New York Songlines: 79th Street

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The park was expanded to 137th Street in 1902, and to 158th Street in 1908. From 1998 to 2007, the park was extended southward to 59th Street.

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Corner (67 Riverside Drive): Riverdale, a nine-story grey-brick apartment building from 1907, designed by George F. Pelham. Violinist Isaac Stern moved here in 1944, taking advantage of the building's thick walls to use it as a rehearsal space. This is where Raymond Shaw lives in The Manchurian Candidate.

Corner (393 West End): Put up in 1927, this 16-story apartment building was designed by Goldner & Goldner.

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Corner (70 Riverside): Six-story brown-brick co-op from 1951.

307: Imperial Court, originally known as Lasanno Court, is an 11-story apartment building from 1906 designed by Schwartz & Gross. Future New Yorker writer AJ Liebling lived here as a child from 1907-1913.

Carlebach Shul

305: Originally built as a carriage house, this structure later served as a garage for the New Century next door—the first apartment building in New York to have a space for tenants' cars.

It became a synagogue in the 1940s, founded by Naphtali Carlebach, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Austria.

Corner (401 West End): The New Century, a handsome nine-story red-brick building, despite the loss of its cornice and its grand collanaded entrance. Designed by William B. Franke.

South:

The Apthorp

Block (2209 Broad- way): Block-spanning apartment complex built by the William Waldorph Astor from 1906-08, designed by Clinton & Russell with a central courtyard featuring two fountains.

Actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr. was an early tenant; he moved here from the Algonquin because he didn't want his son to be born in a hotel. Instead, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was born here December 9, 1909.

Other notable residents have included novelist Joseph Heller, choreographer George Balanchine, Al Pacino, Conan O'Brien, Nora Ephron, Cyndi Lauper, Rosie O'Donnell and 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft.

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Corner (400 West End): The Wexford, 19 stories of brick from 1928. Joe DiMaggio lived in the penthouse here from 1939-42, during which time he had his legendary 56-game hitting streak. Jazz great Duke Ellington also lived here, from 1953 until the mid-1960s (NNY).

Corner (2221 Broadway): The First Baptist Church in the City of New York was organized in 1762, with its first home at 35 Gold Street. Its first pastor, John Gano, was a chaplain in the Continental Army and allegedly baptized George Washington at Valley Forge. (He's also a founder of Brown University and an ancestor of Howard Hughes.) The congregation moved to 354 Broome Street and then to East 39th and Fourth Avenue before moving here in 1890.

George Keister, who later designed the Apollo Theater, was the architect of this building; its asymmetrical towers represent Jesus Christ and the church, incomplete until Jesus' return. With the addition of a balcony in 1903, the church can seat 1,000.

South:

230 (corner): A 13-story building from 1905. 79th Street Wine & Spirits is on the ground floor.

226-206: Developers William W. and Thomas H. Hall finished a row of 11 Renaissance Revival townhouses here in 1894. They are all still standing, in various states of alteration:

226: Was Burke & Wills, an Australian bistro that offered a kangaroo burger. Opened 2013, closed 2021.

224: Irving Farm New York, a local coffee chain, named for its original location on Irving Place.

222: Boy wonder theater mogul Sam Shubert leased this house for his mother. When he died in a train disaster in 1905, at the age of 23, his funeral was held here. In 1986, the ground floor became Restaurant Two Two Two, which in 2004 became the Greek restaurant 0nera—which became Kefi, another Greek eatery, in 2007.

212: Blondies sports bar

208: Knitty City

206: Coppola's Osteria & Pizzeria, opened 1987

200 (corner): The Gloucester, an 18-story red-brick building from 1978.

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Corner (2220 Broadway): This two-story building from 1932 (which houses a Designer Shoe Warehouse) is the site of a mural by Banksy, Hammer Boy, which appeared on October 20, 2013. The brothers who own Zabar's preserved it by covering it with plexiglass from their deli counter (Photo: Mal B).

