Avenue / Sutton Place
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York Avenue and Sutton Place are the names of a relatively short north-south thoroughfare in the Upper East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City.
"Sutton Place South" runs from 53rd Street to 57th Street.
"Sutton Place" runs from 57th to 59th Street.
"York Avenue" runs from 59th to 91st Street.
The streets are considered among the city's most affluent, and are known for upscale apartments, much like the rest of the Upper East Side.
York Avenue runs through eastern Yorkville, while Sutton Place runs through its namesake neighborhood along the East River and south of the Queensboro Bridge.
Addresses on York Avenue are continuous with that of Avenue A in Alphabet City, starting in the 1100 series and rising to the 1700 series.
The greater "Sutton Place" neighbourhood, which sits between the neighborhoods of Turtle Bay on the south and Yorkville on the north, is bounded
on the east by the East River
on the west by Second Avenue
and runs from 53rd Street to 59th Street.
Sutton Square is the cul-de-sac at the end of East 58th Street, just east of Sutton Place.
Riverview Terrace is a row of townhouses on a short private driveway that runs north from Sutton Square.
The street that became York Avenue and Sutton Place (and further north, Pleasant Avenue) was proposed as an addition to the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 for Manhattan, which designated 12 broad north-south avenues running the length of the island.
The geography of Manhattan left a large area on the Upper East Side east of First Avenue without a major north-south thoroughfare, so Avenue A was added to compensate. Sutton Place was originally one of several disconnected stretches of Avenue A built where space allowed, east of First Avenue.
In 1875, Effingham B. Sutton constructed a group of brownstones between 57th and 58th Streets, and is said to have lent the street his name, though the earliest source found by The New York Times dates back only to 1883. At that time, the New York City Board of Aldermen approved a petition to change the name from "Avenue A" to "Sutton Place", covering the blocks between 57th and 60th Streets.[1][2] The vacant block between 59th and 60th Streets is now considered a part of York Avenue.
Sutton Place first became fashionable around 1920, when several wealthy socialites, including Anne Harriman Vanderbilt and Anne Morgan, built townhouses on the eastern side of the street, overlooking the East River.
Both townhouses were designed by Mott B. Schmidt, launching a career that included many houses for the wealthy.[3])
Very shortly thereafter, developers started to build grand co-operative apartment houses on Sutton Place and Sutton Place South, including several designed by Rosario Candela.
Development came to an abrupt halt with the Great Depression, and the luxury apartment buildings on the lower part of Sutton Place South (below 57th Street) and the northernmost part of Sutton Place (adjacent to the Queensboro Bridge) were not developed until the 1940s and 1950s.
In 1928, a one-block section of Sutton Place north of 59th Street, and all of Avenue A north of that point, was renamed York Avenue to honor U.S. Army Sergeant Alvin York, who received the Medal of Honor for attacking a German machine gun nest during World War I's Meuse-Argonne Offensive.[2][4][5]
Sutton Place encompasses two public parks overlooking the East River, one at the end of 57th Street and another at the end of 53rd Street.
The 57th Street park is separated by an iron fence from the landscaped grounds behind One Sutton Place South, a neo-Georgian apartment building designed by Rosario Candela.
The property behind One Sutton Place South was the subject of a dispute between the building's owners and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Like the adjacent park, the rear garden at One Sutton Place South is, in fact, cantilevered over the FDR Drive, a busy expressway at Manhattan's eastern edge that is not visible from most of Sutton Place.
In 1939, city authorities took ownership of the property behind One Sutton Place South by condemnation in connection with the construction of the FDR Drive, then leased it back to the building. The building's lease for its backyard expired in 1990,[6][7]
The co-op tried unsuccessfully to extend the lease, and later made prospective apartment-buyers review the legal status of the backyard and sign a confidentiality agreement.[8] In June 2007, the co-op sued the city in an attempt the keep the land,[8] and on November 1, 2011, the co-op and the city reached an agreement in which the co-op ended its ownership claim and each side would contribute $1 million toward the creation of a public park on the land.[9]
Prominent residents of Sutton Place include architect I. M. Pei, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, his son-in-law designer Kenneth Cole, and actress Sigourney Weaver.
Former residents include Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, C.Z. Guest, Peter Lawford & Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Lillian Gish, Aristotle Onassis, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Bill Blass, Bobby Short, Percy Sutton, Irene Hayes, Elsie de Wolfe, Joan Crawford, Raj Rajaratnam, Richard Jenrette, Marilyn Monroe and her then husband Arthur Miller, Mildred Natwick, and Maureen O'Hara [10] to name a few.
One Sutton Place (North), an imposing townhouse at the northeast corner of Sutton Place and East 57th Street, was built as a residence for Anne Harriman Vanderbilt, widow of William K. Vanderbilt.
This house is currently owned by an heiress to the Heinz Company fortune.
