York Avenue/Sutton Place

Townhouses line the east side of Sutton Place between 58th and 57th streets.

Sutton Place South at 53rd Street.

North end of York Avenue, at 92nd Street and FDR Drive

"Avenue A Estate" of New York & Suburban Homes Company, named before the Avenue was renamed

York Avenue from high atop 59th Street Bridge

York Avenue is a relatively short north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It runs from 59th Street north to 91st Street on the Upper East Side. Sutton Place is a very short street and surrounding neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York. It is known for its upscale apartments, much like the rest of the Upper East Side. York Avenue runs through eastern Yorkville, while Sutton Place runs through its namesake neighborhood.

In 1928, a one-block section of Sutton Place north of 59th Street, and all of Avenue A north of that point, was renamed York Avenue in honor of World War I US Army Sergeant Alvin York, who won the Medal of Honor for an attack in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on October 8, 1918. He received The Medal for attacking a German machinegun nest and capturing 4 German officers and 128 men and several guns.

York Avenue was proposed as an addition to the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 for Manhattan, which designated 12 broad north-south Avenues running the length of the island. The geography of Manhattan left a large area on the Upper East Side east of First Avenue without a major north-south thoroughfare, so Avenue A, later called York Avenue and Pleasant Avenue, was added to compensate. The address numbering on York Avenue are continuous with that of Avenue A in Alphabet City, starting in the 1100 series and rising to the 1700 series.

At its south end, York Avenue becomes Sutton Place, a wide avenue that runs only two blocks, from 59th Street to 57th Street, along the East River and south of the Queensboro Bridge. The stretch that continues below 57th Street down to 53rd Street is called Sutton Place South, which ends at 53rd Street. Both Sutton Place and York Avenue are considered one of the most affluent streets in the city.

Other streets that lie east of First Avenue include Beekman Place between 49th and 51st Streets, and Asser Levy Place (itself a former part of Avenue A before being severed by the construction of Stuyvesant Town in the 1940s) between 23rd Street and 25th Street. Between 1st Street and 14th Street, Alphabet City, consisting of Avenue A through Avenue D, lies east of First Avenue.

From 79th to 90th streets, East End Avenue lies east of York Avenue. FDR Drive runs along the East River shore, east of both York and East End Avenues.

The greater Sutton Place neighborhood is situated between the neighborhoods of Turtle Bay on the south and the Yorkville on the north, is bounded on the east by the East River, on the west by Second Avenue, and runs from 53rd Street to 59th Street. Sutton Square is the cul-de-sac at the end of East 58th Street, just east of Sutton Place; and Riverview Terrace is a row of townhouses on a short private driveway that runs north from Sutton Square.

History

Sutton Place was originally one of several disconnected stretches of Avenue A, where space allowed, east of First Avenue. Effingham B. Sutton constructed a group of brownstones in 1875 between 57th and 58th Streets, and is said to have lent the street his name, though the earliest source found by The New York Times dates back only to 1883. At that time, the New York City Board of Aldermen approved a petition to change the name from "Avenue A" to "Sutton Place", covering the blocks between 57th and 60th Streets. The vacant block between 59th and 60th Streets is now considered a part of York Avenue.

Sutton Place first became fashionable around 1920, when several wealthy socialites, including Anne Harriman Vanderbilt and Anne Morgan, built townhouses on the eastern side of the street, overlooking the East River. Both townhouses were designed by Mott B. Schmidt, launching a career that included many houses for the wealthy.) Very shortly thereafter, developers started to build grand co-operative apartment houses on Sutton Place and Sutton Place South, including several designed by Rosario Candela. Development came to an abrupt halt with the Great Depression, and the luxury apartment buildings on the lower part of Sutton Place South (below 57th Street) and the northernmost part of Sutton Place (adjacent to the Queensboro Bridge) were not developed until the 1940s and 1950s.

Prominent residents of Sutton Place include architect I. M. Pei, former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, his son-in-law designer Kenneth Cole, and actress Sigourney Weaver. Former residents include Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, C.Z. Guest, Peter Lawford & Patricia Kennedy Lawford, Lillian Gish, Aristotle Onassis, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, Bill Blass, Bobby Short, Percy Sutton, Irene Hayes, Elsie de Wolfe, Joan Crawford, Raj Rajaratnam, Richard Jenrette, Marilyn Monroe and her then husband Arthur Miller, Mildred Natwick, and Maureen O'Hara to name a few.

