Netto, David: Rosario Candela & The New York Apartment

Masterworks of the Jazz Age architect whose residential buildings are as significant in their impact on the character of New York as the skyscrapers of Wall Street.

Known and celebrated for many of the apartment buildings on Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, and in Sutton Place—82 in NYC, including the storied 740 Park, sometimes called the richest and most powerful address in New York and whose famous residents included John D. Rockefeller Jr.—Candela’s work is at once timeless and profoundly of its time. Classical in styling and even modest on the exterior, it is on the insides, in the apartment interiors, the floorplans, the extraordinary and frequently luxurious arrangements of rooms and space, where his designs set a standard that serves as a benchmark and aspirational goal of taste and refinement. The authors explore these seminal spaces through the lens of exteriors and urbanism, planning and interior architecture, and the circumstances and stories of creation.

Lavish and comprehensive black-and-white vintage photography as well as color imagery of the exteriors, original plans, and a collection of exceptional interior views give historical perspective (including a seductive Slim Aarons' Park Avenue streetscape) and contemporary sizzle (as seen in Derry Moore’s depiction of K. K. Auchincloss’s penthouse at 1040 Fifth). The story told is of a genius designer who gave form to the New York of his dreams.