History
Plans for the building were filed by architectural firm Schwartz and Gross at the behest of Victor Earle and John C. Calhoun, for whom they were working. Earle, and his brother Guyon, had been actively developing the Upper West Side of New York City since the 1910s.
The structure, between 65th and 66th Streets and considered to be mostly "second tier" by the socialite New Yorkers who occupy most of the buildings along Central Park West, was opened as a rental property in 1930. Its neighbor to the south is the earlier Holy Trinity Lutheran Church. Upon its opening Real Estate magazine praised it as resembling "Jungfrau, that most beloved snowcapped Alpine peak." Musician Rudy Vallee, whose salary was up to $20,000 per week, was one of the building's earliest residents. Ginger Rogers was one of its residents during her Broadway days in the early 1930s.
Read more about this topic: 55 Central Park West
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)