Candela's Post-War Buildings

My big book of Candela (Andrew Alpern's "The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and James Carpenter") lists only 2 post-war residential buildings (1 E 66th & 135 E 54th), and there are some handsome floor plans in 1 E 66th (separate service entrance, reasonable segregation of public and private space, etc.), but not so much at 135 E 54th (completed Dec 1950). I was thinking about this the other day when I saw the listings for 360 CPW, which rightly point out that it's a Candela building, but a look at the floorplans will tell you that about the only thing left of his work is the exterior, the steel frame, and the integrated church. The floorplans are definitely not Candela.

Interestingly, Alpern notes that "... Candela's name was barely mentioned in the advertisements of his time." So it's only been later that he's become a 'starchitect'.

Alright, I take a little of it back: at 360CPW, 10A is mostly the original A floorplan, combined with the original G unit (with some minor tweaks).

Candela did lots of buildings that're not Candela-ish. He had to make a living, so the developer's target market determined how good the plans were.

Interestingly, there was a building on UES that formerly marketed itself as Candela, that has just struck all references to Candela from their building description on SE.

It's also fascinating to see how Candela's reputation has changed over the years--and disappointing that he had to compromise his design/standards to be commercial.