The Prasada

50 Central Park West | Lincoln Square | built 1907

Open on the map4 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1907

    Charles Romeyn's Prasada apartments open on Central Park West

    Developer Samuel B. Haines completes The Prasada in 1907, a 12-story Beaux Arts apartment house designed by architect Charles Romeyn at the corner of 65th Street, for about $250,000. Each floor holds three apartments, and the lobby features a marble entrance hall and a Palm Room with a fountain beneath a stained-glass dome.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1919

    The Prasada is remade into a club-hotel to fight 'the servant problem'

    New owners Penrhyn Stanlaws and Walter Russell buy The Prasada for $1.35 million in 1918 and hire architects Starrett & Van Vleck to turn it into a blend of club, hotel and apartment house. The renovation, finished in 1919, adds a marble swimming pool and gymnasium in the basement and a staffed central kitchen that sends meals up by electric dumbwaiter, but it removes the building's original mansard roof.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1919

    Novelist Edna Ferber writes So Big and Show Boat while living at The Prasada

    Edna Ferber is among the first tenants to move into The Prasada after its 1919 renovation, and she writes So Big and Show Boat while living there. She says she will never give up "this wonderful place."

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1933

    Met tenor Nino Martini moves into The Prasada

    Metropolitan Opera tenor Nino Martini takes an apartment at The Prasada in 1933 and lives there for two decades while also appearing in films including Here's to Romance and The Gay Desperado. He gives his final Met performance, as Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville, on April 20, 1946.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

Further reading

Nearby

All 48 buildings with stories in Lincoln Square