By Matt Chaban 1/17/12 5:20pm

Building Expectations

6 Photos

757 Third

Aby Rosen’s Hidden Jewel

From the moment you walk through the doors of 757 Third Avenue, you know the building is different from the average, anonymous East Side office tower.

One of the lesser works of the monolithic Emery Roth & Sons—they of GM and Look and Pan Am buildings fame—757 Third is the typical wedding-cake office building. A banded obsidian glass curtain wall with those I-beam mullions, it is the sentinel we’ve seen before, cast ever so slightly anew in a thousand business districts the world over. Seagrams lite with a splash of Chase Manhattan.

That is why walking into, or really out of, 757 Third is such a dramatic experience. The 28-story building may have the nicest revolving doors in the entire city. Set into two curving, scythelike glass panels, the building’s egress does not really have an edge, and so when stepping out onto the street through those spinning doors, it is as though the building suddenly disappears. You have left the warm confines of this sleek building and are back on the cold New York City street. You might even stop to gasp at the trick if the door were not coming up behind you, about to deliver a smack in the toosh. Read More

By Janon Fisher 1/17/12 2:00pm

REBNY2012

Gerard Schumm, REBNY Honoree.

Gerard Schumm: George M. Brooker Management Executive Recipient

Real estate was never supposed to be a career for Gerard Schumm.

The executive vice president of RFR Realty always wanted to be a musician, a drummer to be exact. But while going to St. Francis College, he asked his father, who worked in the real estate game, to help him find a day job until the record companies came banging at his door. Read More

By Dan Geiger 12/20/11 1:00pm

Lease of the Week

NYC Bonds Draw "Strong Demand" Abroad As Yield Exceeds Spain's Left

Advertising Spin-Off DDCD & Partners Moves to 17 State Street

For months DDCD & Partners had been in the market for more than 10,000 square feet of space and the new advertising firm was starting to see a trend.

Its partners had walked through one stuffy Art Deco lobby too many and had spent too much time contemplating how the company’s operations could be arranged in offices littered with bulky columns and, likewise, how company morale could be kept afloat in the cavelike environs cut off from light and air that they kept encountering.

DDCD had given its broker, CBRE executive vice president William Iacovelli, a simple mandate: find space in Midtown South. It was a request that Mr. Iacovelli was perfectly happy to comply with. For years, the neighborhood has been a draw for mad men and creative tenants alike. Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 4/01/10 5:48pm

Aby Rosen Slapped with Suit for Breach of Agreement

In the waning days of the real estate boom, mogul Aby Rosen, owner of both the Seagram Building and Lever House, harbored grand ambitions for a humble six-story office building at 520 Fifth Avenue, near Times Square. Those ambitions, apparently crushed by the bust, have now precipitated a lawsuit alleging he withheld crucial financial Read More

By Staff 12/01/05 12:23pm

Big Step for Seagram


We’re a little late on this one, but last week the Landmark Preservation Commission approved RFR Realty’s plan under Section 74-79 of the city’s zoning text for its development at 610 Lexington Avenue. RFR is halfway home now–it now needs to get approval from the Department of City Planning to transfer air rights Read More

By Staff 11/11/05 1:13pm

Seagram Switch


Last night, Community Board 5 narrowly passed a resolution supporting the transfer of air rights from the iconic Seagram Building, at 375 Park Avenue, to a new development at 610 Lexington Avenue (the transparent building in the photo of the developer’s model).

RFR Realty LLC is the owner of both the Seagram Building Read More