The Beekman Campanile

450 East 52nd Street | Turtle Bay | built 1927

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
The Beekman Campanile opens with its own yacht landing
Van Wart & Wein designed this 14-story Venetian Gothic apartment building for real estate operator Joseph G. Thomas, with a two-story base of rough-faced stone and a pointed-arch entrance. Its upper floors are rough-faced brick that gives an impression of age. The building held just sixteen apartments, and the architects used the riverside spot to add a yacht landing and a private club, the Montauk Yacht Club.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1933
February 1
The New York Sun reports a Prohibition raid on a speakeasy in the building
On February 1, 1933, The New York Sun reported that Prohibition agents had raided a speakeasy at the Beekman Campanile. A patron had tipped them off after objecting to paying $1 for a bottle of beer during the Depression. The manager, a beer delivery man and fifteen waiters and bartenders were arrested.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1953
Greta Garbo buys a seven-room apartment at the Campanile
Swedish-born actress Greta Garbo bought a seven-room apartment in the co-op in 1953 and lived there for 37 years, until her death in 1990. Reclusive and uninterested in interviews, she often took long walks through the neighborhood dressed like any other New Yorker. Photographers caught her only occasionally, and she was mostly left alone, as her line in Grand Hotel wished.
Source: Ephemeral New York

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