225: Dublin House Taproom, opened in 1921 as a speakeasy. It celebrated the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, by putting up a giant harp-shaped neon sign. A GoFundMe in 2021 raised more than $18,000 in one day to restore it to its original glory. (Photo: Ashok)

219: Riverside Animal Hospital

217: Emily Post lived at this address in the 1890s, before she became an etiquette authority. Around the turn of the century, she divorced her husband and moved to Tuxedo Park, NY.

Lucerne Hotel

201 (corner): A gorgeous landmark built in 1904, designed by Mulliken & Moeller with their trademark richly detailed terra cotta—here executed in a rich plum color and set off by variegated red and purple brick. Future playwright Eugene O'Neill lived here with his parents after he was kicked out of Princeton in 1907. (Photo: Linda.)

During the Covid pandemic, 283 people without homes were housed here—and then evicted less than a year later, in what the New Republic called "a case study of the city government’s multiple, overlapping failures in homelessness policy."

The acclaimed Provencal restaurant Nice Matin is on the ground floor.

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172 (corner): The Hopkins, a 19-story condo built in 1929. Classic Kids photography, Bagels & Co., Emilio & Bolio's ice cream, Stoopher & Boots kids clothing are on the Broadway side.

Rodeph Sholom School

168-170: Impressive twin brownstones built in 1895 as Blessed Sacrament Convent and the Academy of the Blessed Sacrament, Catholic institutions run by the Sisters of Charity. Future writer Dorothy Parker (then Rothchild) enrolled here in 1900. Became the Notre Dame Convent School, run by the Sisters of St. Ursula, in 1947. Corazon Aquino, later president of the Philippines, attended from 1947-49.

From 1988-91 it was home to the Fleming School, a French/English school that closed here after 35 years.

Since 1993, this has beeen part of a school associated with Congregation Rodeph Sholom, founded in 1842 on the Lower East Side. The school was the first Reform Jewish day school in the country when it opened in 1970.

150: The Dorset, a 12-story Italian Renaissance co-op built in 1911, noted for its bold balconies.

130: The Austin, 19-story condo from 1986. Author Philip Roth wrote and later lived here from 1988 until his death in 2018.

The condo replaced a Byzantine-style structure designed by Walter Schneider in 1928 to house the Unity Synagogue. By 1930, it was the Mount Neboh Synagogue, the name under which it is best remembered. (Mount Nebo is the mountaintop in Jordan from which Moses saw the Promised Land.) It was bought by Crossroads Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1978, which stayed only until 1981. The building was landmarked in 1982 against the wishes of its owners, and un-landmarked a year later—citing "undue financial hardship"—allowing the building to be razed.

102: Astro West, shop for crystals and fossils. The business has been around since 1961; this branch opened in 2016.

Corner (392 Columbus): Five stories from 1920.

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175 (corner): A 15-story building designed by George F. Pelham in 1927. Amsterdam Gourmet is the deli on the ground floor.

171: A 16-story co-op from 1923. Actor Karen Allen has lived here.

163: The little building that looks like a squashed castle is the sole survivor of six rowhouses designend by developer George A. Denig to have a Medieval flavor.

157: Twelve stories in the Italian Renaissance style by Schwartz & Gross.

147: 1926 building with 16 stories. Features ornate Neo-Classical detailing in terra cotta.

145: Manchester House, a 1926 building by Emery Roth, features the arms of the Duke of Manchester above its entrance.

135: The Lyons, 12 stories of brown brick with a limestone base—from 1920.

127: Clifton House, 15 stories in Italian Renaissance style from 1926.

124: Five-story townhouse is a near-twin of its neighbor to the east.

123: Neway fertility clinic

121: Four-story Neo-Classical townhouse from 1892.

117: Built in 1898 as The Indiana, following the fad for buildings named after states sparked by The Dakota. Its seven stories were designed by Neville & Bagge in a Neo-Classical style, complete with a Corinthian-coloumned portico (Photo: Patrick Rasenberg).

