740 Park: The Story of the World's Richest Apartment Building Book

From a bestselling author and journalist renowned for his access to the rich and famous comes the epic story of the last great apartment building erected on Manhattan's Gold Coast--home to countless 20th Century icons including Bouviers, Rockefellers and Chryslers, as well as modern Midases like Edgar Bronfman, Henry Kravis, Ronald O. Perelman and Saul Steinberg. 740 Park Avenue is the best-known, and most lusted-after co-op apartment building in New York-and so, in the world. Built by Jacqueline Kennedy's grandfather, the building has housed America's oldest, richest, most powerful and most gossiped-about families for 75 years. Their stories are juicy, startling, and above all entertaining, but no more so than that of the building itself--and in 740 Park, Michael Gross tells all. The backbone of the book is the building: the financial, artistic, and social stew that created it and made its apartments the most expensive in New York. Interwoven are stories of the residents who set the building's tone and made its grand reputation--including Countess Kotzebue, a five-times married multi-millionairess; Marshall Field III, whose family was a model of patrician dysfunction; C. Channing Blake, the Friendly's Ice Cream heir, whose gay lover lived on one floor of the duplex while his wife lived upstairs; Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, brother of the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Kamel Abdel Rahman, the Palestinian billionaire believed murdered by his third wife; and many more. Michael Gross knows their world intimately, having explored its every nook and cranny. More than just a sensational read, 740 Park is rich in social history, providing a glimpse into a world that most of us can only dream about.Read More