Gramercy Park

[BigMac]

New York Times
November 19, 2006

With the Gate Ajar, a Kingdom in Danger?

By JENNIFER BLEYER

In a neighborhood whose jewel is a famously exclusive park, few things involving that park go unnoticed.

This was apparent last Sunday, when Sallie Scripter, a local resident who was leaving Gramercy Park with her 19-month-old daughter, saw that the north gate of the park was standing wide open.

This was not the first time in recent months that Ms. Scripter had noticed the wrought-iron gate ajar. In August, Ian Schrager reopened the Gramercy Park Hotel, equipped with Italian linen, art by Andy Warhol, and keys to the park. Ever since then, local residents, who also possess keys to the park, have occasionally remarked that the gate had been left open.

An open gate may not seem a terribly pressing issue, but keys to this kingdom are highly prized. The hotel keeps its six keys for guest use on giant silver rings, each about the diameter of a Frisbee and decorated with a showy gold tassel.

Arlene Harrison, a park trustee, says she thought that hotel guests occasionally left the gate open because it was too heavy to close, or simply because they didn’t realize that according to park rules, it must be closed and locked even when visitors are inside.

And anxiety about the open gate may have less to do with the presence of guests at the hotel, where prices start at $525 a night, than of other people. “The terrible threat,” Ms. Harrison said, “is that with the gate wide open, hordes of people may come in.”

Last week, in response to complaints, the hotel set forth what may be one of the most formal procedures ever devised for a walk in a green space. According to Ellis O’Connor, the hotel’s general manager, park-bound guests will be escorted there by a hotel worker, then educated about the park’s history and rules, including its bans on alcohol, pets, and groups larger than six. The worker will open the gate, close it behind the guests, and give them a key to let themselves out.

Still, Ms. Harrison intends to keep close tabs on it. “I speak to the managers there once or twice daily,” she said. ”And I talk to Ian Schrager at least twice a week.”

But if the park key holders are now happy that their space is safely private again, Courtney Spencer, a marketing executive who was walking nearby one day last week, was not. “I’m not nuts about the fact that it’s so exclusive,” he said. “It’s a nice-looking park, but it feels a little like a fortress.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[MidtownGuy]

"Ms. Harrison" should go jump in the river.
with silver rings and gold tassssssels attached.:rolleyes:

[nycla3]

Pompous and funny..."hordes...."

But to put it in perspective, I lived on E 18th St. for many years in the 70's and 80's. I walked by Gramercy Park almost every day and nobody invited me in so I just never got too worked up about it. It looked fabulous and quaint and if that was the way it was...OK by me...

I don't have any issues with this being a private park. If it were open, it wouldn't take much time for it to resemble any other public space in New York...and that would be a damn shame.

I bought a membership to an airline club after many years and, well....membership does have privledges. I get it.

[brianac]

The Guardian of Gramercy Park’s Leafy Seclusion

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/06/19/nyregion/19grammercy.600.jpg Librado Romero/The New York Times
Arlene Harrison at the gate of Gramercy Park, one of two private parks in the city. Only those who live adjacent to the park have access.

By ERIC KONIGSBERG (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/eric_konigsberg/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
Published: June 19, 2008

Arlene Harrison calls herself the mayor of Gramercy Park, and she does not just mean that she knows almost everybody who walks through the lush, private two-acre expanse in the East 20s enough to say hello. Ms. Harrison’s influence over that particular piece of prime Manhattan green space and its neighbors — some 900 units in 39 buildings border the park — is felt in the “Keep off the grass” signs and the holly bushes she had installed recently “to block out the streets and the sidewalk.”

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/06/19/nyregion/19grammercy2.650.jpg
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Gramercy Park, two acres in the East 20s, at a level of use that is close to typical, even when the weather is good.

Since Ms. Harrison started the Gramercy Park Block Association in 1994, after her son was attacked and beaten up in front of their apartment building at 34 Gramercy Park, she has effectively remade the area in her own image.

