Author Archives: Michael Gross

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Gibney’s 740 Park documentary in eye of PBS storm

Posted on by Michael Gross

Alex Gibney‘s documentary Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, based on my book 740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building, aired worldwide last fall and is currently available for sale or rental in the iTunes store and on Hulu (as well as free online in the truncated-for-broadcast PBS version via Youtube). This week’s issue of The New Yorker is led by a story about Gibney’s film, detailing the pressure put on WNET, New York’s public television station, for broadcasting it. Though this is hardly the first time a wealthy subject has pushed back against revealing … Continue reading

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Twelfth Avenue flip-out

Posted on by Michael Gross

Michael Holtz (at right), the founder of the Smartflyer travel agency, owns four apartments in a West Side Highway condo, a fraction of the eleven he’s bought and sold in the last fifteen years (including one at Fifteen Central Park West and another in the boombastic One57). He’s the subject of my latest “On the Flip Side” column in Alexa Luxe Living in the New York Post.

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How do you really feel, Gwyneth?

Posted on by Michael Gross

Did someone say, how was your weekend? Well, busy. First we were unwillingly evacuated from our home. So I didn’t have time to post about NASCAR champ Jeff Gordon listing his apartment at 15 Central Park West, subject of my just-completed next book, or about France selling the home of its UN ambassador at 740 Park, subject of an earlier real estate opus. Then, Le Monde published a story on the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute and its ball quoting my Rogues’ Gallery, and Gwyneth Paltrow, one of the select invited guests, opined that, “It sucked.” And finally, my exile on … Continue reading

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In the shadow of Ext-hell’s One57

Posted on by Michael Gross

Wealth and powerlessness (the latter, mine) are the subject of an opinion piece, “In Manhattan Real Estate, Wealth and Power Are Relative,” that marks my return to the (online) pages of the New York Times.

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A Spring Awakening of True Love on West End Avenue

Posted on by Michael Gross

Spring Awakening producer Tracy Aron‘s Clarence True-designed mansion on West End Avenue is the focus of my latest Unreal Estate column in Avenue Magazine, in better building lobbies now. You can also read it here. Listing is on the Corcoran web site.

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Mo’ money, mo’ problems for Metropolitan Museum

Posted on by Michael Gross

In a followup to its revelation yesterday that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has charged admission for forty-plus years in violation of its lease, reporters Isabel Vincent and Melissa Klein offer up Art of the $teal , a Sunday feature stuffed with more examples of the museum administration’s contempt for the public that owns its buildings, the land they sit on, and the art within. Gripepad supports the Met’s desire to collect admission, but finds its devotion to the public, to its own history and to the truth, in the words of its chief dissembler, a matter of interpretation.

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Artful dodging at the Metropolitan Museum

Posted on by Michael Gross

The New York Post filed a Freedom of Information Act request to gain access to the long-hidden agreement that–Metropolitan Museum of Art officials have always alleged, most recently in statement by museum director Thomas Campbell–gave them the right to charge admission. But reporter Julia Marsh‘s story today reveals that no such agreement exists. The link above does not include the response to the Post’s charges from Museum spokesman Harold Holzer that appears in the iPad version of the paper today. He calls the report “a matter of interpertation.” This from the same flack who called Rogues’ Gallery “highly misleading,” yet … Continue reading

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Mi Coachella: Sex dolls, French food and mud baths

Posted on by Michael Gross

I ran away to the circus two weekends back, or rather to Palm Springs and vicinity, where the Coachella circus had pitched its tents. My report on what I found is in tomorrow’s New York Post travel section. That’s Hope Springs, a lovely Desert Hot Springs resort, at right.

