A sprawling white-brick Upper East Side apartment building, which was once inhabited by Grace Kelly and Benny Goodman and inspired other uptown modernist buildings, may become a landmark. The Landmarks Preservation Commission is set to vote tomorrow on whether to pursue landmark designation for Manhattan House, at 200 East 66 Street, whose ample light and ventilation influenced a generation of postwar apartment buildings.
Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the gleaming building, which has approximately 583 apartments, received an award from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1952, a year after its completion. Its glass-walled lobbies are set below a spare frame with Bauhaus-style balconies. A sloping driveway traverses the front of the H- shaped apartment building, which stretches between Second and Third avenues and is bounded by 65th and 66th streets.
The president of Docomomo US, an advocacy group for documenting and conserving buildings of the modern movement nationally, Theodore Prudon, said Manhattan House began to set the standard for apartment house designs following World War II. The co-chair of the Modern Architecture Working Group, an ad hoc committee of preservationists, John Jurayj, said this building has always been known, virtually from the time it was built, as architecturally important.
Another Skidmore, Owings & Merrill Building under consideration for landmark status is the Guardian Life Insurance Company Annex at 105 East 17 St (1959-63).
“One of our top priorities is to preserve the city’s modern architecture, which is why we are pursuing Manhattan House and Guardian Life with a great deal of determination,” said Commission Chairman Robert B. Tierney. “Both of these buildings are important examples of architecture that is finally getting its due.”…
This NYSun article continues here. By GARY SHAPIRO, Staff Reporter of for the NYSun. January 29, 2007