535 Park Avenue ca. 1913

535 Park Avenue began its life in 1909 when a group of businessmen and professionals began to plan for an apartment building on Park Avenue just above midtown. Intending on creating a co-op, the group hired the architect Herbert Lucas, known for his work on 24 Gramercy Park South. In designing the building, the group hoped that Lucas would land as close to "a private home as possible."

Endeavoring to do so, Lucas came up with an elegant Colonial design, using simple brick and half-oval balconies. The co-op owners' apartments tended to be duplexes within the building, along with a numbed half floor simplexs that were rented, mostly to bankers and lawyers, to reduce the initial building costs.

However, the press was not as kind. It was decried in the 1911 Architectural Review as a sham-palatial amongst other more biting critiques. The author, taking particular offense to the mix of red brick and terra cotta, called it "cheap finery" and described its cornice as that "of the cheapest and vulgarest kind of tenement houses."

While 535 has aged well, the two-story terracotta band at its bottom has experienced some wear and tear, graying with dirt over the years. The co-op board undertook renovation work on the base in 2013, returning it to its original gleaming white color.