceslas — not the good one — whether or not the queen had confessed to having a lover.) The church was closed in 2015 and deconsecrated in 2017.

260 (corner): This five-story building went up in 1930.

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203 (corner): The four-story Georgian-style building here was built in 1947 by the Bank for Savings, and served as housing for veterans — called Bayard House after William Bayard (1761–1826), the bank's founding president (in whose home Alexander Hamilton died after his duel). In 1967, it became the base of a 27-floor apartment tower known as Bayard House Apartments.

Second Avenue Subway

Corner (1381 2nd Ave): A Second Avenue IND line was first proposed in 1919; construc- tion began in 1972 but was abandoned in 1975 as a result of the city's fiscal crisis. Work resumed in 2007, and in 2017 the first phase of the line was opened, connecting the 72nd Street station here to stops at 86th and 96th streets — two miles of tunnel that cost $4.5 billlion. (Downtown, the track connects to pre-existing stops at 63rd/Lexington and 57th/7th.) Phase 2 of the project is projected to extend the line to 125th Street by 2029, for another $6 billion. Eventually the line is supposed to go from 125th to Houston, at a total cost of $17 billion.

South:

300 (corner): Another entrance to the Second Avenue subway.

320: A 19-story red-brick building from 1930. Actor Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959) was living here in the early 1940s when she appeared in one of her most successful Broadway roles, playing Miss Moffat in The Corn Is Green.

344: A townhouse survivor.

350: Le Chambord is a 22-story red-brick tower from 1987, designed by Costas Kondylis. (The Château de Chambord is a famous French manor house built by Francis I.)

360 (corner): This 1964 supertower has a total of 455 apartments. Originally white brick, it was thankfully reclad in red in 2007. Milton Caniff (1907–1988), creator of the comic strip Terry & the Pirates, lived here from 1964–70. Tennis star Arthur Ashe moved here in 1977.

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North:

305 (corner): Charing Cross House, a 1955 apartment building with 17 floors. Charing Cross is a road in London that is famous for its bookstores. The building took the name after the death of writer Helene Hanff, who lived here from 1956 until her death in 1997; her best-known book, 84, Charing Cross Road, is a collection of letters she exchanged with Frank Doel, who ran a bookshop at that address.

315: A 22-story red-brick building from 1958. Elizabeth Taylor had an apartment here.

319: In a townhouse that was torn down for 315, photographer Diane Arbus lived from 1954–1958 with her husband, Allan Arbus, who was later a successful TV actor. Sculptor Paul Manship earlier lived in the same apartment.

347: Theosophy Hall was opened here in the 1920s as a meeting- place for the United Lodge of Theosophists, an association that promotes the esoteric teachings of Madame Blavatsky (1831–91).

353: The Fontaine, 36 stories built in 1975.

355 (corner): Eastwood Towers, 19 stories of white brick from 1962.

South:

Corner (1330 1st Ave): Coleman Tower, a 20-story building that went up in 1987; provides housing for staff of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which owns the building.

422: The Oxford, a 44-story building from 1990, called "one of the handsomest post-war apartment towers on the Upper East Side" ( Carter Horsley). Noted for its asymmetrical step-pyramid roofline. There used to be a dental clinic run by New York Hospital here.

430: Knickerbocker Cleaners

436: La Crosta pizzeria

Corner (1339 York): Mary Manning Walsh Nursing Home, run by the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm. Founded on Sutton Place in 1952 (with a million-dollar gift from the late Mrs. Walsh's husband), and moved here in 1967.

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399 (corner): Eastview House, 20 stories from 1961. It's not clear to me why this building's address is not 401, which is usually the number for the first building northeast of First Avenue.

405: This Art Deco "new tenement" building was built in 1935, replacing the addresses through 411 (Daytonian). This was the home of George D. Lottman, PR agent for celebrities like Rudy Vallee, Dorothy Lamour, Kate Smith, Tex Guinan and George Jessel. Lottman—who also contributed one of the verses to the Navy fight song "Anchors Aweigh"—died here September 25, 1942.

In 1936, attorney Fridolin A. Buholzer sued a neighbor here who had had him arrested for playing his accordion too late at night.

415: Fine Flowers by Kelly & Co.

417: York Veterinary Center

Corner (1365 York): The Somerset, a 38-story building from 1977 with 418 apartments. Sheldon Wasserman's December 16, 1996, murder of his wife Carol here established case law regarding what items can and cannot be seized during a crime scene investigation. In 1986, another resident, Charles Fridman, was found guilty of trying to terrorize tenants out of two buildings he owned on East 90th Street. On November 22, 1987, Kidder, Peabody broker Michael Bateman leaped to his death from his 32nd floor balcony here, having sustained heavy losses in the stock market crash a month earlier.

South:

Sotheby's

Corner (1334 York): The famous auction house was founded in London in 1744, making it the oldest company listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In its early years it specialized in books, including Napoleon's collection from St. Helena, but later became a prime fixture in the art world.

It opened its New York branch in 1955, becoming the first international auction house. It moved here in 1980, into a 1925 cigar factory that later served as a warehouse for Kodak. The current green glass facade dates to a 1999 redesign by Kohn Pedersen Fox. It was here in 2004 that the first painting sold for more than $100 million — Picasso's Boy With a Pipe.

516: The Citigroup Biomedical Imaging Center, part of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. A modest Art Deco building.

524: The Belaire, a 50-story apartment tower from 1988 with a distinctive pyramidical roofline. Felonious financier Ivan Boesky (who inspired Wall Street's Gordon Gekko) and mystery author Carol Higgins Clark have lived here.

Yankee pitcher Cory Lidle flew a small plane into this building on October 11, 2006, killing himself and his flight instructor. One of the apartments he destroyed belonged to Kathleen Caronna, a woman who had been injured when a Thanksgiving Day balloon knocked over a lamppost.

The first 14 floors are used by the Hospital for Special Surgery, whose entrance is on 71st Street.

530: The Edgewater was built in 1962, 21 floors of white brick. For its first 10 years or so, the penthouse was Frank Sinatra's New York crash pad, site of legendary parties whose guests included JFK, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol and the Rat Pack; Sammy Davis Jr. once was reportedly so drunk here he was throwing champagne glasses down onto the FDR Drive. Singer Eddie Fisher—husband of Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor and Connie Stevens, and father of Carrie Fisher—has also lived here.

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North:

501 (corner): A seven-story building from 1958.

515: Forty stories that went up in 1985.

523: The East River Professional Building is a handsome seven-story building made in 1920; houses doctors' offices.








One East River Place's plaza under renovation.

525: One East River Place is a 49-story glass-walled apartment tower from 1989, designed by Davis, Brody & Associates. It's really on 73rd Street, but uses as its address a pleasant little plaza on 72nd.

In August 2018, the building made the news when bullets were shot through the windows of two different apartments, two days apart. Farris Koroma, a resident of the East River's Roosevelt Island (and the nephew of a former president of Sierra Leone), was arrested for reckless endangerment and criminal mischief; he said he was aiming at the water.

527-541 (corner): The Black and Whites, an attractive row of tenements that ends 72nd Street. There were originally eight buildings, but they were remodeled in 1938 by Carmel Snow, the editor-in-chief of Vogue, and they now have four entrances. No. 541 was the home of participatory journalist George Plimpton from 1961 until his death here on September 26, 2003; the office of The Paris Review, which he edited for half of century, was on the ground floor.