Notable residents included Frank Crane, who played the Pharaoh in 1933's The Mummy, and Daniel Meyers, a bondsman who bailed out Dutch Schultz and other gangsters. In the 1950s it was renamed Hayden Hall, eventually becoming an SRO. It was rebranded Park 79 in the 21st century, when it racked up numerous occupancy violations. Now being converted to affordable senior housing.

Park Belvedere

101 (corner): Park Belvedere is a 31-story tower built in 1985 by William Zeckendorf Jr. (to a Frank Williams design). Carter Horsley calls it "an important and attractive new (unofficial) landmark" for the Upper West Side. In the 1980s, Duran Duran's John Taylor and Culture Club's Boy George lived in adjoining apartments on the 27th floor (RAREG). Another notable resident: tennis star Billie Jean King.

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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 Olmstead 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).

Naturalists' Walk

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Hunter's Gate

One of the 20 gates named by the Commis- sioners of Central Park in 1862—though the names were not actually inscribed until 1999. The names were intended to reflect the democratic intentions of the park.

Diana Ross Playground

This playground is named for the singer, who paid for its construction following her 1983 concert on the Great Lawn. It is overlooked by Summit Rock, the highest natural point in the park. To the east of the playground, hidden in foliage, is Tanner's Spring, one of only two natural springs still in the park; it's named for Dr. Henry Tanner, who in 1880 fasted for 40 days and nights, supposedly only sustained by the water here.

79th Street Yard

Facilities for park employees, including offices, training rooms, locker rooms, a mechanic's garage and equipment storage. The buildings here used to be stables.

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Burns Lawn

Vista Rock

Manhattan Communications Office Fire Alarm Telegraph Station

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Swedish Cottage

Shakespeare Garden

Featuring plants mentioned in Shake- speare's plays, this garden was dedicated on April 23, 2016—the tricentennial of the Bard's birth. (Photo: Gigi NYC)

Belvedere Castle

The top of Vista Rock was called The Belvedere—"Beautiful View" in Italian—in the original park plan; the castle was designed by Calvert Vaux and Jacob Wrey Mould as a lookout tower, and completed in 1872. The US Weather Bureau moved in in 1919; though they moved their offices in the 1960s, this hill is still where New York City's official weather measurements are taken. It serves as Gargamel's hideout in the 2011 Smurfs movie.

Turtle Pond

This body of water was not part of Olmsted's original park design, but was added in the 1930s to provide drainage for the Great Lawn.

Originally called Lake Belvedere, after the Belvedere Castle that overlooks it from the south, it was renamed in 1987 in honor of its reptilian denizens, mostly red-eared sliders descended from pets that outgrew their pens and were released into the park (though there are several other species of turtle in the pond, including snappers).

Jagiello

South:

Cedar Hill

Miner's Gate

One of the 20 gates named by the Commis- sioners of Central Park in 1862—though the names were not actually inscribed until 1999. The names were intended to reflect the democratic intentions of the park. The term "miner" was intended to "include the workers in coal, and the different ores, and also the quarrymen or miners of stone."

As discovered by the website PopSpots, this was the location of the pretzel vendor featured on the cover of the Steely Dan album Pretzel Logic.

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Friedman Playground

South:

Fifth Avenue to Madison, from 78th to 79th, is known as the Cook Block, bought in 1883 by railroad tycoon Henry H. Cook, who insisted that only opulent single-family homes be built on his property.

Ukrainian Institute

2 (corner): A five-story townhouse built in 1899 to a CPH Gilbert design, decorated with images of sea life. The first owner was coal tar magnate Isaac Fletcher; after he died in 1917, it was bought by Harry Sinclair of Sinclair Oil, who spent a year in prison in connection with the Teapot Dome scandal. In 1930, the house was bought by Augustus van Horne Stuyvesant, the last patrilineal descendant of Peter Stuyvesant. Two years after his death in 1953, it became the headquarters of the Ukrainian Institute of America. It appears as the Valmont mansion in Cruel Intentions.