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The Schwarzman Challenge

Posted on by Michael Gross

In the last pages of 740 Park, written nine years ago, I challenged Stephen Schwarzman to live up to the standard set by John D. Rockefeller Jr., who’d once owned the private-equity chief’s apartment in that fabled building, and add significant philanthropy to his resume. It took a few years, but Schwarzman did take up that challenge, as has been noted in this space. Today’s New York Times finds the Blackstone boss in China, giving away money for good again, donating a third of the cost of a new $300 million scholarship program for study in China, and helping raise … Continue reading

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Park Avenue on iTunes

Posted on by Michael Gross

Alex Gibney‘s documentary Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, based on my book 740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building, is now available for sale or rental in the iTunes store. UPDATE: This week’s issue of the New Yorker is led by a story about Gibney’s film, detailing the pressure put on WNET, New York’s public broadcasting station, for broadcasting it.

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Applauding Lauder’s words as well as his deed

Posted on by Michael Gross

Leonard Lauder‘s magnificent gift of a collection of Cubist masterpieces to the Metropolitan Museum of Art got front page treatment in the Times this morning. But the most interesting tid-bit was contained in the New York Post’s piece on the donation (which includes the Picasso at right). It quotes Lauder saying “This is a gift to the people who live and work in New York and those from around the world who come to visit our great art institutions.” That recognition–that the museum’s art is held in trust for the people of New York–is far too often forgotten or ignored … Continue reading

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Out of the closet: 15CPW book title

Posted on by Michael Gross

The Times’ Real Estate section on Sunday will include a story on New York’s growing obsession with closets by Elissa Gootman. It seems I let slip the title of my new book, just completed, on Fifteen Central Park West. It’s…here.

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Eye on LA on Unreal Estate

Posted on by Michael Gross

Good things are worth waiting for. Back in November 2011, when Unreal Estate was launched with a gala party at the Greystone Mansion in Beverly Hills, KABC’s “Eye on LA” filmed a piece on the book that finally aired–sixteen months later. Watch it here.

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Isn’t it Majestic?

Posted on by Michael Gross

What do Ian Schrager, Gary Gensler and Susan Soros have in common? The apartment at the Majestic on Central Park West that I peek into in this month’s Unreal Estate column in Avenue Magazine. I lived in the building once, too, for a couple of weeks, and majestic is a pretty good word for it.

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Flashback: H. L. Mencken on America’s (God-awful) Aristocracy

Posted on by Michael Gross

In The Yale Review in 1920, Baltimore’s H.L. Mencken (at right) took on the notion of an American aristocracy, the utter failure of the plutocratic class to live up to any aristocratic ideal, and the role of the press in propping up the plutocracy. This passage is long, but well worth revisiting, as ninety-three years later, it’s both funny and frightening how much it still applies. “The most salient characteristic of [a genuine aristocracy],” Mencken wrote, “is its interior security, and the chief visible evidence of that security is the freedom that goes with it–not only freedom in act, the … Continue reading

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Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown

Posted on by Michael Gross

Extell’s West 57th Street condo-hotel One57, home of Hurricane Sandy’s dangling boom of doom, has been an (un-)favorite of Gripepad’s since its damn-the-context design was first revealed. The Towering Infernal was in the news again yesterday, when London’s Telegraph revealed that the latest Chinese buyer in the building had gone into contract on a $6.5 million unit for a two-year old in anticipation of the child’s enrollment in college sixteen or so years from now. As I noted in Newsweek earlier this year, realty insiders have already nicknamed the building Chinatown. But with China’s new leadership cracking down on the … Continue reading

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Met Museum flak calls critics a “nuisance,” AP listens anyway

Posted on by Michael Gross

Institutions are run by individuals who sometimes fail to live up to what’s best about them. In an AP story making the rounds today about the latest class-action lawsuit accusing the leaders of the august Metropolitan Museum of Art of cowing and gouging visitors and violating the terms of its lease, MMA spokesman Harold Holzer (referred to as the Met’s Minister of Propaganda by one rogue curator) shows its administration’s thin skin when faced with insufficient reverence, calling the suit an “insupportable nuisance.” History repeats itself. Holzer criticized Rogues’ Gallery, too, calling it “highly misleading,” but failed to point out … Continue reading

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Down memory lane to Miller Huggins Field

Posted on by Michael Gross

I’m all ears in the photo accompanying my sister Jane’s article in tomorrow’s NY Times sports section on our father Milton Gross and our years skipping school to accompany him to spring training in St. Petersburg. But just to be clear, with all due respect to the late Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals (with whom we’re pictured), I was (and remain) a Yankees fan. And yes, that me and the Mick, but the rookie Mel Stottlemeyer was pitching batting practice that day, so he wouldn’t let me into the cage.