Next door, the official residence of the Secretary-General of the United Nations is a five-story townhouse that was built in 1921 for Anne Morgan, daughter of financier J.P. Morgan, and donated as a gift to the United Nations in 1972.[11]
In popular culture[edit]
1935/37 – Sutton Place at East 53rd Street is the Dead End of the play and movie of that name, which began the movie careers of the Dead End Kids.
1947 – In John Cheever's short story "The Enormous Radio", the main characters, Jim and Irene Wescott, live in an apartment in the Sutton Place neighborhood.
1948 – 1 Sutton Place North is the home of Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert) and her husband Richard (Don Ameche) in Douglas Sirk's film noir "Sleep, My Love".
1951 – Sutton Place is mentioned in J. D. Salinger's novel Catcher in the Rye as the location of a "swanky" apartment.
1953 – 36 Sutton Place South was an exterior location for the film How to Marry a Millionaire starring Marilyn Monroe.[13]
- 1960 – Sutton Place is featured in the film Satan in High Heels.
- 1970 – In an article in New York magazine, Tom Wolfe mentions "the famous Mrs. C--------, one of New York’s richest widows, who has a 10-room duplex on Sutton Place, the good part of Sutton Place as opposed to the Miami Beach-looking part".
- The article was later reprinted in the book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.
- 1973 – Sutton Place is featured in Larry Cohen's film Black Caesar.
- 1976 – Sutton Place South's wealthy residents are mentioned in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver.
1983 – Scarface had a scene in which Tony Montana (Al Pacino) was on the telephone in the now-defunct 60th Street Heliport, now used as a dog run.
- 1986 – In the film Legal Eagles, the villain, Victor Taft (Terence Stamp), resided on Sutton Place.
- 1987 – In Oliver Stone's film Wall Street, an excited broker (Sylvia Miles) offers to show Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) some apartments on Sutton Place once she realizes how wealthy he is.
2000 – In the film Almost Famous, Patrick Fugit's character is seen sprinting down Sutton Place.
- 2007 – 50 Sutton Place South was one of the buildings used to film American Gangster.
2008 – Sutton Place is mentioned in season 3, episode 2 of the TV series Mad Men. Set in 1963, it's where the new British CFO finds an apartment when he arrives in New York to run the advertising agency.
- 2008 – Sutton Place is the location of the home of the main character in Mary Higgins Clark's novel Where Are You Now?. Clark owns an apartment in the neighborhood, and in several books her characters occasionally dine at Neary's, an actual Irish bar and restaurant located on East 57th Street between First and Second Avenues.
See also[edit]
- 11 October 2006 New York City plane crash, a crash just off of York Avenue/Sutton Place
- Beekman Place
References[edit]
Notes- Jump up ^ Senft, Bret. "If You're Thinking of Living In/Sutton Place; A Riverside Enclave for the Well-to-Do", The New York Times, June 12, 1994. Accessed December 27, 2007.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Gray, Christopher. " Streetscapes/Sutton Place, Sutton Place South and One Sutton Place North; A Prestigious Enclave With a Name in Question", The New York Times, September 21, 2003. Accessed December 27, 2007.
- Jump up ^ Hewitt, Mark Alan. "About Mott Schmidt: Beginnings and Sutton Place". The Architecture of Mott B. Schmidt. MottSchmidt.com. Retrieved September 08, 2012.
- Jump up ^ Pollak, Michael. "F. Y. I.", The New York Times, August 7, 2005. Accessed October 16, 2007. "In 1928, Sutton Place from 59th to 60th Street, and Avenue A north of 60th, were renamed York Avenue in honor of Sgt. Alvin C. York (1887-1964), a World War I hero from Tennessee and a recipient of the Medal of Honor."
- Jump up ^ During his on October 8, 1918, attack, York captured four German officers and 128 men and several guns. "Medal of Honor Recipients - World War I". United States Army Center of Military History.
- Jump up ^ Bagli, Charles V. "In Sutton Place's Backyard, Private Oasis on Public Land", The New York Times, December 31, 2003
- Jump up ^ "Sutton Place Private Lawn Going to the Masses", Curbed.com, December 7, 2004
- ^ Jump up to: a b Bagli, Charles V., "A Co-op on Sutton Place Sues to Keep Its Backyard", The New York Times, June 19, 2007. Accessed December 27, 2007.
- Jump up ^ Flegenheimer, Matt, "Co-op Ends Fight With City Over Its East Side Backyard", The New York Times, November 1, 2011. Accessed November 4, 2011.
- Jump up ^ "Misty for Maureen O'Hara" New York Post Jan 2012
- Jump up ^ Teltsch, Kathleen. "Town House Offered to U. N.", The New York Times, July 15, 1972. Accessed December 27, 2007.
- Jump up ^ "Sothebys Contact Info". Business Insider. Retrieved 2013-05-22.
- Jump up ^ Alleman, Richard. The Movie Lover's Guide to New York. New York: Harper & Row, 1988. ISBN 0060960809, p.117
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