James E Nichols House

4: Designed in 1899 in an extravagent Beaux Arts style by CPH Gilbert for business executive James E. Nichols. Nichols' widow died here in 1915, accidentally killed in a robbery orchestrated by a former butler. It was subsequently bought by banker Joseph Wright Harriman, who later went to prison for bank fraud. In 1938, Ogden Phipps became the owner and dulled down the architecture. From 1946 until 1973 it was the French Mission to the UN.

6: This striking red and white facade was designed in 1900 by Barney & Chapman for dilettente Fred Gephard, best remembered for his open affair with very married actor Lillie Langtry.

8: This granite-faced mansion was built in 1910 for Henry Schniewind, founder of the Susquehanna Silk Mills (not to be confused with the Susquehanna Hat Company). It was bought in 1970 by the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese, which still uses it as offices.

10: Built in 1902 for Civil War naval Capt. John Sanford Barnes. Since 1942 it's served as a residence for the Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church of North and South America.

12: This and No. 14 to its east were designed as a pair by Arthur Little for real estate investor Charles W. Ogden and his sister Mary F. Ogden. This one was later the School of Practical Philosophy, noted for its happiness-promising subway ads. It was connected to London's School of Economic Science, which some have called a cult. The building is now Guidepost Montessori.

14: Iraq's mission to the UN. From 1990–2003, this was the only Iraqi diplomatic outpost in the US. The New York Post claimed that Saddam Hussein kept a secret torture chamber for Iraqi expatriates in the basement here.

16: A neo-Georgian mansion designed by Warren & Wetmore. It was built from 1902-04 for Sidney Dillon, an insurance executive. He died here from appendicitis in 1905, just over a year after moving in. The building was converted to doctors' offices in 1956, losing much of its architectural detail in the process; the most famous practitioner here was Steven Levenkron, a psychotherapist who specialized in eating disorders, with Karen Carpenter among his patients. Since 1979 a series of art galleries have been on the ground floor—most recently Emma Scully Gallery, which describes this building as a "19th century townhouse."

18: Built in 1909 for banker J. Woodward Haven, this townhouse is faithfully based (by architect Ogden Codman) on an 18th century house in Bordeaux. In 1926-27 it was home to William Vincent Astor, who was called the "richest boy in the world" after his father died on the Titanic. In 1937 it was bought by four-time national racquets champion Richard Mortimer, who in 1947 died of a heart attack here at the age of 56. Fine arts dealers Duveen Brothers, which sold Leonardos, Raphaels, Vermeers and Rembrandts to Fricks, Rockefellers, Morgans and Whitneys, purchased the building in 1951. When the firm liquidated in 1964, its owner traded this building to Acquavella Galleries in exchange for two paintings by Renoir and Fantin-Latour. That gallery has been here since 1967, representing artists like Picasso, Renoir, Monet, Degas and Cezanne.

20: An Italianate building from 1913, first occupied by banker Dudley Olcott. After Mrs. Olcott left him for a Russian prince, the building was sold in 1933 to stock broker Chester Dale, who used it to display his extensive collection of 20th century masterpieces (Picasso, Renoir, Degas, Monet, Matisse...), which ended up in the National Gallery. (Dale and his wife rented rooms at the Plaza to live in.) The building is now the Skarstedt Gallery, which specializes in more recent artists like de Kooning, Warhol and David Salle.

Corner (1022 Madison): The five-story limestone and brick building built on this corner in 1911 is the only one of the block's grand houses not to survive. It was owned during almost all its existence by paint maker Edward H. Raynolds, who is remembered for allowing his second wife to torment his two sons by his first marriage. (See Daytonian.) It was torn down and replaced in 1949 with an "architectural aberration"—which since 1995 been the original flagship of the Serafina pizza chain.

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Corner (980 5th Ave): A 26-story co-op from 1966 that replaced the French Renaissance Brokaw mansion, built in 1888—featuring turrets, gables and almost a moat, in what came to be known as the Fifth Avenue style. Its destruction, along with that of Penn Station, compelled Mayor Robert Wagner to sign a landmarks preservation law.