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Flying Zweig at $120 Million?

Posted on by Michael Gross

Super stock picker Martin Zweig’s last interview before his death in February appeared in my Avenue Unreal Estate column in June 2012 about three ballrooms-turned-penthouses on the southern rim of Central Park. Today, Jennifer Gould Keil at the Post reports a rumor that his widow Barbara Zweig is about to list his Pierre Hotel penthouse for $120 million, which would be a record-setting price. When he bought it for $20 million in 1999, he told me, “I thought it was under-priced.” Let’s see how high the market will fly now.

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Bowie’s Back

Posted on by Michael Gross

David Bowie’s return this week reminded me of the last lines of a profile I wrote long ago of his friend and collaborator Brian Eno, and a comment Eno made on his work with Bowie on the albums Low and Heroes. It’s applicable to just about any creative endeavor. “We’d go to the studio, work for hours on end, and then come back and find ourselves sitting in the kitchen at 6:00 AM too tired to make anything to eat,” Eno said. “What Bowie would do was tie a napkin ’round his throat and break a couple raw eggs into … Continue reading

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Spring Cleaning: Archive Update

Posted on by Michael Gross

I’ve at last updated the Selected Articles archive, and added stories written since late 2011 for Newsweek, Departures, The Daily Beast and Travel & Leisure and columns for the New York Post’s Alexa Luxe Living, Avenue and Crain’s New York Business.

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Betsey Pickering Kaiser, RIP

Posted on by Michael Gross

New York Social Diary report that Betsey Pickering Kaiser, a friend and subject (she was one of the most compelling of the models in my book Model) has died after a long decline. I saw her last at a dinner given for her and me at Lost Tree in Florida at the home of Alexander and Robbin Gaudieri. Discovered at Sarah Lawrence in 1953, Betsey modeled even though her parents disapproved. “It was not considered the most reputable profession,” she told me. Those were the days!

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Courting Chaos: At home(s) with Bob and Cortney Novogratz

Posted on by Michael Gross

Reality TV stars Bob and Cortney Novogratz are the subject of my second On the Flip Side column for the New York Post’s Alexa Luxe Living. Thrill! as they move from Deliverance country. Chill! as they renovate their first home. And then watch with envy as they flip their way to riches and fame.

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Everything old is new again: Lerman’s unreal estate at the Osborne

Posted on by Michael Gross

The late Leo Lerman’s apartment at the Osborne is for sale for $4.5 million, proving there’s a place on Manhattan’s glittery new Billionaire’s Belt for historic apartment houses, and apartments there that the rest of us can afford, too. My new Unreal Estate column in Avenue looks at the 127-year old landmark on West 57th Street and lots of the people who’ve lived there.

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Bruce Weber: The Back Story

Posted on by Michael Gross

The arrival of Vanity Fair’s new Hollywood issue, with its photo portfolio by the great Bruce Weber, reminded me of my June 1986 debut in Vanity Fair–a story never before available on this web site. Originally commissioned by the New York Times Magazine, it was rejected due, I think, to the newspaper’s then-notorious homophobia (after, I should add, an editor there demanded to know why I hadn’t asked Weber if he was gay). “They’ll never publish it,” VF’s then-editor Tina Brown predicted, “but I will.” And she did, in June 1986. You can read it here (pdf alert: give it … Continue reading

