23 Beekman Place facts for kids

23 Beekman Place

23 Beekman Place is a unique apartment building in New York City, located in the Turtle Bay area of Midtown Manhattan. It sits between East 50th and 51st Streets. This building was famously redesigned by Paul Rudolph, a well-known American architect and a former leader at Yale University. It's one of the last buildings he designed that is still standing in the city.

The building is special because of its four-level penthouse. This top section has a thin steel frame and concrete panels that stick out over the older part of the building. It also features large glass walls that offer amazing views of the East River. Inside, the ceilings are high, and the rooms have an open layout. Even though different parts of the building were built at different times, the cement on both sides was made to match the upper and lower sections.

Paul Rudolph was hired for this project, and it later became his own home. He kept working on the building until he passed away. Some neighbors didn't like his modern design because it drew a lot of attention to the area. However, this didn't stop Rudolph from finishing the addition in 1982. After Rudolph's death, the building was sold and changed inside. It was sold again, and more changes were made. These new changes were also debated because some of the original materials and unique features were altered. In 2010, 23 Beekman Place was officially named a New York City Landmark.

History of 23 Beekman Place
Inside 23 Beekman Place
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History of 23 Beekman Place

The building at 23 Beekman Place is about 20 feet wide. It has two very different parts. The first part is the original five-story brick building. The second part is a four-story penthouse that sticks out over the front and back. These two sections look very different, almost like a modern black hat placed on a traditional white suit. It's a mix of old and new styles.

Paul Rudolph first became involved with 23 Beekman Place in 1961 when he rented an apartment on the fourth floor. By 1965, it became his main home. In October 1976, Rudolph bought the entire building for $300,000. He then started to change it from four apartments into five, by adding his modern, multi-level penthouse.

Rudolph only completed six buildings in New York City. He also worked on a home in Lloyd Harbor, New York, in 1973. Later in his career, he designed many buildings in Southeast Asia. People say that the addition at 23 Beekman Place shows ideas from his work there. Rudolph's style is considered part of the "second generation" of modernist architects. He studied at Harvard University in the 1940s under Walter Gropius, who founded the Bauhaus school. However, Rudolph wasn't happy with the "International Style" of architecture, calling it "boring" and "shy." He respected older styles, like the original brownstone at 23 Beekman Place. He saw it as a building that was "meant to be built off," which is exactly what he did. The penthouse addition became one of his most famous works.

Rudolph liked to experiment with industrial materials. Concrete was very important to him, even if it wasn't the main material in all his big projects. The penthouse was made of steel, which he sometimes painted brown to stand out against the concrete panels. Rudolph saw his penthouse as a secret lookout spot where he could escape. He designed it so that the inside layout was shown on the outside, with parts that stuck out, went up, and pulled back from the street. He thought about how the building looked from different angles, both inside and out.

Building the Penthouse Addition

The first changes to the original building at 23 Beekman Place were made in 1929 by architect Franklin Abbott. He updated the front and inside, adding Neo-classical details and rounded windows. A service entrance with a metal cover was likely added at this time. The basement was also made larger at the back, and the garden was surrounded by walls.

After buying 23 Beekman Place, Rudolph submitted plans for a $120,000 renovation. However, the Department of Buildings (DOB) rejected his plans in July 1976. There were issues with the proposed height and how much the second to fourth floors would expand. The new design would increase the building's size by almost 25%, which was more than allowed by city rules. In February 1977, the plan was presented to the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals (BSA). This group had the power to approve projects that went beyond normal limits. After a meeting, the plans were approved, and the Department of Buildings gave a permit in June 1977. Donald Luckenbill, an architect trained at Pratt Institute, managed the project from 1976 to 1977. Marco Martelli was the main builder, and Vincent J. DeSimone was the engineer for the structure.

The back of the building was taken down, and a new wall made of steel and glass was put up. The rooftop addition was designed to hold several terraces and other parts. Rudolph wanted a beam to stick out almost five feet over the sidewalk and even proposed a rooftop swimming pool, but the DOB and BSA said no to these ideas. The first step in construction was to rebuild old brick walls that were unsafe. After that, Rudolph's famous penthouse was built, starting in 1977-78. It was made from very light steel and concrete block panels. Most of the inside work for the apartments to be rented was finished by the end of 1978. All the materials needed for the penthouse were lifted to the fifth floor. A new certificate of occupancy, which means the building was approved for use, was issued in January 1992.