9: A 14-story building from 1929 with just eight duplex apartments. Musician Art Garfunkel has lived in the penthouse here since 1975. Firefighters put out a smoldering wall here in 2015, caused by plumbers trying to thaw frozen pipes.

Rudolf Steiner School

15: A 1917 Italian Renaissance palazzo designed by McKim Mead & White for former state Sen. Thomas Newbold. The building was bought in 1944 by the Rudolf Steiner School, the first Waldorf school in North America, founded in 1925. The Waldorf low-tech, pro-art approach is grounded in the esoteric theories of Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher and occultist.

Bloomberg Townhouse

17: Media mogul Michael Bloomberg bought this five-story townhouse in 1986, and continued living here when he was mayor of New York from 2002-13, spurning the official mayoral residence of Gracie Mansion. Since 1989 he has been buying up pieces of No. 19 next door, slowly expanding his townhouse into a mansion.

17 was built in 1880 as a brownstone, and totally made over in limestone in 1907 (Daytonian). Other residents have included Broadway producer Leonard Sillman (whose home here is said to have inspired the director's over-the-top apartment in The Producers) and famed illustrator Rene Bouche.

19: The building slowly being absorbed by Bloomberg is an 1880 townhouse by D & J Jardine, remodeled in neo-classical style on its first two floors in 1902.

21: A 15-story building from 1930 with 14 apartments. Writer Tom Wolfe lived on its 14th floor.

27: Novelist John O'Hara lived on this building's ground floor (NNY).

31 (corner): The easternmost two-thirds of this 15-story brown-brick building went up in 1925; the western third was added in 1928. (You can see a break in the cornice.)

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50 (corner): Twenty-one floors of red brick from 1958. Actor Geraldine Fitzgerald, known for her roles in Wuthering Heights and Dark Victory, lived here until her death in 2005.

58: The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (TOLI), named for a Holocaust survivor, Resistance member and author. This townhouse was supposedly built in 1958, but it sure doesn't look like it.

66: Lawyer/novelist Louis Auchincloss lived with his parents here from 1935-1945, as he was getting his start in the law.

72-76: A set of 1884 brownstones that had a 1988 tower affixed on top of them.

Corner (898 Park): A 14-story apartment building from 1924, designed by John Sloan and Albert E. Nast. Delightful terra cotta detail near ground level.

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39 (corner): This 14-story red-brick building was built in 1926 by etiquette maven Emily Post, who made it as a co-op for herself and her friends from the social registry. She died here in 1960 (Streetscapes).

New York Society Library

53: New York's oldest library, founded in 1754, and its main one until the public system was launched in 1895, the NYSL loans books to members who pay an annual fee, now $270. Its visitors over the years include George Washington, John Jay, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, John James Audubon, Herman Melville and Willa Cather, and at the present location WH Auden, Lillian Hellman, P.G. Wodehouse and Mary McCarthy.

The building is an Italianate townhouse from 1917, designed by Trowbridge and Livingston and converted to a library in 1937.

59: French Renaissance Townhouse built in 1909 for attorney John Iselin, designed by Foster, Gade & Graham.

Greek Consulate

69: Originally a five-story Parisian-style townhouse, designed in 1909 by NYPL architects Carrère & Hastings for George Rives, former corporation counsel under Mayor Seth Low. When the Greek government bought it in 1958, it rebuilt the fourth and fifth floors and seamlessly added a sixth.

Corner (900 Park): This 28-story tower by Philip Birnbaum, built 1973, was controversial because it is set back from the street wall (unnecessary on Park Avenue) and ignores the avenue's relatively consistent heights. The owner, American Invsco, has also been subject of multiple lawsuits over harassment of tenants.