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Jerry Buss, RIP

Posted on by Michael Gross

Jerry Buss, the owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, who died this morning Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 80, plays only a cameo role in Unreal Estate: Money, Ambition and the Lust for Land in Los Angeles, but it’s a fun one. Buss bought Pickfair, the 42-room Beverly Hills estate built by Douglas Fairbanks for his lover actress Mary Pickford (at right) from the latter’s estate in 1979 for $5.3 million and sold it to actress Pia Zadora and her husband Meshulam Riklis for $6.7 million in 1988. Now in other hands, the house has been so … Continue reading

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A Valentine for Unreal Estate

Posted on by Michael Gross

Realestalker, the much-read luxury realty blog, sent a heart to Unreal Estate today, calling it “exhaustively researched…and deliciously dishy” in a post that retails the rumor that one of the great estates featured in the book, Casa Encantada in Bel Air, once the home of Conrad Hilton and David Murdock, can be yours if you shovel $225 million in the direction of its current owner, Global Crossing founder Gary Winnick. HBO’s planned Unreal Estate series is currently in development. Watch this space for more news on that front as soon as Gripepad is allowed to share it.

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Attention Trophy Apartment Buyers!

Posted on by Michael Gross

The new listing of a tower duplex at River House for $25.5 million by Brown Harris Stevens this week might seem to have been inspired by my Unreal Estate column on the building in this month’s Avenue Magazine, but in truth, it’s come on the market because its owner, Betty Evans, just died. Hers happens to be the only River House apartment I ever visited. She was a niece of Julia Loomis Thorne who, with her husband Landon, were two of the most fascinating characters ever to inhabit 740 Park, the subject of my 2005 book. Evans was one of … Continue reading

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River House Revolution: Take that, Dr. Kissinger!

Posted on by Michael Gross

“Henry’s Hideaway” is the provocative title of my latest Unreal Estate column for Avenue, on the famously secretive River House cooperative on 52nd Street at the East River. Yes, it’s the home of stuffed shirts like Henry Kissinger, but some of what you know about it is wrong, and as the column reveals, a lot has just changed there. Among other things, it may now be the best bargain in New York for trophy apartment-seekers. UPDATE: Max Gross at the New York Post picked up my River House reveal yesterday.

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Ed Koch, RIP

Posted on by Michael Gross

Ed Koch, New York’s most colorful modern mayor, died this morning. My favorite memory of him is our interview for Rogues’ Gallery, the story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Koch had long disdained the place as a clubhouse for its wealthy and arrogant patrons and greatly enjoyed winning several battles against the museum’s board. Aside from the wealthy and the socially prominent, The Met had a history of putting powerful people on its board, sometimes to seduce and neuter them (newspaper publishers, for instance), sometimes to use them. Henry Kissinger‘s diplomatic contacts made him a natural choice for a … Continue reading

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Whale Watching

Posted on by Michael Gross

Students and fellow realty obsessives, Curbed LA gives a history lesson on the first realty whales to hit Los Angeles this week and Unreal Estate is one of the assigned texts.

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Bonfire of the Verities: LIBOR’s Bob Diamond’s hideout revealed and other tales of unreal realty

Posted on by Michael Gross

Where’s Barclay’s banker-in-chief Robert “Bob” Diamond been since leaving Barclays in disgrace amidst a rate-fixing scandal last summer? Licking his wounds (and counting his millions) right in our midst in a modest $37 million penthouse at Fifteen Central Park West. Read that and other tales of high-end apartment insanity in Manhattan–and of the people who spend eight figures on it without blinking–in “Bonfire of the Verities,” my update of Tom Wolfe’s 1985 discussion of “the Good Buildings” in the new issue of the digital only Newsweek via The Daily Beast. 740 Park was one of the good buildings. These are … Continue reading

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Uncommon Coinage: The Billionaires’ Belt

Posted on by Michael Gross

A while back, while guest-editing Curbed New York, I tried to give a nickname to the midtown neighborhood I’d moved to, and earned a flaming from the site’s ardent comment trolls. Today, in the New York Observer, Matt Chaban gives me a second chance, letting me dub 57th Street The Billionaire’s Belt, in a story about the rennaissance of residential life on the broad boulevard that uses the phrase in its headline. I’d still rope surrounding streets into the corral with the glossy new kids on these blocks (Roman and Williams’ exquisite 120 West 57th, which is at right, Extell’s … Continue reading

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Beachy Keen in Palm Beach

Posted on by Michael Gross

Maurice Fatio was one of the architects who defined the luxe eclectic look of Palm Beach. In the January issue of Avenue, my latest Unreal Estate column looks at the home he built for his future mother-in-law, a thoroughly unconventional Tudor-by-the-shore on Lake Worth. Is it worth its asking price of $24.9 million? Only the market will answer that question

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Trophy Buildings Then and Now

Posted on by Michael Gross

To each his own. Trophy building, that is. The Real Deal’s Jane Timm and Candace Taylor look at several of the city’s finest residences, then, now and, it predicts, in days to come, in this story on what it calls It Buildings. Two are the subjects of books by this blogger: Then, it was 740 Park. Now, I’m finishing my book on 15 Central Park West. One quoted broker says “she’s shown apartments at [the as yet unfinished] One57 to 15 CPW owners, some of whom are looking to sell before the older building loses its cachet,” the paper reports. … Continue reading

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#printnotdead…yet

Posted on by Michael Gross

Do you have to be Belgian to still love print? Happy holidays from one still proudly ink-stained wretch.

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“A romping account…hidden and hushed up stories of alluring lives…” –HUSK Magazine

Posted on by Michael Gross

The new issue of the bi-annual fashion magazine Husk has an interview with me by Eugenia Lapteva and a lengthy and irreverent guide to the residents of 740 Park (and some gate-crashers, too). I told Husk that 15 Central Park West is the new black, but apparently they still hanker for old school East Side co-ops. That’s alright. I still like my Turnbull & Asser blazer as much as I do the Rick Owens jacket I wear in the photo by Hadley Hudson that accompanies the piece. To read it in pdf form (be warned, it’s a big download) click … Continue reading

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Diplomatic Wintour

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Anna Wintour a diplomat? That’s the subject of Jane Ridley‘s feature in today’s New York Post, in which I’m quoted recalling my favorite tale of Wintour’s wrath–the night the Rogues’ Gallery cover girl gave the deep freeze treatment to Giorgio Armani.

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Who’s On Top? Big Deals in Unreal Estate

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Sandy Weill takes the cake, but he’s hardly along in cashing in on do-ops, condos and townhouses this year. The baker’s dozen biggest deals in residential real estate in New York City are the subject of my Unreal Estate column in the new December issue of Avenue magazine. And yes, 740 Park makes the list along with 15 Central Park West. (It’s a few pages–five clicks–into the “most talked about” feature.)

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Saul Steinberg, R.I.P.

Posted on by Michael Gross

Saul P. Steinberg, the financier, died yesterday at age 73. Though he declined to be interviewed for 740 Park, he nonetheless emerged as the book’s leading character, appearing in its opening pages and later, at the center of some of its most raucous moments. Felled by a stroke in 1995, he lost his business and sold his massive duplex apartment, one of if not the grandest in the city, to Steven Schwarzman for a then record-setting $29.9 million in 2000, and left the public stage he had occupied since the 1960s. He is survived by his second and third wives … Continue reading

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Gibney’s Demagaguery??

