The second cooperative building in our series, 740 Park Avenue, shares many attributes with River House: a strict board, high ceilings, and other architectural details too expensive to replicate with new construction today.
The 19-story building, which also uses the more discrete 71 East 71st Street address, was designed by Rosario Candela and developed by James Lee, the grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
Because 740 Park was constructed just as the United States was entering the Great Depression, it faced financial difficulties from its inception and for decades after being completed in 1930, even spending time as a rental. Its units, constructed to be mansion stacked on mansions, were white elephants that were difficult to sell.
By the time the building’s fortunes recovered in the 1980s, the face of the country’s and city’s elite had changed. America’s WASP aristocracy had given up its monopoly on high society in favor of a meritocracy of sorts. At 740 Park, representatives of this meritocracy include David Koch, Stephen Schwarzman, Vera Wang, Elizabeth Swig, and William Zeckendorf.
In 2005, society reporter Michael Gross published “740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building,” which listed the building’s residents. We give you an updated look at the captains of finance, industry, and fashion who reside there today, more than a decade later.
(Source: Property Shark and published news articles).
David and Julia Koch
Unit price: Undisclosed
David Koch and his unit
David Koch is a Kansas-born chemical engineer, captain of industry, donor to libertarian political causes, philanthropist to the arts and medical research, and the scion of the Koch family that made its fortune in chemicals.
Since 1970, he has worked at the conglomerate owned by his family, Koch Industries — rising to president in 1979, and co-owner with his brother Charles in 1983. He received a master’s degree and a bachelor’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1963 and 1962, and is an alumnus of Deerfield Academy (Class of 1959).
Julia Flesher Koch is a former fashion assistant and philanthropist. She is Koch’s second wife. The couple have three children, David Jr., John, and Mary.
Ronald Lauder and Jo Carole Knopf Lauder
Unit price: Undisclosed
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt
Ronald Lauder is a philanthropist, art collector, native New Yorker, would-be politician, donor to Jewish causes and scion of the Lauder family, whose members are heirs to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune. His varied career includes a failed run for mayor of New York, founding of the Neue Galerie, working for his family’s company, and in the 1980s, serving at the Pentagon, as a deputy assistant secretary of defense for Europe, and as the US ambassador to Austria in the Reagan administration.
For his gallery, Lauder acquired the Gustav Klimt painting above for $135 million, in June 2006. At the time, it was the highest price ever paid for a painting.
Lauder received a degree in international business from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. He is an alumnus of Bronx High School of Science. Jo Carole Knopf Lauder is a homemaker. The couple have two adult daughters, Aerin and Jane.
Stephen Schwarzman and Christine Hearst Schwarzman
Unit price: Undisclosed
Stephen Schwarzman and Christine Hearst Schwarzman
Stephen Schwarzman is a billionaire financier, philanthropist, and the co-founder and principal of the Blackstone Group, a private equity firm. His career includes stints at Lehman Brothers and Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. He received a MBA from Harvard Business School in 1972 and a BA from Yale University. He grew up in suburban Philadelphia.
Christine Hearst Schwarzman is a trained lawyer. She and Schwarzman, her second husband, have two children, Elizabeth and Edward. Her previous marriage, which produced one child, ended in divorce. In the 1990s, she worked as an intellectual property lawyer at Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman. She received a JD from New York University Law School and a BA from Hofstra University.
Dana and Andrew Stone
Unit price: Undisclosed
Andrew Stone
Dana Stone, née Cook, is a psychotherapist who practices out of an office at 740 Park. Stone received a master’s degree in social work from New York University (NYU) in 2012, a master’s degree in real estate development in 1988, and a BS in occupational therapy from Tufts University in 1980.
Andrew Stone is a real estate portfolio manager, financier, and the founder of Petra Capital Management. While working at investment bank Credit Suisse, he financed the real estate development projects of Donald Trump, Harry Macklowe, Ian Schrager, and Steven Witkoff. Stone received an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and a BS from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
Elizabeth Swig
Unit price: Undisclosed
Elizabeth and her ex-husband Kent
Elizabeth Swig is an art collector and philanthropist. She is the ex-wife of Kent Swig, with whom she has two sons. Her father, Harry Macklowe, and her ex-husband are both real estate investors and former business partners who have experienced dramatic reversals of fortune.
