Imperial House is a high-rise

apartment building An apartment (American English), or flat (British English, Indian English, South African English), is a self-contained housing unit (a type of residential real estate) that occupies part of a building, generally on a single story. There are ...

at 150 East 69th Street in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It was New York's largest post-war apartment building at the time of its construction. The building was owned and built by the

Fisher Brothers Fisher Brothers is a real estate firm in New York City. It was formed by Martin Fisher in 1915, soon joined by his brothers Larry (born 1907), and Zachary (born 1910). The Fisher family has substantial real estate holdings in New York City and els ...

. The architect was Emery Roth & Sons. The project engineer was W.R. Cosentini & Associates, Raisler Corp were the mechanical contractors. The garden of Imperial House collapsed into its underground garage shortly after construction. Construction started on Imperial House in 1959 and was completed in 1961. The building has 30 residential floors with 350 apartments and offices. Interiors were designed by the Raymond Lowey Group. The actor

Joan Crawford Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, ncertain year from 1904 to 1908was an American actress. She started her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting on Broadway. Crawford was signed to a motion pict ...

lived at Imperial House from November 1968 to her death in 1977. Crawford lived at apartment 22G from 1968 to 1973 and at 22H from 1973 to 1977. Her 22H apartment was featured in ''

Architectural Digest ''Architectural Digest'' is an American monthly magazine founded in 1920. Its principal subjects are interior design and landscaping, rather than pure external architecture. The magazine is published by Condé Nast, which also publishes internati ...

'' in 1975. Imperial House is noted for its distinctive white brick design; a 2010 ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' article on white brick buildings described it as a "star" of the 140 white brick apartment buildings of Manhattan. Imperial House was sold for $51.6 million in 1971 (). It was converted into a

housing cooperative A housing cooperative, or housing co-op, is a legal entity, usually a cooperative or a corporation, which owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings; it is one type of housing tenure. Housing cooperatives are a distinc ...

in a process beginning in 1971 by N. Anthony Rolfe and other investors. There were 378 apartments in the building at the time. 213 apartments were sold by 1980, the process was almost complete by 2007, with 7 apartments remaining. The process led to "court battles and confrontations" according to the ''New York Times''. In 1971 a one-bedroom apartment cost $43,000 () with an "upper-floor three-bedroom with a gallery, living room, dining room, library, four bathrooms and a maid's room" going for $150,000 ().

References

External links

Imperial House brochure collection - Columbia University Library
{{Coord, 40, 46, 5, N, 73, 57, 47, W, type:landmark_region:US-NY, display=title Apartment buildings in New York City Residential buildings completed in 1960 Modernist architecture in New York City Emery Roth buildings