240 Central Park South
also 1804 Broadway, 1806 Broadway, 1800 Broadway | Midtown | built 1940
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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.
- 1927
Brewer George Ehret's Broadway blockfront gets a Mission Revival auto-trade building
Brewer George Ehret, founder of the Hell Gate Brewery, assembled seventeen lots on the Broadway blockfront between West 58th and 59th Streets from 1881 to 1908, on the future site of 240 Central Park South. The New York Times said at his death that only the Astor estate held more New York real estate. After the lot passed to a corporation in April 1927, it was built up with a two-story Mission Revival building for automobile businesses.
- 1940
Mayer & Whittlesey finish two linked towers on half the Columbus Circle site
Mayer & Whittlesey filed plans in July 1939, construction began that September, and the complex was finished in September 1940 at a final cost of $4.5 million. Instead of one slab they built two buildings, of 20 and 15 stories, joined at the ground floor and covering only about half the site. That left room for a landscaped courtyard and gave the apartments a maximum number of corner suites.
- 1941
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry moves into the new Central Park South apartment house
The French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry took an apartment here in July 1941, about a year after the building opened. Two years later his best-known book, The Little Prince, was published. Among the other early arts-world tenants were opera singer Helen Jepson, who signed a lease in August 1940, and sculptor Catherine Barjansky, who moved in that September.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1943
Police raid gambler Sam Boston's luxury apartment, where four phone lines took bets
Samuel Solomon, known as Sam Boston, ran a betting operation from his thirteenth-floor apartment, and police tapped the four phone lines as they were installed. Plainclothes officers entered on Friday night, January 29, 1943, and found a partner at a long table with four telephones and sheets listing $16,000 in bets. Solomon was convicted that November and sentenced to a year, but the Court of Appeals reversed the verdict in March 1944.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1952
Gas explosion kills an elderly resident and rattles Columbus Circle
On the morning of March 21, 1952, Regina Oblatt, a 72-year-old invalid, opened the five gas jets on her kitchen range while her nurse-companion was out, and the apartment filled with gas. It ignited at about 10:40 and killed her, wrecking the apartments on either side. The blast broke plate glass for blocks and was heard from West 57th Street to West 70th, and some New Yorkers feared the city was under attack.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1961
A dentist here trades dental work for a collection of modern paintings
Dr. Jack M. Greenbaum began around 1938 to offer his artist patients dental work in exchange for paintings, and by 1961 his four-room apartment held 125 works by artists including Larry Rivers, Franz Kline, Milton Resnick and Willem de Kooning. When Museum of Modern Art curator William Seitz appraised the collection on August 6, he called pictures by Kline, Mark Tobey and Jan Mueller major examples of their work.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1977
Critic Paul Goldberger puts the building on his list of New York's top ten luxury apartment houses
In The New York Times in 1977, Paul Goldberger listed 240 Central Park South among the city's top ten luxury apartment buildings, calling it often overlooked and full of good apartments and urban lessons. Lewis Mumford had written in The New Yorker in December 1940 that it was the finest of its class since the Rockefeller apartments, and praised its interior plan as better than theirs.
“…this often-overlooked building at the edge of Columbus Circle contains not only good apartments, but also some splendid urban lessons…”
- 2002
Landmarks Commission designates the building after nineteen speakers testify in favor
The Landmarks Preservation Commission heard the case on April 30, 2002. Nineteen people spoke for designation, including Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, the Municipal Art Society, the property's owners and the architectural historian Robert A. M. Stern, and one person opposed. On June 25, 2002, the commission designated 240 Central Park South Apartments an individual city landmark.
“Nineteen people spoke in favor of designation ... One speaker opposed designation.”
Further reading
- 240 Central Park SouthWikipedia
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