One Sutton Place (North), an imposing townhouse at the northeast corner of Sutton Place and East 57th Street, was built as a residence for Anne Harriman Vanderbilt, widow of William K. Vanderbilt. This house is currently owned by an heiress to the Heinz Company fortune. Next door, the official residence of the Secretary-General of the United Nations is a five-story townhouse that was built in 1921 for Anne Morgan, daughter of financier J.P. Morgan, and donated as a gift to the United Nations in 1972.

Park controversy

Sutton Place Park, with the Queensboro Bridge in the background

Sutton Place encompasses two public parks overlooking the East River, one at the end of 57th Street and another at the end of 53rd Street. The 57th Street park is separated by an iron fence from the landscaped grounds behind One Sutton Place South, a neo-Georgian apartment building designed by Rosario Candela. The property behind One Sutton Place South was the subject of a dispute between the building's owners and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Like the adjacent park, the rear garden at One Sutton Place South is, in fact, cantilevered over the FDR Drive, a busy expressway at Manhattan's eastern edge that is not visible from most of Sutton Place.

In 1939, city authorities took ownership of the property behind One Sutton Place South by condemnation in connection with the construction of the FDR Drive, then leased it back to the building. The building's lease for its backyard expired in 1990, The co-op tried unsuccessfully to extend the lease, and later made prospective apartment-buyers review the legal status of the backyard and sign a confidentiality agreement. In June 2007, the co-op sued the city in an attempt the keep the land, and on November 1, 2011, the co-op and the city reached an agreement in which the co-op ended its ownership claim and each side would contribute $1 million toward the creation of a public park on the land.

In popular culture

• Sutton Place at East 53rd Street is the famous Dead End of the 1935 play and 1937 movie of that name, which also began the movie careers of the Dead End Kids.
• Sutton Place is mentioned in J. D. Salinger's novel Catcher in the Rye (1951) as the location of a "swanky" apartment.
• Sutton Place is featured in the 1953 film How to Marry a Millionaire and the 1960 film Satan in High Heels.
• In a 1970 article in New York magazine, Tom Wolfe mentions "the famous Mrs. C--------, one of New York’s richest widows, who has a 10-room duplex on Sutton Place, the good part of Sutton Place as opposed to the Miami Beach-looking part". The article was later re-printed in the book Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers.
• Sutton Place is featured in Larry Cohen's 1973 film Black Caesar (film).
• Sutton Place South's wealthy residents are referenced in Martin Scorsese's 1976 film Taxi Driver.
• Sutton Place's park appears in Woody Allen's 1979 film Manhattan.
• Scarface had a scene in which Tony Montana (Al Pacino) was on the telephone in the now-defunct 60th Street Heliport, now used as a dog run.
• In the 1986 film Legal Eagles, the villain, Victor Taft (Terrence Stamp), resided on Sutton Place.
• In Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street, an excited broker (Sylvia Miles) offers to show Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) some apartments on Sutton Place once she realizes how wealthy he is.
• In the 2000 film Almost Famous, Patrick Fugit's character is seen sprinting down Sutton Place.
• 50 Sutton Place South was one of the buildings used to film the 2007 movie American Gangster.
• Sutton Place is mentioned in season 3, episode 2 of the TV series Mad Men. Set in 1963, it's where the new British CFO finds a flat when he arrives in New York to run the advertising agency.
• The home of main character in Mary Higgins Clark's 2008 novel Where Are You Now?. Ms. Clark owns an apartment in the neighborhood, and her characters (in several books) occasionally dine at Neary's, a (real) Irish bar & restaurant located on East 57th Street between 1st Ave & 2nd Ave.
• 1 Sutton Place North is the home of Alison Courtland (Claudette Colbert) and her husband Richard (Don Ameche) in Douglas Sirk's 1948 film noir "Sleep, My Love".
• In John Cheever's short story "The Enormous Radio", main characters Jim and Irene Wescott live in an apartment near Sutton Place.
• 36 Sutton Place South was an exterior location for the 1953 film How to Marry a Millionaire starring Marilyn Monroe.

See also

• 11 October 2006 New York City plane crash, a crash just off of York Avenue/Sutton Place
• Avenue A
• Beekman Place
• Pleasant Avenue

References

Notes