720 Park Avenue

also 718 Park Avenue, 722 Park Avenue, 49 East 70th Street | Upper East Side | built 1929

Open on the map9 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. 1929

    Rosario Candela designs the cooperative at 720 Park Avenue

    The developer MonteLenox hired Rosario Candela, working with Cross & Cross, to design a brick apartment house of 17 floors plus a penthouse, reported to cost $6 million. The suites were planned at eleven to twenty-seven rooms, and by September 1929 half were sold from plans. The site had earlier been assembled by Robert E. Dowling and James T. Lee, among others, before they sold it in 1928.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1930

    Jesse Straus takes a 17-room duplex at 720 Park Avenue

    Jesse Isidor Straus, the Macy's president and son of Titanic victims Isidor and Ida Straus, was among the first owners. His duplex had an ultra modern Art Deco decor by Candela. He became ambassador to France in 1933, resigned in 1936 and died that October.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1930

    June 29

    Broker Harold Ryder, an original owner, faces his creditors in court

    Wall Street broker Harold Russell Ryder had put about $500,000 into a cooperative apartment and its furnishings here. After the 1929 crash cost him millions, an investor sued him for over $2 million. He was sentenced to Sing Sing for three to ten years and was sent back in 1937 after another fraud conviction.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1937

    January 26

    William Iselin dies at 720 Park Avenue five years after his wife died in the same apartment

    William E. Iselin, from a banking, merchant and yachting family, lived at 720 Park Avenue with his wife Alice Rogers Jones Iselin, a granddaughter of the society figure Mary Mason Jones. Her illness began in the autumn of 1932, and she died in the apartment on October 22, aged 82. He outlived her by five years, dying there on January 26, 1937, two weeks past his 89th birthday.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1959

    March 21

    A burglar takes $100,000 in jewelry from a 15-room apartment whose kitchen window was found open

    Dr. James Craig Joyner and his wife Lucie had a 15-room apartment at 720 Park Avenue. While they were away for several days in March 1959, a maid went in on the evening of March 21 to prepare for their return and found a kitchen window open. A burglar had taken $100,000 worth of jewelry. Police noted the window was 20 feet above a second-floor terrace, in a wall too smooth to give a foothold.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1961

    April 23

    Financier William F. R. Hitt, once married to a woman engaged to a duke, dies in his apartment

    William F. R. Hitt, a retired financier and racehorse owner, lived in the building with his second wife Eugenia. His first marriage, in 1913, was to Katherine Elkins, who earlier had been engaged to the Duke of Abruzzi. They divorced in 1921, remarried in 1923, and she died in September 1936. Hitt died in the apartment on April 23, 1961, at 81.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  7. 1976

    December 21

    Marcia Brady Tucker, a collector of English children's portraits, dies in her apartment

    Marcia Brady Tucker moved to 720 Park Avenue in 1969 after selling her townhouse at 733 Park Avenue, across the avenue. Her husband Carll Tucker had died in 1956. On leaving her earlier Park Avenue home she donated a collection of English portraits of children from the 1800s to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cincinnati Museum of Art. She died in her apartment on December 21, 1976, aged 92.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  8. 1990

    Eugenia Hitt dies and leaves a collection valued above $50 million to the Birmingham Museum of Art

    Eugenia Woodward Hitt, the widow of William F. R. Hitt, died at 720 Park Avenue in 1990. A collector since her youth, she had filled her homes with 18th-century French furniture and decorative objects. She left most of her furniture and art, valued at more than $50 million, to the Birmingham Museum of Art, and a bronze wall clock to the Chateau de Versailles.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  9. 2008

    Diplomat Carl Spielvogel sells his apartment to a Wall Street chief executive for $37 million

    In 2008 the diplomat Carl Spielvogel, who had been the US ambassador to the Slovak Republic during 2000 and 2001, sold his apartment at 720 Park Avenue to Peter S. Kraus, chairman and chief executive of AllianceBernstein, for $37 million. The building is a cooperative with 34 apartments, and another unit was listed at $25 million in 2013.

    “…diplomat Carl Spielvogel ... sold his apartment in the building to businessman Peter S. Kraus, the chairman and chief executive officer of AllianceBernstein, for US$37 million.”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 93 buildings with stories in Upper East Side