She has added to a list of regulations (no dogs, no feeding of birds, no groups larger than six people, no Frisbees or soccer balls or “hard balls” of any kind) that, in turn, have served to dictate how the park is — and is not — used. Most recently, she helped pave the way for Zeckendorf Realty to redevelop a 17-story Salvation Army (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/salvation_army/index.html?inline=nyt-org) boarding house on the south side of the park, and for the company’s plan to convert the 300 rooms into 14 floor-through apartments plus a penthouse duplex. The company would not confirm the transaction.

“One of Will Zeckendorf’s best friends lives in my building and I liked him,” she said. “I like what they did with 15 Central Park West. I think they’re the best developers for the job.”

She added: “It will change the neighborhood for the better. It will be less use on the park.”

Indeed, while a key to Gramercy Park — or, more precisely, an address that entitles one to such a key — is among the most coveted items of New York real estate, under Ms. Harrison’s stewardship, the park has become perhaps the least-used patch of open space in the city. Most days, in nice weather, one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people in the park at once, and few linger.

Gramercy is one of two private parks in New York City (the other, in Queens, is Sunnyside Gardens Park), and a key is required not only to enter, but to leave through a gate in its wraparound wrought-iron fence.
Each of the 63 lots on which the current 39 buildings sit gets two keys, which residents (and guests at the Gramercy Park Hotel) may borrow from their doormen. In addition, residents of those buildings — but only those — may purchase keys for $350 per year; the keys are all but impossible to copy and cost $1,000 to replace.

About 400 people now have keys, but many of them apparently sit unused in junk drawers in the grand foyers in the apartments overlooking the park. One sunny morning last week, as Ms. Harrison chatted with the Rev. Thomas F. Pike, rector of Calvary-St. George’s Church, there were three others in the park: a woman checking her BlackBerry, a custodial worker and a jogger. On a Saturday morning three days later, about two dozen people could be spotted in the park over the course of four hours, and never more than six or eight at a time.

“Honestly, we don’t use it that much,” said Gale Rundquist, a real estate broker who has lived on the park for five years. Still, she said, access “adds a lot to a listing; it’s panache.”

“Because we work during the day, and we leave town on the weekends,” she explained of her own nonusage. “But it’s beautiful to look at.”

Actual use of the park is not Ms. Harrison’s measure. “It was always an ornamental park,” she said. “A lot of people don’t even go in to enjoy it.

They’re so thrilled just to see it. It’s like a hotel room with a view of the ocean.”

Mr. Pike, who like Ms. Harrison is on the park’s five-member elected board of trustees, noted that his dogs were not allowed inside, “but they love to walk around it.”

Over the years, Ms. Harrison and her supporters have feuded with O. Aldon James Jr., president of the National Arts Club (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_arts_club/index.html?inline=nyt-org) (which is on the park and thus is entitled to a few keys), and his supporters. There have been fights over regulations, pruning and birds. There has been a discrimination lawsuit (quietly settled). Today, the rift has essentially come down to access (he is for more, imagining the space as a delightful one for arts club functions).

For years the two were friends, but after a falling-out Ms. Harrison aligned herself with Sharen S. Benenson, a park trustee who up to then had been the primary object of Mr. James’s populist agitations.

“There used to be concerts and dance recitals in the park, but Arlene Harrison is afraid of who’ll show up,” Mr. James said in an interview last week. “It would be much truer to the spirit of the place if more people from the community could use it.”

The park is beautiful and tranquil. There are well-manicured flower beds, statuary, grand American elms, plenty of usually empty benches, and those holly bushes. “It creates seclusion,” Ms. Harrison said, adding that night club traffic along 21st Street is “too much.”

Ms. Harrison, a smallish, high-spirited woman, patrols the park and its surroundings every day from 6:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m., clipboard in hand. “I talk to the all the buildings’ supers about their concern,” she explained. “Quality of life issues. Individual renovations. Noise.”

She knows the rhythms of the park intimately. “Between 5:30 and 6:30 in the morning, there are two people here,” she said. “One walks, the other breaks into a jog and stretches occasionally. Two women walk here at 7, and then a third joins them at 7:15. The nannies come in with the small kids around 11, and then again around 4.

