The Morris B. Sanders House on E. 49th Street Is for Sale
A limestone fireplace, elegant wooden woodwork, cork floors and glass tiles were at the forefront in 1935.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
On East 49th Street, between the second and the third avenues, a bright red door at the street is set to an angle, as if it were caladed for a visitor. Above, the facade at 219 seems to float, alternating square terraces with transparent and glass windows in a wall of brick and dark blue glass tiles. It’s austere but colorful, a strange spectacle on a block known for the Tudor style apartment at 225the dark AMSTER YARD at 211And the Flemish and style houses in the path that once housed Stephen Sondheim and Katharine Hepburn. And it was perhaps an even stranger view in 1935, when the house was finished, becoming the first built from zero in New York with the modern and clean lines launched by Le Corbusier and modified by William Leszaze. 219 and the house in row of Lessaze – renovated in the same style a year earlier, A block to the south – has survived long enough to be individually entered, the first taking the name of his architect resident, the Morris B. Sanders Maison.
The red door and the facade above. The Moma curator, John Mcandrew, noted that the blue icy brick was a unique choice of colors at the time, and “adapted to the future atmosphere of the city”. From left to right: Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 propertyPhoto: Anton Brooks / H5 property
The red door and the facade above. The Moma curator, John Mcandrew, noted that the blue icy brick was a unique choice of colors at the time, and “Fatab …
The red door and the facade above. The Moma curator, John Mcandrew, noted that the blue icy brick was a unique choice of colors at the time, and “adapted to the future atmosphere of the city”. High: Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 propertyPhoto: Anton Brooks / H5 property
Rich independently and known by friends for “Strong and inflexible nature that would allow no compromise”, Sanders was born in the company. His father was in plumbing and his uncle studied architecture. Sanders went to Yale And found himself in Paris between the wars, where he could have reached Le Corbusier’s work. Back in New York with his license in hand, he overturned a 1869 house to build a six -story building and 6,900 square feet with its demanding specifications, filling it with personalized furniture and advanced technologies, including central air and withdrawal lighting. (General Electric gave him His own gratitude For the use of its tubular bulbs.) Built during the great depression, the house was a centerpiece for what Sanders could do and what modernism could be. In 1936, Architectural forum has published a brilliant ten -page spread that praised 219 to “mix any effort to preserve amenities” on a house pâté where “the contrast between the old and the new one could hardly be more extreme”. Even in the 1960s, the house stood out for its “revolutionary character”, according to criticism Ada Louise Huxable, who calls him a work to “protest routine ways of overworked period styles”. And on the current market, it’s always a show. “If you are looking for your town hall par excellence, that’s not all,” explains the broker Martin EidenWho represents the family who has lived and worked there for over 50 years, using the building as the Sanders family had – like a house, a rental and a business.
Price: $ 5.3 million ($ 4,747 in monthly taxes)
Specifications: Office on the ground floor, duplex (3 beds, 3 bathrooms), triplex (3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms)
Extras: Roofboard, two terraces, basement, original cabinets, lighting and interior details of Sanders
Listed by: Martin Eiden and Zoe Jackson, Compass
The distinctive red door opens onto an inclined corridor with an intercom that looks like a metallic world: a huge panel with three tiny buttons housed in a lower corner to the left, under an exposed bulb. A shallow staircase through a door with a circular window is the desk on the ground floor that Sanders has built to manage its practice. On the street side, the glass bricks let the light enter but filter chaos and noise – an innovation at the time. The office extends to 64 feet back, which removes the largest courtyard which was no longer necessary for the inhabitants of the modern city who did not do the laundry outside or keep the horses. The main stairs lead to a duplex designed as a rental, with a loggia on the 49th street and a light centerpiece: a curved staircase with a chrome handrail designed by Sanders, which also designed chrome tubular furniture. (“To his best in parts like these”, ” rented Architectural forum.))
A chrome ramp designed by Sanders. He organized the house with his conceptions of tubular chrome furniture, rented by Architectural forum In 1936 as “the best in rooms like these”.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
Above the rental duplex is the triplex of an owner with a “penthouse” style room on the top floor which leads to a private roof terrace. On one floor, a main suite has integrated with curved cabinets. On the fourth floor, there was an entry designed to impress visitors: its open plan extends from a dining room on the back with a image window framing the court amster, and a living room in front where a flat wood without incapacity frames a fireplace of ordinary limestone slabs. Personalized Sanders furniture for space have long disappeared. (Although you can always take a article here And there online.)
The main suite on the floor includes another simple fireplace framed by woodwork and tons of hidden storage, including cabinets and integrated around the window and on the side of the fireplace. Behind are three cupboards.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
Don and Taki Wise have raised their family and have run over the overlap at 219. Don, who Died in 2012was an artist, a curator and an Adman who founded a marketing company In 1952, which specialized in interior decoration, reptying Danish designer Georg Jensen. One of the donations business possessed the building by 1970, when He gave him the property personally. Taki, who sold now, had also worked in marketing as a fashion stylist, but she found a new niche when she opened a Soho gallery This has transformed the business of fashion photography into an art form for sale to collectors. When they didn’t need the duplex, they praised it. In 1983, when the New York Times decreeThe unit on the ground floor housed HEA productions, a company that provided Jingles for NBC (“Just Watch US Now”) and Hallmark advertisements (“Birthday”).
At ground level, the former office of Morris B. Sanders Jr. leads to a small patio. Don Wise then used the space as an office for its marketing agency.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
The old offices always have books and papers on the shelves and flat files, and Eiden has staged the owner’s triplex, but the naked bones of the house are the sale argument, showing how Sanders thought in space. The integrated cupboards bend right where a busy parent would like to slide them in front of them. The cupboards abound – with three in the primary suite alone. And there is a separate bathroom for each bedroom, where the sinks, the mirrors and the original white tiles are very 2025. The living room floors are a surprising spongy cap. And the glass bricks differ in size in different rooms, perhaps to correspond to “the scale of the parts they consider”, as the curator of Moma John Mcandre supported. There is a feeling that the house is the work of a perfectionist, someone who could not be satisfied with what was done. Describing his design philosophy, Sanders once said a teacher room“The materials and methods to be accomplished must be skillful to suit real end in sight.”
At the top of the stairs on the third floor, a door leads to the owner’s triplex. The storage was integrated into Sanders, which installed larger glass blocks on this floor on the side of the East 49th Street. A door on the left leads to a loggia.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
The main living room that goes back to Amster Yard. A curved cabinet off the staircase leads to the bedrooms, and a limestone fireplace (left) is framed by wooden woodwork.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
The floors are in cork. The layout of the open plan would not have been common at the time, and it allows light on both sides. A cabinet and a new staircase pole curve just where a busy parent could pass them in front of them.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
Above the main suite, a smaller room opens onto a private room that leads to the roof terrace.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
On six floors, the house has a view of the block.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
Other companies have rented the space below, including a music publisher.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
A company occupied a room that Sanders installed in the third floor rental unit.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
The window here echoes the bedroom window in the primary suite upstairs, with glass bricks framing the windows.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
A smaller room in the rental unit with a view of Amster Yard was transformed into an office.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
The back of the house looks at Amster Yard, a hidden but public park which is now linked to the Instituto Cervantes.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
AMSTER Yard shares a rear wall with 219 East 49th and its neighbors.
Photo: Anton Brooks / H5 property
