Built in 1927 by York & Sawyer for the developers the Starrett Brothers 660 Park Avenue is a beautifully executed 12 story building designed in the Neo Italian Renaissance style fully clad in limestone. The façade, compared to many of its contemporaries, is relatively unadorned, although gracious and refined in its simplicity, it can best be described in favored term of upper east side wealth as, discreet.

660 Park, also has the distinction of sharing the dual address of the seemingly sinister, if you are of that sort, number 666. In many cases of these classic style buildings the second address was often a side entrance, or separate apartment. In this case 666 Park is so much more than that. A New York Times article from 1981 wrote: “SURELY the greatest maisonette ever constructed in New York is the 21-room triplex at 666 Park Avenue… To call it a maisonette at all is rather like calling a Bugatti a runabout – this is not the small insertion on the ground floor of an apartment building that most maisonettes are, those little and charming places that coyly pretend to be both apartments and townhouses. No mistakes can be made about this place. It is not little, it is not coy, and it is not, in the conventional sense, charming”. Mrs. William Vanderbilt is often said to be the first resident of 666, but city records show that the first permits for the apartments renovation were issued to Seton Porter, an industrialist and engineer. Further reading on the home is a must for anyone with more than a simple passing curiosity.

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