“Saturday, it’s empty,” she added. “People are doing their errands.”
There is, to be frank, not much to do in the park. Music is forbidden. So are alcoholic beverages, bicycles and furniture. A gravel path around the perimeter provides the only opportunity for low-impact play, or, for that matter, running or walking. Ms. Harrison said parents constantly offer to donate playground components for the park, but she won’t have it.

“Too much wear and tear,” she said. “But do you know what? The children who grow up here learn to use their imagination.”

Just past noon on Saturday, a maintenance worker asked two young women enjoying a picnic lunch to produce their keys, and, when they could not, politely asked them to leave. They politely agreed and headed for the gate, but had to be let out by a stranger with a key.

“I didn’t know it was a private park — we just followed somebody in,” said Elizabeth Heyman. “I’ve heard of Gramercy Park. Which is the one with all those rent-stabilized apartments with the old people?”

Ms. Harrison, who worked for decades as a special-education teacher in the public schools, supervises the block association’s extensive philanthropic projects and community advocacy. These have ranged from preventing a disco from opening in the neighborhood to volunteering with the local police precinct and raising money for Hurricane Katrina (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/hurricane_katrina/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) victims.
She has lived on the park since 1971, when she and her ex-husband, a financier, bought an apartment for “around $68,000,” she said, adding that it is worth “millions” today.

Steven Leitner, the longest-serving park trustee, said that as Manhattan real estate values have increased, most residents of the buildings on the park are not very interested in park governance and see the debate as quaint.

“We live in an era when people are so concerned with making money,” he added. “These people don’t have time to use the park or to make much of a fuss about it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/nyregion/19gramercy.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=nyregion

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[MidtownGuy]

I think Harrison's a total nutcase with her little clipboard. Poor thing was probably never the same since her son was attacked. Now she is afraid of people.

Someone should blow the gates apart and bring in a classroom of laughing children and a busload of old folks from the nearest nursing home.

[Sunnygirl]

I understand the advantages of a private park - and don't have a problem with it being private... I do find it amusing that Ms. Harrison is so concerned about "hordes" of people coming into the park, though.

However, what is really sad, is all of the restrictions put on the people that have access to the park. It's as though they can look at it, but don't you dare have fun in it. Those poor little kids... kids like to run & play in parks. Ms. Harrison's comment about how they do not need playthings in a park, that they should just "use their immagination", simply makes her look like the Grinch of Gramercy Park. I bet she bought heirloom toys for her son when he was growing up, that he was able to "look" at, but not "play" with... which is just how she is running the park.

It is very sad that such a beautiful space can not be fully enjoyed by it's members, especially considering that they pay such a high price to live there. Then again, I guess if they really cared, they would have exiled Ms. Harrison long ago... I know I would have.

What a shame.

[alonzo-ny]

no dogs, no feeding of birds, no groups larger than six people

Get the f*** outta here.

[brianac]

Streetscapes | Lexington Avenue at Gramercy Park North

On the Trail of Stanford White

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/26/realestate/26scap-600.jpg
Left, Bettman/Corbis; Right, from "Stanford White, Architect"/Rizzoli - Museum of the City of New York
GILDED AGE The sumptuous interior of Stanford White's renovated brownstone on Gramercy Park was a virtual advertisement for his decorating style. The house, its exterior shown at left, no longer stands.

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY (http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&fdq=19960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=CHRISTOPHER GRAY&inline=nyt-per)
Published: October 24, 2008

“STANFORD WHITE (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/stanford_white/index.html?inline=nyt-per), Architect,” a book published this month by Rizzoli, is a sumptuous look at the designer’s most inventive commissions, from the Lovely Lane Methodist Church in Baltimore to the Century Association in New York.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/24/realestate/26scap-2-190.jpg From "Stanford White, Architect"/Rizzoli - Museum of the City of New York
Stanford White

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/24/realestate/26scap-3-500.jpgAndrea Mohin/The New York Times
Samuel White, a grandson of the architect, and his wife, Elizabeth, below center at White's Washington Square Arch, have written a book on his work.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/24/realestate/26scap-4-500.jpgJonathan Wallen
Exterior detail from an 1882 White house.

