Gracie Square, 84th Street and East End Avenue 1949


This sequence of photos from 1949 show a car coming down East 84th Street and entering 110 Gracie Square.
The stills are from the movie East Side, West Side starring Van Heflin, Barbara Stanwyck and James Mason.
The vantage point from the dead end of East 84th Street is one you will rarely see in old photos of New York. The wall in the foreground marks one of the entrances to Carl Schurz Park.
Nearly seven decades later the changes in this view are minimal.
Some of the canopy’s to the buildings along Gracie Square are gone. 110 Gracie Square was renumbered for the film, it is really 10 Gracie Square, one of the most exclusive co-op buildings in the city. Built in 1930 as a rental building, famous past residents include Gloria Vanderbilt, conductor Leopold Stokowski (Vanderbilt’s husband), New York Times editor and author Charles Merz, and theater critic and author Alexander Woollcott. A five bedroom penthouse apartment has been on the market for over two years. Why so long? The original price tag was $23 million. Currently the asking price will only set you back $15 million, but be prepared for the monthly maintenance charges of $16,747. In 1937 the building went into foreclosure and the entire building was sold for $450,000!
The building seen in the first two photographs on the northwest corner of 84th Street and East End Avenue is the Chapin School, Continue reading →