Jonathan Sobel and Marcia Dunn
Unit price: $19,250,000
Jonathan Sobel is a financier, former Goldman Sachs partner, and philanthropist, who owns four car dealerships (Mini, BMW, Porsche, and Audi) in Southampton, on Long Island. Sobel received a BA from Columbia University in 1988 and is an alumnus of Dwight Englewood, a private school in New Jersey. He collects models of early computers and other gadgets, including the first model of the Apple Mac.
Marcia Dunn is an ophthalmologist in private practice and a philanthropist to medical causes. Dunn sees patients out of Manhattan office and a West Chester office.
Vera Wang
Vera Wang
Unit price: $23,100,000
Vera Wang Becker is a designer of wedding dresses and evening wear, who worked as an editor at Vogue, and as design director at Ralph Lauren, before striking out on her own.
As of 2016, she was separated from Arthur Becker, whom she married in 1989. She received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, and is an alumna of Chapin, a private all-girls school on the Upper East Side. She was a competitive figure skater as a child.
Hamburg and Miranda Tang
Unit price: Undisclosed
Hamburg Tang, Sr. is a retired businessman who made his fortune in semiconductors and was the co-founder of Long Island City-based Alloys Unlimited.
Miranda Wong Tang is a philanthropist. In 2001, she sat on the board of the Edward S. Harkness Eye Institute and was a member of the president’s council at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
William Lie Zeckendorf and Laura Jean Weiser
Unit price: $27,000,000
William Lie Zeckendorf is a real estate developer and the scion of the Zeckendorf family, which has been investing in New York City real estate for three generations. He is the co-chairman of Terra Holdings, which controls two upscale residential brokerage firms: Brown Harris Stevens and Halstead Property. Kent Swig, the ex-husband of fellow 740 Park resident Elizabeth Swig is co-chairman of Terra Holdings. Zeckendorf is the co-founder with his brother Arthur of their eponymous firm, Zeckendorf Development.
He received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1984 and an undergraduate degree from Tufts University in Massachusetts in 1980. Zeckendorf is an alumnus of Taft, a boarding school in Connecticut.
Laura Jean Weiser is a lawyer. Weiser received a JD from Fordham University, a BA from Tufts University in Massachusetts, studied at Sciences Po (Institut d’études politiques de Paris), and is an alumna of Chapin, a private all-girls school on the Upper East Side, class of 1976.
Michael Palin
Unit price: Undisclosed
Michael Palin is a real estate developer and a widower. He is a principal at Palin Enterprises. His wife Caryl, whose father owned a stake in Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, died in 2007. Palin has a son, Dean, and two daughters, Andrea and Dorothy. Dean works at the family firm.
Israel and Caryl Englander
Unit price: $71,277,500
Isreal Englander and his unit
Israel Englander, who goes by Izzy, is a hedge fund manager, art collector and philanthropist. Forbes estimated his net worth $5 billion, as of 2016.
Englander, who grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and began trading stocks in high school, co-founded Millennium Management in 1989. He received a BS from New York University in 1970 and majored in finance.
He and his wife Caryl have donated millions of dollars to Jewish organizations and schools. Caryl Englander, née Schechter, is an art collector and philanthropist. She sits on the board of the Mount Sinai Children’s Center Foundation.
John and Carmen Thain
Unit price: $27,500,000
John Thain is a bank executive and former Goldman Sachs partner, whose career has included stints as chief executive of both investment bank Merrill Lynch and the New York Stock Exchange.
Since 2010, he has served as chairman and chief executive of mid-sized lender CIT Group, but is expected to step down in March 2016. Thain’s decade-long leadership of Merrill Lynch was cut short by the financial crisis and the bank’s forced merger with Bank of America. He received an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1979 and a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977.
Carmen Ribera-Thain is a homemaker. She and John Thain have four children.
