The Marquand, 11 East 68th Street: Review and Ratings

Review of 11 East 68th Street by Carter Horsley

This beige-brick apartment building at 11 East 68^th Street on the northwest corner at Madison Avenue was erected in 1913 and designed by Herbert Lucas.

It is now known as The Marquand and was converted from a rental to 22 condominium apartments in 2013 by HFZ Capital, which was formed in 2005 and is also involved in the conversion of One Madison on West 23^rd Street.

It has escutcheons on its façade with the letter “M” that refer to the owner of the mansion designed by Richard Morris Hunt that used to occupy the site, Henry G. Marquand, who served as the second president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and gave it its finest painting by Vermeer.

Beyer Blinder Belle was the architect for the conversion and Shelton, Mindel & Associates was the interior designer.

Bottom Line

A spruced up, detailed, pre-war building with large apartments and an impressive side-street light-court entrance.

Description

The building is notable for its very deep light well/courtyard entrance on the side-street and for its many large bay windows that give several of its façades curves. It has a very handsome rusticated one-story lime-stone base and beige brick façades.

The 2013 conversion includes a make-over of its entrance with a few steps up at the building line, considerable landscaping, a ramp on its east side, and a glass entrance marquee.

The building has a balustrated bandcourse above the second floor, string courses above the third and fifth floors and a large cornice. It now has a paneled lobby and no protruding or discrete air-conditioners.

Amenities

The building has a doorman and a concierge, a fitness center, a kids’ lounge, a live-in superintendent and storage, but no garage and no roof deck.

Apartments

Apartment 4D is a three-bedroom unit with an 11-foot-wide entry foyer that leads to a 18-foot-long living room with a large bay window and fireplace, and a 19-foot-long kitchen.

Apartment 2A is a four-bedroom unit with an 18-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 24-foot-long living room with a fireplace and a 20-foot-long dining room with two large bay windows down a hall from the 18-foot-long kitchen.

Apartment 6C is a three-bedroom unit with a 15-foot-wide entry foyer that leads to a 21-foot-long living room with a large bay window and a fireplace, and a 19-foot-long dining room next to a 19-foot-long kitchen.

Apartment 10 East is a five-bedroom unit with a large living room with two large bay windows and a free-standing, double-sided fireplace.

History

According to a September 5, 2013 “Streetscapes” column by Christopher Gray in The New York Times, "Marquand House was one of the last apartment buildings on Madison Avenue to have a purely residential ground floor,” adding that stores “were cut into the ground floor in the 1920s.”

Marquand, Gray continued, “also commissioned two separate but related houses facing Madison Avenue, apparently for family members,” adding that “the entire assemblage had the scale of a French palace, albeit one with streetcar tracks in the front yard.”

Marquand’s mansion had decorations by John La Farge, Samuel Colman and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Mr. Gray said that the building originally had 20 servants’ rooms on the roof and “the original tenants were people like W. Albert Pease Jr., a founder of the real estate firm of Pease & Elliman.”  “In 1914,” Mr. Gray continued, “his wife, Martha, treated 100 guests to a costume supper, referred to by The New York Sun as a ‘bal poudre,’ at which the women wore powdered wigs. The New York Tribune described the doormen as ‘clad in yards of gold lace.’”

Mr. Gray’s December 4, 1994 “Streetscapes” column noted that Evelyn Longman, the sculptor of the great “Spirit of Communications” statue that once topped the A. T. & T. building at the foot of City Hall Park, then bedazzled the lobby of the A. T. & T. Building on Madison Avenue between 55^th and 56^th Streets until the company relocated to New Jersey, had a double-height studio in the Marquand.