The sunken plaza is theoretically open to the public but is dominated by the building's driveway. It has been home to a series of sculptures, originally Henry Moore's "Interconnecting Figures," which was kept by developer Burt Resnick when he sold the building to Invsco. It was replaced in 1982 by Francisco Zuniga's "Four Generations," whose owner moved it from St. Bartholemew's when the church threatened to sell some of its land for an office tower. Later "Gato," a monumental bronze of a well-fed cat, was placed here by the artist Fernando Botero, who lived and worked on the 22nd floor here from 1980-2017. Lately the featured sculpture has been "Dama a Caballo V" by Manolo Valdes, inspired by Valasquez's equestrian portrait of Queen Isabel de Borbón of Spain.

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Corner (895 Park): A 19-story Art Deco co-op from 1930, designed by John Sloan, who also did 898 Park across the avenue. Leonard Bernstein lived in the penthouse here from 1961-1974. A fundraiser for the Black Panthers here on January 14, 1970, was the subject of an infamous Tom Wolfe essay, "Radical Chic."

108: Dorothy Arnold, a 25-year-old aspiring writer, was living here with her family on December 12, 1910, when she disappeared near Madison Square, a notorious missing-person case that remains unsolved.

124: The Belgravia, named for an upscale London neighborhood, is a 20-story condo from 1985.

Corner (1140 Lexington): Lenox Hill Florist is in a skinny building from 1910.

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Corner (903 Park): This 17-story building was said to be the "World's Highest Apartment House" when it was built by Bing & Bing in 1912. The architect was Robert T. Lyons, co-designer of Grand Central.

109: The penthouse in this 20-story building from 2022 was designed by Steven Harris Architects to evoke the architectural history of the Upper East Side. The penthouse was pre-sold for $35 million.

It replaced twin buildings at 109 and 111, built for sisters Alice Martin McCoon and Edith Martin in French Renaissance style. Talkshow host Dick Cavett later lived in 109.

121: Built in 1907 for Eufrasia Tucker.

123: A double-wide Georgian-style house built in 1907 for sisters Eufrasia Leland and Emma Wesson—relatives of Eufrasia Tucker, who sometimes lived here as well.

127: Vincent Astor tore down a brownstone at this address in 1926 to build a garage that connected to his house on East 80th Street. This in turn was demolished along with all the buildings to 135 to build the Hunter College School of Social Work in 1969.

129-131: Mott Schmidt designed a Georgian-style house here for E. Farrar Bateson in 1920.

135: This 19-story limestone-clad building from 2013 proves they can build 'em like they used to. The Hunter building was torn down to make way for it.

139 (corner): Sixteen brown-brick stories from 1928. Eisler Chemists, on the ground floor, appears to have been founded in 1898.

South:

Corner (1135 Lex): Glass box with a Republic Bank branch

152: Il Riccio, Italian

154: Was Candle 79, vegan

Corner (1388 Third Ave): Vivaldi Boutique, women's fashion

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151 (corner): A 15-story building with just 16 apartments, erected as a co-op in 1926.

161: A 12-story building from 1915; Groucho Marx lived here from 1921-1924.

Corner (1390 Third Ave): By day, the space is the cafe Eli's Essentials; by night it's Eli's Night Shift, a cocktail/craft beer bar. Eli is Eli Zabar, from the family that owns Zabar's.

South:

200 (corner): A 19-story limestone-clad building from 2013.

208: Telephone Building, as a dramatic entrance declares. Verizon still uses what must have once belonged to Ma Bell.

Yorkville Branch

222: Opened in 1902, this was the first branch of the New York Public Library funded by Andrew Carnegie. It was designed by James Brown Lord in a Paladian style. To serve Yorkville's early 20th century immigrant population, it initially had a floor entirely devoted to German-language publications.

226: Brownstone built in 1901 with a striking right-angled stoop.

230: Belmont 79, a 20-story white-brick building from 1963, but with a black granite base.

240: A 16-story apartment building from 1929 with an attractive Art Deco polychrome entrance.

242: Our Place China Chalet, dim sum

244: Sojourn, New American, is on the ground floor of Harry Houdini's childhood home (1887-90), a four-story tenement where he used to practice escape tricks as a boy.