Steven and Heather Mnuchin
Unit price: Undisclosed
Steven Mnuchin
Steven Mnuchin is a senior bank executive, former Goldman Sachs partner and financier to the movie industry. His career has included a stint as co-owner and co-chairman of Relativity Media, a film and television production studio in Beverly Hills that declared bankruptcy in 2015.
Mnuchin led a group of investors that acquired California-based OneWest Bank (formerly known as IndyMac), which was reeling from the sub-prime crisis. CIT, which was run by fellow 740 Park resident John Thain, acquired OneWest in 2015. He received a BA from Yale University.
He and his wife Heather, who have three children, spend most of their time in Los Angeles. Heather Mnuchin, née Crosby, is a designer of yoga clothes and former public relations executive. She received a BA from Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Tamara Sarah and David Randall Winn
Unit price: $32,000,000
Tamara Sarah Winn is an heiress. She is the daughter of billionaire Ira Rennert, who made his fortune in mining and smelting plants in South America and the United States via Renco Group, a privately-held conglomerate. The EPA singled out the company as a polluter.
David Randall Winn, who goes by Randy, is a fund manager and former credit ratings analyst. In 2014, he established FiveW Capital LLC, a private investment firm. From 1999 to 2011, he co-managed Capital IQ, now a subsidiary of ratings agency Standard & Poor’s. Winn received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.
Howard and Nancy Marks
Unit price: $52,500,000
Howard Marks is a private equity executive, former equities analyst and author. He serves as chairman of Los Angeles-based Oaktree Capital Management, a private equity firm he co-founded.
In 2011, Columbia University Press published a book written by Marks, “The Most Important Thing: Uncommon Sense for the Thoughtful Investor.” He and his second wife Nancy spend a significant amount of their time in L.A. The couple have an adult son, Andrew, who works as a hedge fund manager. Marks received an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and a degree from University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business in 1967. He grew up in Rego Park, Queens.
Nancy Marks is a homemaker and educator by training. She received an MA from Columbia University Teachers College in 1972 and a BA from New York University in 1971.
David and Danielle Ganek
Unit price: $19,100,000
David and Danielle Ganek
David Ganek is a money manager, patron of the arts and a former trustee of the Guggenheim.
From 2003 to 2011, he established and ran a hedge fund, Level Global. It closed in the wake of an insider trading scandal. Ganek himself was never charged, though his fund settled with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, paying $20.5 million.
His career includes stints at now-shuttered hedge fund SAC Capital, and at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (an investment bank acquired by Credit Suisse in 2000). He received an undergraduate degree from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Danielle Ganek is a philanthropist, a novelist and a former magazine editor. She is the author of “Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him,” set in the milieu of artists and their modern-day patrons, and “The Summer We Read Gatsby,” about love in the Hamptons. She serves on the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, an organization that strives to alleviate poverty in New York. Her career also includes stints in the editorial departments of glossy magazines Woman’s Day and Mademoiselle and at Galeries Lafayette, a French department store. She received an undergraduate degree from Franklin & Marshall, where she met her husband, and spent parts of her childhood in Brazil and Switzerland.
The Ganeks have three children, Harry, Nicholas, and Zoe and divide their time between Manhattan and a house in Southampton.
As of April 2016, their 4-bedroom unit was listed for $32,500,000, according to Streeteasy.
Ezra and Lauren Merkin
Unit price: $11,000,000
Ezra Merkin
Jacob Ezra Merkin is a financier, a trained lawyer, and former business associate of Bernie Madoff, whose investment firm turned out to be a pyramid scheme in 2008.
From 1988 until the Madoff scandal, he established and ran his own fund, Gabriel Capital. His career includes stints at the hedge funds Ariel Capital, Gotham Capital, Halcyon Investments, and at law firm Milbank Tweed. He received a JD from Harvard Law School and a BA from Columbia University in 1976. Merkin attended a Jewish, Upper East Side prep school, Ramaz, and yeshivas in Israel.
Lauren Merkin is a former broadcasting and publishing executive. Her career includes stints at CBS and Elsevier Science Publishing Co. She received an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and an undergraduate degree from the all-women’s Bryn Mawr College. The Merkins have four children.
In April 2016, Merkin’s apartment caught fire.
Check out the other buildings in our series here: