Take your Dumbo condos, your West Village co-ops or your Tribeca lofts. When it comes to the fashionable, Old New York of Hollywood fame, we’ll take Sutton Place. In fact, we’ll take this 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom penthouse atop the venerable limestone-based prewar stalwart at 444 East 57th Street. Designer Bill Blass owned this unit and welcomed Cary Grant, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor plus a steady stream of streamlined beauties who looked good in his runway clothes, like Jackie O.
Who wouldn’t want to hold a cocktail party on the massive 3,000-square-foot terrace that wraps around this apartment, which is on the market for $6.75 million?
The building itself is a landmark to entertainment notables like Bobby Short, the smooth singer who could be heard nightly at the Cafe Carlyle, as well as Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, who lived in a 13th-floor unit during their marriage. Later, Monroe kept another unit in the 45-unit building as she moved back to Los Angeles. It’s said that Monroe loved to walk her dog to the nearby park and look out at the East River — a scene made famous by Woody Allen in the movie “Manhattan.”
“She often took her Maltese terrier, Maf (short for Mafia Honey), for walks to the park on Sutton Place. They would sit on a bench and gaze at the East River, Maf recalls in his ghosted memoirs (“The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe,” by Andrew O’Hagan, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), and she would “stare into space and mention names,’ ” wrote The New York Times in a 2011 article that recounts Monroe’s history of New York City apartments.
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