House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World's Most Powerful Address Author: Michael Gross | Language: English | ISBN:
B00DPM7ZH6 | Format: PDF
House of Outrageous Fortune: Fifteen Central Park West, the World's Most Powerful Address Description
In real estate–obsessed New York, no new building has captured the city’s imagination—or as many of its richest residents—as Fifteen Central Park West.In
House of Outrageous Fortune, America’s foremost chronicler of the upper crust, journalist and bestselling author Michael Gross, turns his gimlet eye on the new-money wonderland that’s sprung up on the southwest rim of Central Park. Mixing an absorbing business epic with hilarious social comedy, Gross creates a dishy exposé of today’s wealthiest and most famous. This colorful story recounts the recordsetting building’s inspired genesis, costly construction, and the flashy international lifestyle it has brought to a once benighted and socially déclassé Manhattan neighborhood.
With two concierge-staffed lobbies, a walnut-lined library, a lavish screening room, a private sixty-seat restaurant offering residents room service, a health club complete with a seventy-foot swimming pool, and penthouses that cost almost $100 million, Fifteen is the most outrageously successful, insanely expensive, titanically tycoon-stuffed real estate development of the twenty-first century. And any building that’s home to such unimaginable wealth and heavyweight egos—its cast of characters includes Denzel Washington, Sting, Alex Rodriguez, Norman Lear, NASCAR’s Jeff Gordon, hedge fund heads Daniel Loeb and Daniel Och, Russian and Chinese oligarchs, and top executives of Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, AIG, Disney, Google, and Yahoo!, among many more—will be chock-full of jaw-dropping excess.
Gross won unprecedented access to the people behind this instantly legendary building, including the scions of the fabled Zeckendorf real estate dynasty; their financial backers, Goldman Sachs and Israeli billionaire Eyal Ofer; and their “starchitect,” Robert A. M. Stern. Then he drilled past its limestone façade to ferret out the stories Fifteen’s fathers and its residents don’t want told.
More than just an apartment building, 15CPW represents a massive paradigm shift in the lifestyle of New York’s rich and famous—and is a bellwether of the city’s changing social and financial landscape. With its dazzling detail,
House of Outrageous Fortune is a sweeping history of those changes, and it pulls open wide the gilded walls of Fifteen to reveal the private lives of that .01 percent.
- File Size: 55751 KB
- Print Length: 416 pages
- Publisher: Atria Books (March 11, 2014)
- Sold by: Simon and Schuster Digital Sales Inc
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00DPM7ZH6
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #656 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #1
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Urban - #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Sociology > Urban - #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Americas > United States > State & Local > Mid-Atlantic
- #1
in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Sociology > Urban - #1
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Sociology > Urban - #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Americas > United States > State & Local > Mid-Atlantic
Most of us have all heard tales of the world's uber-wealthy. This book is a modern chapter in the unending antics and extravagances of the newest class. Based on interviews and information from current residents and guests at one of Manhattan's most expensive and prestigious addresses, the author, Michael Gross, has captured many of their inimitable actions and described them in his characteristically witty and humorous style. Normal people simply don't live like this ... you can most easily learn about the differences through timely books like this one. It is brutally honest and candid. I believe most readers will be astonished at the information this excellent book reveals.
By Robert Steven Thomas
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
The message behind Fifteen Central Park West is the dream of classical opulence for the ultra wealthy buyers of today's economy. Many of the older, established luxury buildings are co-ops in which a board must approve one's application to buy. Single moms, international wanderers, and ovcious social fringe groups need not apply. The new money is international, concerned with status, demanding of service, and without cultural bounds. Here is the birth of buildings of condominiums like this one.
This book goes into detail, sometimes excruciating, of the founding both of the building and the careers of its builders. The provenance of the plot itself is traced historically back through the non-romantic days of "West Side Story". The prose is clear, but the details drag at times for me. I think this is an indication of individual taste rather than a short coming of the book in general. A person looking to understand the real estate changes in residential space in NYC would find this part gratifying.
For me the more interesting part is the discussion in the last fourth of the book of the buyers who eventually either invested in or inhabited the building. The detail is rich, no pun intended, and one can easily picture the building as the organism that the developers had dreamed. The book is sold as somewhat more sensational than the product delivered. While the expensive features are certainly revealed, there is nothing of the "wealth porn" that has come to the shelves recently. Rather the book reveals the features that can be and are had by the super rich in a measured tone. It makes for an interesting look at that tiny fraction of the world who can afford this building.
By Amelia Gremelspacher
TOP 500 REVIEWER
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