Along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams
Tina Fineberg for The New York Times, left; Museum of the City of New York

On The River One East End Avenue, left, occupies the wedge-shaped block bounded by 79th and 80th Streets. Its narrow southern end resembles a ship’s prow. The co-op at 25 East End Avenue, right, was photographed in 1929.


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By CHRISTOPHER GRAY


EAST END AVENUE, running along the East River from 79th to 90th Streets, does not have the white-glove touch of Park Avenue — it’s mostly midcentury Modernist buildings. But the future on East End was supposed to have been different, and the two 1920s co-ops at the foot of this unusual street — Nos. 1 and 25 East End, at 79th and 80th Streets — give a flavor of what might have happened had the Roaring Twenties not gone bust.

Well into that decade, East End was still a mix of tenements and, below 84th Street, factories. Elisabeth Pell, who lived on 86th Street off East End in the 1920s, said in 1980, “We would just sniff along — coffee, sugar, something that smelled like popcorn, all depending on the wind.”

The gentry arrived on East End Avenue when the private Chapin School opened on 84th Street in 1928. Its reserved neo-Georgian building, completed in a year, brought scores of young girls from patrician families into the sleepy area.

The first apartment house to go up was the neo-Georgian 25 East End Avenue, at 80th, begun in 1927 and designed by Cross & Cross, which had been instrumental in the redevelopment of Sutton Place a few years earlier.

Each floor was divided into three apartments, the northerly unit running from the East River to East End, so fresh air could rush past the three double doors on the balcony of the 14-by-26-foot living room, through the 7-by-25-foot foyer and then out the windows of the library, facing the street.

An advertisement for the building in The New York Times proclaimed: “It is in the city — but not of the city. Every apartment will represent a gilt-edge investment.”

The construction of 25 East End was somewhat daring since the avenue south of 84th was still industrial. But in early 1928, property owners gained the rezoning of this section for residential use. When the measure was approved, James J. Hackett, secretary of the First Avenue Association, told The Times, “East End Avenue is destined to become the garden spot of Manhattan.”

Just to the south is 1 East End, begun in 1929 on the wedge-shaped block bounded by 79th and 80th Streets, from East End to the river. The architectural firm of Pennington & Lewis produced a chaste, aristocratic, nearly styleless building of soft orange brick and limestone, with four projecting window bays on the East River side.

Each floor was divided into three, a duplex in the central section flanked by simplexes north and south. The narrow southern end of the building looks like a ship’s prow. The living rooms there are 27 feet across, and each one must feel like the bridge of an aircraft carrier.

In an interview in 1980, Alexander Neave recalled living at 25 East End in the early 1930s: “Our apartment went through the building, and it was quiet except for the boats — they used to blow their whistles right under our living-room window, to clear the traffic. There was also an abattoir on the Queens side of the river, and sometimes it smelled like hell.”

The 1930 census indicates that the Neave apartment was valued at $25,000, as was the apartment of Charles MacArthur, an author of “The Front Page” who lived there with his wife, the actress Helen Hayes. (Earlier this year, a 10-room apartment on the 14th floor sold for $4.3 million.)

In 1930, co-ops up and down East End Avenue sued to stop nighttime dredging operations by the War Department. Col. George M. Hoffman, the head of the operation, suggested that residents stuff cotton in their ears, The Times reported.

In 1931 Vincent Astor put up the majestic 120 East End Avenue, at 85th Street, the last big apartment house of the boom period.

By this time other builders had been chased away from the avenue by the stock-market crash. In 1929 Rosario Candela had filed plans for an apartment building at 82nd, Louis Abramson for another at the same intersection, and Emery Roth for a 40-story hotel between 89th and 90th. None of them were built.

After the construction of the East River Drive in 1940, development began again, and now there are tall modern towers up and down the street. The original isolated character is lost, except for the little dead-end street crammed between the drive and 1 and 25 East End. Delivery trucks and off-duty ambulances sometimes idle there.

Walking past the back of 1 East End Avenue, there is a still a whiff of the ambition of the place. An elegant set of marble stairs leads down to what was originally a yacht landing. Now it is simply the leftover dream of a different era.