Posted on by Michael Gross

“None of those Park Avenue billionaires will sleep any less soundly after watching this film,” says the Telegraph’s Neil Midgley after viewing Alex Gibney‘s Park Avenue, based on my book 740 Park, which debuted on England’s BBC4 the other night. The reviewer went on to condemn the documentary as “a pretty thin retread of some already well-vented resentments in US politics.” The Independent disagreed, hailing Gibney’s conclusion that, “The US, built on the promise that anyone can drag themselves out of poverty if they work hard enough, actually has lower social mobility than most other comparable democracies.” Gripepad reports. You … Continue reading

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“How the wealthiest have rigged the game.” –the NY Observer

Posted on by Michael Gross

Good things are worth waiting for, like this review of Alex Gibney‘s Park Avenue by Kim Velsey of the New York Observer. “The documentary unfurls like a crime story,” she writes, “with a raft of damning evidence revealing the shameful acts committed by the masters of the universe in service of accumulating even vaster fortunes than they already have….[Gibney] makes a compelling case that inequality imperils democracy and that the victims of the inequality include not only those who find themselves in the rapidly expanding underclass, but the American dream itself.”

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740 Park is back in stock at Amazon

Posted on by Michael Gross

Alex Gibney‘s Park Avenue cleaned Amazon out of copies of 740 Park, but it’s now back in stock and available for purchase again. Happy Black Friday!

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I know 740 Park, and 666 is no 740

Posted on by Michael Gross

I never watched ABC’s supernatural soap opera 666 Park, and now it’s been cancelled, which makes me think I made the right choice. It was “shameless when it came to the inaccurate portrayal of Manhattan real estate,” Kim Velsey writes in her analysis of its failure in the New York Observer. But the real reason it’s died, she thinks, was “the erratic plot, the wooden acting, the lack of any sympathetic characters and for those who care about these kinds of things, the incoherence of the ‘evil’ plaguing the building.” So I wonder, if someone accurately dramatized the story 740 … Continue reading

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740 Park is now Alex Gibney’s Park Avenue: Watch it here

Posted on by Michael Gross

For those who missed it last week on PBS, Alex Gibney‘s documentary inspired by 740 Park is available for viewing online. You can watch it here.

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Curious Cavallo

Posted on by Michael Gross

I wrote a story about a semi-secret island called Cavallo that appeared in Departures last month. It’s now on the web. Once a jet-set scene promoted by Jean Castel, the late Parisian club-owner, then a transshipment point for cocaine and the site of a notorious killing and other nefarious doings, it is now one of the most particular and splendid Mediterranean resorts I’ve ever encountered. That’s it, right over there. Not bad, huh?

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Metropolitan Museum sued for fraud. It’s the signage, stupid.

Posted on by Michael Gross

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, subject of my book Rogues’ Gallery, has been sued for defrauding the public ever since the 1970s when it first introduced its Pay What You Wish But You Must Pay Something admission policy in contravention of its lease for its buildings and land, which are publicy-owned (as is its art, which is held in trust for the public). A press conference on the lawsuit is scheduled for this afternoon, but today’s New York Post already has the story and a response from the museum’s flack, who describes the suit as frivolous, ludicrous and outrageous, pointing … Continue reading

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NY Times on Gibney’s ‘Park Avenue’: “Particularly damning.”

Posted on by Michael Gross

Neil Genzlinger reviews Oscar-winner Alex Gibney‘s “Park Avenue” in today’s New York Times. The documentary based on 740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building airs tonight at 10 PM on PBS in America. Check local listings for air times elsewhere in the world.

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Reminder: Gibney’s Park Avenue Airs Monday

Posted on by Michael Gross

Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, Alex Gibney‘s documentary inspired by 740 Park: The Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building, airs Monday night at 10 PM on PBS. Bloomberg BusinessWeek calls it “Trenchant, dishy,” and says it bristles with “savage indignation.” In the wake of this week’s election and the coming debate over the fast-approaching fiscal cliff, it’s must viewing if you haven’t already seen it on Hulu.

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Haute Fashion Houses

Posted on by Michael Gross

The former homes of both Halston and Richard Avedon are currently on the market and they’re the subject of my latest Unreal Estate column in the November issue of Avenue Magazine. That’s Paul Rudolph‘s floating staircase in the Halston house at right, lined with former owner Gunther Sachs‘ photo of Claudia Schiffer‘s luscious lips.

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