Carter HorsleyDec 23, 2011
Carter's Review
This 15-story apartment building at 405 East 54th Street was erected in 1930 and designed by George and Edward Blum and is notable for its "clinker brick" façade.
"Clinker" bricks are denser and heavier than regular bricks and in firing were often too close to the fire and ended up with volcanic textures and darker colors and they were often discarded.
The Arts & Crafts Movement around 1900, however, considered them distinctive and charming. One of the most famous usages was by Greene & Greene at the Lodge at Torrey Pines in San Diego, Calif.
This building, which is also known as 984-990 First Avenue, is one of a few in the vicinity with similar façades such as 350 East 55th Street and 404 East 55th Street. Although the term clinker refers to the individual brick, the phrase also connotates a crazy-quilt pattern of brick laying with odd shapes and conjures the rustic quality of many older stone houses.
This building has 394 rental apartments and its residents over the years have included Georgia O'Keeffe, the great modernist artist, and Alfred Steiglitz, the great photographer, and Van Johnson, the popular blond MGM movie star of the 1940s and 1950s.
George and Edward Blum were very active architects in New York and some of their other buildings include the Admaston and the Evanston on the Upper West Side and 1075 Park Avenue.
This block is convenient to numerous restaurants and Sutton Place and there are two major midblock plazas between First Avenue and Sutton Place.
- Rental built in 1930
- 2 apartments currently for rent ($4.9K)
- Located in Beekman/Sutton Place
- 396 total apartments 396 total apartments
- Doorman
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