By Carter B. Horsley

One of New York City's most prestigious addresses, 10 Gracie Square is the most desirable residential building overlooking Carl Schurz Park, whose southeast end it anchors.

The building is distinguished by a very unusual and elaborate rooftop, a through-block driveway to 83rd Street, and a very unusual façade treatment.

Designed by Van Wart & Wein and Pleasants Pennington and Albert W. Lewis for a development group headed by John Drummond Kennedy, the building has long been one of the most exclusive in the city. It was completed in 1930. Its residents have included Gloria Vanderbilt, conductor André Kostelanetz, critic Alexander Woollcott and publishers John Fairchild and Horace Havemeyer III. Another resident was Madame Chiang-Kai Shek who lived in an 18-room duplex from 1975 to her death at the age of 105 in 2004.

The asymmetrical rooftop design consists of square columns that form a loggia with the chimneys. The massing is unusual and intricate and yet quite bold - a powerful pinnacle.

The vaulted driveway leads to three entrances into the building and has its own marble walkway and colonnade, sentry and iron gates.

The northeast corner of the building is clad in limestone with an asymmetrical fenestration pattern while the rest of the building is clad in red brick. The effect, as noted by Andrew Alpern in his book, "Historic Manhattan Apartment Houses," (Dover Publications Inc., 1996), is to make "look more like three adjoining buildings rather than one," an effect also accentuated by the stepped plan of the building. Ten Gracie originally had a private club below street level that opened onto a yacht mooring that was demolished for the FDR Drive. The club has subsequently been converted to a squash court and fitness center.

The building originally contained 34 large duplex and "semiduplex" suites and now has 42 cooperative apartments and some apartments on the East River frontage have bay windows and others have balconies. Some apartments have fireplaces. This area is inconvenient to public transportation.

10 Gracie Square has a through-block driveway. In a November 1, 1992 article in The New York Times, Christopher Gray noted that "the building had no grand lobby, only three separate foyers for three banks of elevators."

"The decoration in the building is strangely abstract, with neo-Greek details, like Doric columns and a Greek key frieze set against unornamented backdrops. Such modern classicism is repeated in the asymmetrical rooftop silhouette of urns, towers and Greek details. But the bulk of the building is a conundrum, with the appearance of three separate structures for no discernible reason. The limestone corner at Gracie Square and the East River is flanked by two red-brick sections. The brick section of Gracie Square, it is true, is a bedroom wing, with floors of lesser height than those in the limestone portion. But the brick section facing the river, reaching down to 83rd Street - itself a confusing staccato of angled step-backs - is of a kind with the limestone section."

In 1992, the building underwent substantial renovation when it was discovered that its steel structure had not been rust-proofed. "With scores of stone blocks removed and replaced with plywood and others drilled or sawn, it looks like 10 Gracie Square is being unbuilt," Mr. Gray wrote.

Mr. Gray noted that Van Wart & Wein had designed romantic, medieval-style apartment houses in the east 50's, including the riverfrot Campanile at 450 East 52nd Street.  Pennington & Lewis had produced spare, sophisticated buildings with a severity derived from both modernism and classicism, like 1001 Park Avenue, at 84th Street.

Mr. Gray observed that the decoration in 10 Gracie Square "is strangely abstract, with neo-Greek details, like Doric columns and a Greek key frieze set against unornamented backdrops.  Such modern classicism is repeated in the asymmetrical rooftop silhouette of urns, towers and Greek details.  But the bulk of the building is a conundrum, with the appearance of three separate structures for no discernible reason....The result is not dissonant so much as perplexing, one not explained by the original architectural drawings or by period criticism of the design."