Rare Floorplans, Art Catalogs, and Miscellany

Fans and scholars of Richard Neutra likely associate the Austrian-American modernist architect most with his sprawling houses in sunny California. Some of his most published houses include the Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, California (1946) and Neutra/Maxwell House in Angelina Heights, Los Angelis (1941). But he built another ocean house, too, on the opposite side of the continent. 1936, Richard Neutra got a phone call from a "Mr. Brown of Newport" who was interested in commissioning a summer house. Neutra, the story goes, told his secretary: "Tell him I'll meet him in half an hour." Neutra, unable to fathom that someone would shoulder the then-astronomical expense of calling California from Rhode Island, had assumed that Mr. Brown lived in nearby Newport Beach.  In fact, this Mr. Brown was John Nicholas Brown II, of Providence and Newport, Rhode Island — a member of the Brown family that had been prominent in Rhode Island since its beginn...

In 2014, Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris purchased the penthouse apartment of the late Edgar Bronfman, Sr., at 960 Fifth Avenue, for $70 million, setting a record price for a co-op in New York City. It was not much of a surprise, as 960 Fifth Avenue, designed by Rosario Candela in 1927 on the site of the William A. Clark house and completed a year later, is considered one of the best if not the best co-op building on Fifth Avenue. (Museum of the City of New York) It wasn't the first time that 960 Fifth Avenue had set a record, either. In fact, 960 Fifth Avenue may have been the first  co-op sale record ever set in New York. In the year 1927 (as Marcel Proust was publishing the last volumes of A la recherche du temps perdu  and Germans packed into theaters to see Fritz Lang's Metropolis) , the New York Times  reported that a gentleman called Dr. Preston Pope Satterwhite had purchased a 20-room apartment at 960 Fifth Avenue for $450,000, "a figure that is s...

Welcome, reader. I hope you're here because you are tracking down the elevation of a McKim, Mead and White house you've always admired. Or perhaps it's a rare Sotheby's catalog of the collection of Mrs. John Hay Whitney. Or the plan of an apartment from some Fifth Avenue pile where residents consider the term "publicity" to be a dirty word.  This blog is a personal endeavor — I have long been interested in fine art, great architecture, and an older style of good living that predates McMansions, super-yachts, and Rich Kids of Instagram. Snobs are welcome, but architectural and art nerds are even more welcome.  My taste may not match yours. But I hope these posts can serve as some interest to you, nonetheless Do enjoy. J. A. R. Thackeray