But one project the authors, Samuel White, a great-grandson of the architect, and his wife, Elizabeth White, feature prominently in the book is long gone: Stanford White’s own residence, a renovated brownstone on Lexington Avenue at Gramercy Park North.

Born in New York on Nov. 9, 1853, Stanford White was accomplished early at drawing and painting, and soon showed remarkable design ability. He joined forces with Charles McKim and William Mead in 1879, and within a short time the firm was at or near the top of architectural practice in America, with contracts even in its earliest years for the Newport Casino, the Villard Houses and other major projects.

Throughout their partnership McKim played the intellectual, learned classicist, poring over reference books; Mead, the steady hand on the business side; and White, the impulsive creative genius, always in a hurry but completely assured in his ideas.

Samuel White is an architect, and his wife, Elizabeth, is an editor. Their book is particularly notable for Jonathan Wallen’s photographs. Their close-in views allow the reader to get nose-to-nose with the brilliant details emblematic of White’s originality. And ill-lighted interiors seldom seen by the public, like the rooms at the Seventh Regiment Armory, at Park Avenue and 66th Street, with their intricate chain and other decorations, are brought out of their usual smoky gloom.

At the shingle-style Alden house in Cornwall, Pa., the Whites pay tribute to tiny matters like two stucco panels, one filled with pebbles and bits of glass, the other with painted wooden leaves and anthracite coal.

Out of such humble materials, Stanford White could conjure elegance. Marine serpents for porch brackets, a Colonial bed warmer used as a panel decoration, inch-worm-shaped screen perforations, keystones bursting into flames: these were the products of his genius as much as majestically proportioned ballrooms or Renaissance-style facades.

The Villard houses, at Madison Avenue and 50th Street, feature dreamy blue- and white-veined marble, cut in one instance into a great scallop shell — a hypnotic quarter-sphere of blue cheese.

And the astonishing mirrored Venetian Room in the house built for Payne Whitney, at Fifth Avenue and 78th Street, has a series of porcelain flowers woven into the gilt basket-weave screen that forms the ceiling.

White’s own house on Gramercy Park is presented in black and white; it was demolished in the 1920s, for what is now Ian Schrager (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/ian_schrager/index.html?inline=nyt-per)’s Gramercy Park Hotel. White moved into the half-century old brownstone in 1898 and proceeded to rebuild it into a temple of decorative art.

The parlor was practically a salesroom for European decorative arts, walls of antique red velvet flanking a colossal fireplace assemblage: an Egyptian-style mantel, topped with an intricate gilt screen over a mirror, and flanked by bulbous twisted columns crowned with improbably small Corinthian capitals. The third-floor picture gallery had a beamed, skylighted ceiling; a baroque-style doorway; and an iron grille guarding White’s collection of Renaissance and contemporary art.

Anyone enthralled with the romance of Stanford White should read as a complement Paul R. Baker’s sobering “Stanny: The Gilded Life of Stanford White” (Free Press, 1989). The last decade of White’s life was a maelstrom of spiraling debt, compulsive buying and troubled health, masked all too well by an exuberant good nature.

Prof. Baker quotes a letter from White in 1899 saying he faced “debtor’s prison” over cost overruns on the Gramercy Park house. In 1905 a warehouse fire destroyed $250,000 worth of furniture and artwork which he had planned to sell to offset bills of over half a million dollars. Prof. Baker’s book recounts how White was in “stony misery” for two days, and then broke down and sobbed “like a child.”

White was shot and killed in 1906 by Harry K. Thaw, the jealous husband of a former lover. According to an autopsy, his health was so fragile that he was unlikely to have survived another year.

E-mail: streetscapes@nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/realestate/26scap.html?ref=realestate

Copyright 2008 (http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html) The New York Times Company (http://www.nytco.com/)

[alonzo-ny]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/10/24/realestate/26scap-3-500.jpg

Sam is one of the partners at the firm I used to work for, great guy.