Temple Shaaray Tefila

250 (corner): A Reform congregation that traces its roots back to Shearith Israel, the first Jewish congregation in New York City (or North America). Ashkenazi Jews left to form their own congregation in 1825, and a split in that group produced the synagogue Shaaray Tefila ("Gates of Prayer") in 1854. Originally on Wooster Street (and an Orthodox congregation), it moved to the Upper West Side in 1869 and joined the Reform movement in 1895.

It moved across town to this location in 1959, occupying what was the Colony Theatre, a thousand-seat cinema that opened c. 1914 as the New Theatre.

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201 (corner): Twenty-one floors of white brick from 1964.

211: Upper East Side Rehabilitation & Nursing Center, formerly DeWitt Rehabilitation & Nursing Center, built 1967.

225: This 17-story, brown-brick apartment building from 1929 has been home to film critic Gene Shalit.

239 (corner): Eighteen red-brick floors from 1957, designed by Maxon, Sells & Ficke.

South:

300 (corner): A 2008 building with 18 floors of glass, designed by H. Thomas O'Hara.

308: James Farrell, author of the Studs Lonigan trilogy, lived here from 1969-1978.

320: The Albanian Mission to the UN. On August 11, 1972, this was an Italian restaurant called Neapolitan Noodle, where Sheldon Epstein and Max Tekelch, two kosher beef wholesalers, were killed by a Mafia hitman—mistaken for mobsters who were elsewhere in the dining room. The bystanders were victims of a Colombo Family civil war sparked by the assassination of Joe Gallo at Umberto's Clam House four months earlier.

350 (corner): The Lucerne, a 45-story apartment tower designed by Costas Kondylis and put up in 1990. Not to be confused with the Lucerne Hotel, on the west end of the street.

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301 (corner): Continental Towers, a 36-story building from 1975.

325: A 1928 building by Gronenberg & Leuchtag.

Corner (1513 1st Ave): This unassuming building from 1915 has a remarkable polyhedral four-faced clock hanging from its corner—installed when there was a Manufacturers Hanover branch here.

South:

404 (corner): Hampton House, 31-story slab from 1985.

460 (corner): Gregory Towers, a 20-floor red-brick building from 1960.

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405: Was a convent attached to St. Monica's, built in 1955. Torn down in 2019 by Extell Development, along with the rest of the west end of this block.

413: Church of Saint Monica. The Roman Catholic parish has been based here since 1883; the current Gothic Revival building, designed by church architects Schickel & Ditmars, dates to 1906.

435: The York, 13-story building from 1956 with 243 apartments. Rocker Joe Cocker has lived here.

Therapist Kathryn Faughey was murdered with a meat cleaver at her office here on February 12, 2008; the assailant was a former patient of her colleague Kent Schinbach, who was seriously injured in the attack.

South:

City and Suburban Homes Historic District

The buildings on this block were built between 1896 and 1913 "to demonstrate that humanely designed tenements could produce an attractive financial return" (Streetscapes). When completed, it was the largest low-income housing project in the world.

They were saved by neighborhood activism when developer Peter Kalikow bought them in 1984 and tried to replace them with luxury highrises.

516-520: This pair of City and Suburban tenements was dedicated to Bishop Henry Codman Potter (1834-1908), an Episcopal cleric who was a noted advocate for the poor. He was a rector at Grace Church and laid the cornerstone at St. John the Divine.

542 (corner): The last of the City and Suburban tenements along East 79th Street.

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North:

501 (corner): York Towers, 20 stories of white brick from 1961.

505: East River House, a handsome 20-story red brick building from 1958.

525: Asten House, a 30-story co-op from 1982.

Corner (2 East End): This 10-story building was originally an electrical testing lab, built in 1910. Converted to residential in 1978.

EAST END AVE         ===> N

Block (1 East End): A skinny building that fills up its skinny block. Erected in 1929, the 14-story building is 51 feet wide at its north end and 29 feet at the south.