Landmark Status for 23 Beekman Place

On November 16, 2010, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to make 23 Beekman Place a Historic Landmark. The Chairman of the Commission, Robert B. Tierney, said that the buildings chosen that day showed many different architectural styles from 150 years of New York City's history and growth. He added that these buildings "speak volumes about our shared heritage, and help define who we are now."

The apartment is about 4,100 square feet (381 m²) in size. In 2002, a company called Ruppert LLC bought the property for $6.325 million. In 2012, the house was listed for sale at $27.5 million. By As of April 2013^[update], it was on the market for $22,500,000. As of April 2017, no sale by Ruppert LLC was recorded.

Who Owned 23 Beekman Place

The land at 23 Beekman Place was once part of a large country estate owned by James Beekman. He was a descendant of an early Dutch settler named Willem Beekman. The building itself dates back to the 1860s and has been owned by many different people, including the Beekman family.

Maria L. Higgins owned the townhouse in 1906, before it was divided into apartments. She sold it to Charles Schmid. One of the owners removed the front steps and split the townhouse into two apartments. Schmid and his family, along with Roger Howson (who later became the chief librarian at Columbia University), lived in the building in the 1910s. From 1922 until the 1950s, actress Katharine Cornell and her husband, director-producer Guthrie McClintic, lived at 23 Beekman Place. They likely bought it from Schmid. Before 1960, the building was changed into a Class A multiple dwelling, meaning it had several apartments. In 1960, it had four units: two on the first floor and one on each of the three floors above.

Rudolph was hired for the project in 1967 and bought the property in 1976. He owned or controlled the property until he died in 1997. His estate sold the property to Gabrielle and Michael Boyd in 2000. The Boyds changed the building's layout in 2001 to create two duplex apartments on the lower floors, including the basement. It still had a total of four units. They sold the property to Rupert LLC in 2003. By 2004, architects Andrew Bernheimer and Jared Della Valle were hired to renovate the penthouse apartment. They tried to make it look like something Rudolph himself would have wanted. Della Valle and Bernheimer won awards for their work on the apartment. In New York magazine in 2006, they called the apartment a "laboratory for its designer." The changes to the inside were debated because some people thought it should have been left as it was. However, some of the renovations were practical, like adding air-conditioning and a sprinkler system.

Inside 23 Beekman Place

The original building has a ground floor (which is like a basement with a cellar below), plus first, second, third, and fourth stories. These parts have different styles and materials. The fifth story is where the penthouse begins and goes up for four more levels. It's like the building suddenly jumps from one time period to another. The main materials used are painted brown steel, metal beams, concrete panels, acrylic, and mylan. During renovations, workers found a piece of sheetrock with the words "MELAMINE EVERYTHING" written on it. This likely referred to the material used in the kitchen and probably dated back to the original construction in the 1970s. The penthouse, sometimes called a "quadriplex," is organized into four connected levels. The center of the apartment has "cantilevered floors, narrow bridges, open stairs, windows of different sizes, and terraces." It's estimated to have seventeen separate levels.

William Grindereng, who once lived there, described Rudolph's home:

...his apartment at Beekman Place in New York underwent a number of reincarnations. One of them, I think it was the second one to the last, featured a bird walk, like [Frank Lloyd] Wright’s at Taliesin. It was a very narrow little gangway that went out to a little seating area, with seats on two sides. It was supported on some very, very tall steel columns underneath this little seating area. The ground sloped away, precipitously, to Roosevelt Boulevard and the East River. The frightening thing about it was this thing was constructed all of metal grating. When you went out there, you could look down and see through. It was very unsubstantial. Rudolph loaned me that apartment once, when he was out of town and I was doing something in New York. I stayed there. I went out on this bird walk to the little seating area, and it was really scary. I mentioned this to Rudolph when he came back. He said, 'Yes, I’m afraid to go out there myself.'

A very famous part of 23 Beekman Place is the lucite bathtub that hangs above the kitchen. The bottom of the tub is clear, which was a very bold design choice for a New York City home. The stairs originally had no railings, which even scared Rudolph's cleaning lady! After the Boyds bought the property, they added white frosted acrylic railings to the stairs and covered the skylight above the kitchen bathtub with sheetrock.