740 Park

For 75 years, it's been Manhattan's richest apartment building, and one of the most lusted-after addresses in the world. One apartment had 37 rooms, 14 bathrooms, 43 closets, 11 working fireplaces, a private elevator, and his-and-hers saunas; another at one time had a live-in service staff of 16. To this day, it is steeped in the kind of luxury most of us could only imagine. The last great building to go up along New York's Gold Coast, construction on 740 Park finished in 1930. Once finished, 740 became a magnet for the richest, oldest families in the country. Nowadays, it is bursting with new money, people whose fortunes, though freshly-made, are large enough to buy their way in. At its core this book is a social history of the American rich, but it's also filled with meaty, startling, often tragic stories of the people who lived behind 740's walls.--From publisher description.