The San Remo
145 Central Park West | also 4 West 75th Street, 2 West 75th Street, 146 Central Park West | Upper West Side | built 1890
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1890
Edward Angell designs the first San Remo, a Victorian apartment hotel with pyramid-topped corners
Before Emery Roth's twin towers, an earlier San Remo stood on the 75th Street corner, designed in 1890 by Edward Angell. Moses King's Handbook called it an immense, imposing building facing the park's lawns, woods and waters. A later writer described a ten-story Victorian pile with Gothic and Romanesque details and steep pyramidal towers at its corners. Like the early Beresford and Majestic, it was later replaced by a towered namesake.
- 1930
Emery Roth's twin-towered San Remo rises on Central Park West
Built in 1929–30 to Emery Roth's design, the 27-story building was the first on Central Park West with twin towers, a form allowed by the Multiple Dwelling Act of 1929. Each tower ends in a temple with Corinthian columns, reportedly patterned on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates. The building went into receivership after the Bank of United States, which held its mortgage, collapsed in December 1930.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1930
An 18-room San Remo duplex is offered at $21,000 a year
As the new San Remo was marketed in 1930 as The Aristocrat of Central Park West, The New Yorker ran two pieces on it. One writer, using the pen name Penthouse, praised the views, terraces and sunlight but warned that this was not a house for illustrating cheap West Side rents: an eighteen-room duplex was priced at $21,000 per year. The other, architecture critic George Chappell, admired the towers' colonnaded crowns.
“This is not one of the houses you use to illustrate that rents are lower on the West Side. An eighteen-room duplex was offered at $21,000 per year.”
- 1930
The collapse of the Bank of United States pushes the new San Remo into receivership
The San Remo's $5 million mortgage was held by the Bank of United States, which suffered a run and closed in December 1930. State banking officials took over its holdings, and in early 1931 contractors placed $423,000 in liens against the building while the bank moved to foreclose. A receiver was appointed. Despite critical praise, the San Remo's finances stayed shaky through much of the 1930s.
“After the Bank of United States experienced a bank run in December 1930, it shut down ... the Bank of United States moved to foreclose on the building's $5 million mortgage loan.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1930
Stephen Sondheim is born to San Remo residents Herbert and Etta Sondheim
Herbert and Etta Janet Fox Sondheim, who live at the newly opened San Remo, have a son, Stephen Joshua Sondheim, who grows up to become one of Broadway's most celebrated composer-lyricists. The family is among the building's first wave of residents, arriving the same year Emery Roth's twin towers open on Central Park West.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1936
Boxer Jack Dempsey leases an eleven-room apartment at the San Remo
Former heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey and his wife, singer Hannah Williams, lease an eleven-room apartment at the San Remo. Dempsey nearly dies of gangrenous appendicitis in June 1939, and the couple divorces in 1943. Their tenancy spans a turbulent decade for the building, which also saw an employee strike and a kidnapping threat against a resident's teenage son.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1939
A threat against a striker-supporting tenant leads to a failed kidnapping at her son's school
Sixty San Remo workers walked out on October 28, 1938. Tenant Madeline Bijur, whose husband Harry was a lawyer, funded striking staff with money and food. On February 3, 1939 a caller threatened her; the next day her son Ryan, at a Connecticut boarding school, received a telegram falsely reporting her death. A suspicious headmaster summoned state troopers, and a car of men that later arrived left when he came out. Bijur said she would join the picket line.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1939
Jack Dempsey collapses at home with gangrenous appendicitis
On June 29, 1939, former boxing champion Jack Dempsey was playing cards with two friends in his San Remo apartment when he collapsed. He was taken to Polyclinic Hospital with gangrenous appendicitis. His representative said a doctor told him Dempsey escaped death by about an hour.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1940
The San Remo and the Beresford are sold for $25,000 above their mortgages
After a string of owners and bankruptcies, the San Remo was sold in 1940 together with the Beresford, which had suffered similar troubles, for just $25,000 over the existing mortgages. To keep tenants, rents had been lowered and some of the larger apartments subdivided. The Depression had left nearly a third of the building empty a year after it opened.
“…in 1940 the San Remo was sold along with the Beresford, which was experiencing similar financial woes, for a mere $25,000 over existing mortgages.”
- 1972
The San Remo converts to cooperative ownership
The San Remo completes its conversion from a rental building to a cooperative apartment building. The change ends four decades of rental ownership at the twin-towered Central Park West address.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1982
Steve Jobs buys a San Remo tower duplex he never lives in
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs bought a duplex in one of the San Remo's towers in 1982 but never moved in. He spent years renovating the apartment before selling it to the singer Bono.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1985
The San Remo's co-op board turns down Madonna
In 1985 the board rejected Madonna's application to buy, citing concerns about paparazzi; she was approved in 2008. The building, a cooperative since 1972, has been home to Steven Spielberg, Bono and Steve Martin, and was designated a city landmark on March 31, 1987.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1986
The board rejects Calvin Klein, and Bruce Willis and Demi Moore buy the 28th-floor apartment
When producer Robert Stigwood listed his 14-room 28th-floor apartment in 1986, designer Calvin Klein and his wife hoped to buy it, but the co-op board turned them down, reportedly fearing wild parties. Stigwood sold instead to Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, who also acquired the maisonette. Their renovation removed nearly all of Emery Roth's detailing in favor of a Southwestern Mission look and replaced the windows.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
Further reading
- The San RemoWikipedia
- Emery Roth's 1930 San Remo Apartments - 145-146 Central Park WestDaytonian in Manhattan
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