From the author of House of Outrageous Fortune For seventyfive years its been Manhattans richest apartment building and one of the most lustedafter addresses in the world. One apartment had 37 rooms 14 bathrooms 43 closets 11 working fireplaces a private elevator and hisandhers saunas another at one time had a livein service staff of 16. To this day it is steeped in the purest luxury the kind most of us could only imagine until now. The last great building to go up along New Yorks Gold Coast construction on 740 Park finished in 1930. Since then 740 has been home to an everevolving cadre of our wealthiest and most powerful families some of Americas and the worlds oldest moneythe kind attached to names like Vanderbilt Rockefeller Bouvier Chrysler Niarchos Houghton and Harknessand some whose names evoke the excesses of todays monied elite Kravis Koch Bronfman Perelman Steinberg and Schwarzman. All along the building has housed titans of industry political power brokers international royalty fabulous scamartists and even the lowest scoundrels. The book begins with the tumultuous story of the buildings construction. Conceived in the bubbling financial artistic and social cauldron of 1920s Manhattan 740 Park rose to its dizzying heights as the stock market plunged in 1929the building was in dire financial straits before the first apartments were sold. The builders include the architectural genius Rosario Candela the scheming businessman James T. Lee Jacqueline Kennedy Onassiss grandfather and a raft of financiers many of whom were little more than whitecollar crooks and grandscale hustlers. Once finished 740 became a magnet for the richest oldest families in the country the Brewsters descendents of the leader of the Plymouth Colony the sociallyregistered Bordens Hoppins Scovilles Thornes and Schermerhorns and top executives of the Chase Bank American Express and U.S. Rubber. Outside the walls of 740 Park these were the people shaping America culturally and economically. W