A 1927 Sutton Place Penthouse With an Enormous Wraparound Terrace

In the 1970s, Sutton Place was the epicenter of posh. There were Vanderbilts and “Swans,” actresses and architects, apartments on the side streets filled with designers and executives who wanted to stay close to wealthy clients. When Michael Wynn, the president of a men’s fashion house, rented a place on East 55th Street with a terrace, his fiancée, Alicia Sandra Fox, couldn’t help fantasizing as she looked out at the buildings around her. Maybe after the wedding, they could move into a penthouse. She was ambitious by nature, a television executive at ABC who was one of the first women to sell advertising for the network, but she was also a realist, and the top floor of a townhouse seemed like their best option — until a broker called with promises of a penthouse nearby on 57th Street. The next morning, in January 1978, they walked into a 16th-floor unit wrapped on three sides by a 160-foot-long terrace. The apartment came with an artistic pedigree, social cache, and reams of style, and on that day, the couple didn’t hesitate; they wrote the check for Penthouse C.

The living room has 12-foot ceilings, built-in bookshelves, and a wood-burning fireplace. The painting in the alcove is by Eric Isenburger, a German artist.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The rental had been home to Sidmore Parnes, a music publisher who edited trade magazines Cash Box and Record World with offices on West 57th Street, a quick cab ride away. He had a taste for European opulence: His living room was embellished with gold leaf and centered on a grand piano. Even the smaller bedroom was walled in fabric, which matched the upholstery on a daybed — the “richly appointed” style typical of a manager who would “rather put another expensive painting on his wall than hire another writer,” according to the memoir of one of Parnes’s staffers.

He had followed a friend in the industry, Al Nevins, to the unit. Nevins, a hitmaking composer turned music publisher who later sold a record company to Columbia, was single, child-free, and an avid host. In the 1950s, he spent his money turning the 16th-floor apartment into an after-party destination where he could entertain the likes of Carole King, Paul Simon, Phil Spector, and Bobby Darin after award shows and New Year’s Eve dinners. During the Nevins era, the penthouse looked like it was “straight out of the movies,” according to a biography of his business partner, which described rooms where all the walls and ceilings were painted black and decorated with black lacquer furniture and screens embellished with chinoiserie — a cross between an Orientalist opium den and villain’s lair. On the terrace, Nevins had installed a koi pond, a pagoda, and a bar. When Parnes moved in, along with adding all the gold leaf, he brightened up the place with beds of perennials, 40 trees, and 24 statues of cherubs: a professionally landscaped “secret garden” that made the pages of the Times and New York.

The Parnes terrace (right) was part of a New York Magazine spread on secret gardens across the city.
Photo: Norman McGrath

The terrace is 1,800 square feet and once held a koi pond, a pagoda, and a bar.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The building itself had a own distinguished pedigree, designed in 1927 by George and Edward Blum. The brothers, from a French Jewish family, were rediscovered in the 1990s as “one of the city’s great nonconformist architectural firms,” according to Christopher Gray. Not one of their 120 apartment buildings in Manhattan is a simple red brick or gray limestone. Some have Art Deco tiles; others are as richly patterned as mosques. Take 419, which is one of two made of nubby clinker brick, a medieval look that matches the Gothic arches over the main entrance and the door to a maisonette. On top, there’s a water tower dressed up to look like a 14th-century church tower, which peers over two matching penthouses.

The 1927 building is by George and Edward Blum, who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and refused to build cookie-cutter apartment towers.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The building at 419 East 57th has a façade of rough clinker brick, a material that was once considered defective, then celebrated in the 20th century for its hand-built quality. The Gothic arch over the entrance and other details mimic church architecture.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The Wynns moved into Penthouse C in 1978 and bought their apartment in 1986 when the building became a co-op. They redid it, of course; for the fashion crowd in the early 1980s, the Parnes style was a bit “too much gold,” said Alicia Fox Wynn. The couple chose a palette of muted grays and upholstered the sofas in gray tweeds, a nod to Michael’s career in menswear. New closets in the primary bedroom were a requirement for his extensive collection of suits. They paneled the closet doors with mirrors, then added mirrors to the walls of the foyer — the unit’s darkest room — where Alicia decorated with one of Parnes’s planters. Over the years, they added zones of color: a teal dining room, a raspberry den. The apartment gradually filled with antiques that the two inherited from family and art that Alicia started buying from friends, including drawings and oils sold by their next-door neighbor, Frederick Mont, once known as Adolf F. Mondschein, an art dealer so famed in his day that his move into the penthouse across the hall made the Times in 1942.

The den displays Michael Wynn’s collection of boxing memorabilia and some of the art that Alicia Fox Wynn collected.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The formal dining room allowed Alicia to hold large dinner parties where she could host the ad men who were her clients. It was a strategy that ended up relieving some of the awkwardness at work, where the other executives flinched to see a woman in her role. By inviting them to her home, she could include their wives and “break the ice,” she said. For simpler dinners, the couple put a grill on the terrace just outside the kitchen. But the terrace also played a more essential function, the reason why Alicia had dreamed of having a big one when she first gazed over Sutton Place from Michael’s rental: the clean, safe outdoor space allowed her to have dogs. “I raised nine Cavalier King Charles spaniels there,” she said. “The terrace had a drain on each end so they knew where to go.” When the last Cavalier died in the 1990s, she adopted a greyhound and found herself in a network of other greyhound owners, who she would invite over, along with their dogs. “We had a greyhound race on it one day, but it’s not dirt. They didn’t do well on tile.”

The foyer is one of the only spaces without windows onto the terrace, and the Wynns brightened it with mirrors that reflect the living room through the doorway. The planter and cherub (right) came from Parnes’s terrace.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The living room leads into a second bedroom, painted red and used as a cozy den by the Wynns.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

Through the bookcases is a dining room that the Wynns painted teal.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The dining room, kitchen, and den all have doors out to the terrace.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

Through the dining room is the kitchen.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

An area for plein air dining, off the formal dining room.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

A pair of dog portraits over the sideboard is by a painter friend, who was given free license to improve a pair of stuffy portraits that Alicia got tired of.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The Wynns lived in the apartment for years before Alicia leaned on a panel in the kitchen and it popped open, revealing a hidden bar cabinet — perhaps one of Parnes’s improvements.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The Wynns weren’t much for cooking and liked to host dinner parties where friends came and made a favorite recipe, then added it to a cookbook of dishes by those they loved.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

The Wynns kept some of Parnes’s sculptures but got rid of heavy planters and 16-foot trees, whose weight was taxing the 1927 building.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

Photo: Max Vasiluk

The primary bedroom, where the Wynns added an eclectic collection of mirrors to brighten the space. Across from the bed is the row of closets built to house Michael’s suits.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

A door leads from the primary to the terrace.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

A renovated bath off the primary bedroom.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

A powder room for guests behind the kitchen.
Photo: Max Vasiluk

Some of Parnes’s sculptures are still on the terrace, and a buyer can make an offer to keep them in place.
Photo: Max Vasiluk