By Stephen Jacob Smith 5/24 2:31pm

Manhattan Transfers

23beekman

Snug Like a Bug With Panoramic East River Views: Paul Rudolph’s Penthouse Finds a Tenant

Tucked away on the far east side, a few blocks north of the global headquarters of the powerful and geriatric (i.e., the United Nations) and across the East River from the southern tip of Roosevelt Island, Beekman Place is arguably New York’s most centrally out-of-way enclave.

A waterfront neighborhood once blighted by industry, Beekman Place’s fortunes were buoyed by a booming real estate market and a new-found respect for the water in the 1920s, and the micro-hood became one of the most exclusive in the city. “They sit in their co-ops,” the mayor in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities said, ”Park Avenue, Fifth, Beekman Place, snug like a bug. Twelve-foot ceilings, a wing for them, one for the help.” Read More

By Roland Li 10/15/09 9:47pm

City Moves to Landmark Modernist Rudolph’s East Side Penthouse

The Landmarks Preservation Commission has taken the first step toward landmarking 23 Beekman Place, designed by notable modern architect Paul Rudolph. The so-called Rudolph House was purchased by Rudolph in 1965, and modified with the addition of a steel-and-glass penthouse after 1975, according to the LPC, which called the building “arguably, his most significant” design Read More

By Spencer Morgan 5/06/08 4:37pm

Thank You For Soaking

God willing, at this very moment someone is scrambling eggs on a stove in an apartment overlooking the East River while at the same time gazing up at someone’s buttocks, pressed against a see-through Plexiglas bathtub, sunken, by design, into the floor above.

In the early 1980s, the late Paul Rudolph, noted architect and Read More