If You're Thinking of Living On/Park Avenue; Expansive Spaces, Expensive Prices

UNTIL 1875, when it was still called Fourth Avenue north of Grand Central Terminal, Park Avenue held railroad tracks. But over the next three decades, the tracks were covered, the avenue was renamed and the soot-spewing steam railroad was electrified.

Starting in 1908, the modest apartment buildings that lined the tracks were replaced by luxury apartment houses. The tony atmosphere of Fifth Avenue spread east, and Park Avenue became the city's grand boulevard, with monolithic buildings dwarfing its landscaped malls.

Park Avenue has some of the city's most expensive real estate, though prices are still a tad lower than those on the parallel residential promenade, Fifth Avenue, which has the advantage of facing Central Park.

Residential Park Avenue starts at 59th Street, though a handful of residential buildings mix with the office towers of the 50's. The 1920's-type buildings end at 96th Street. Within one block, which runs steeply downhill, the Metro-North tracks emerge. With a few exceptions -- some churches, town houses, institutions and modern towers -- Park Avenue contains block after block of prewar co-ops, roughly 12 to 16 stories high.

The apartments are characterized by space -- enormous rooms and plenty of them. Studios and one-bedrooms do exist, but most apartments are two-bedrooms and up.

''Some people can't find the size apartment they want anywhere else,'' said Deanna Kory, senior vice president at the Halstead Property Company. Sixteen-room apartments, with four maids' rooms, are not uncommon. Nor are 15 by 25 foot bedrooms, within apartments of 8,000 to 10,000 square feet. ''Many town houses are not as big as that,'' Ms. Kory said.

Noteworthy buildings include 1185 Park Avenue, which surrounds a formal drive-in courtyard and occupies the entire blockfront from 93rd to 94th Streets, and 1088 Park Avenue at 89th Street, whose courtyard has a fountain.

''Some people move to Park Avenue for the protection of value they believe it affords,'' Ms. Kory said. ''Though it is a less expensive alternative to Fifth Avenue, it is still on the same prestige plane.''

Park Avenue has no buses, so it is quieter than many other avenues. There is almost no commerce, either, except for scattered cleaners, florists and salons. Gorgeous Market, an upscale deli once opposed by neighborhood residents, is at 75th Street. Ground floors are often occupied by doctors' offices. For shopping, people head east, toward Lexington Avenue.

Park Avenue's character changes along its length. The 60's, near the bustle of Midtown, include ''some wonderful buildings that have one or two apartments per floor, though some have been cut up over the years,'' Ms. Kory said.

TWO condominiums -- a new tower at 515 Park Avenue, at 60th Street, and a recently renovated building at 610 Park Avenue, at 65th Street, the former Mayfair Hotel -- ''have attracted some investors and foreign purchasers who can't otherwise get into Park Avenue buildings because they don't have substantial assets in this country,'' she said. ''The buildings sold out in record time.''

The 70's are ''prime Park Avenue, more residential in feeling,'' Ms. Kory said. In the 80's, where Park Avenue runs through Carnegie Hill, it becomes yet ''more family oriented and down to earth, with a lot of private schools in the area.'' It is close to the city's major museums, too.

''It costs a lot to live here,'' said Ann Cutbill Lenane, senior vice president at Douglas Elliman. ''Co-op boards tend to be restrictive on anything west of Lexington. You have to put down at least 50 percent cash.''

On Park Avenue, a typical Classic Six apartment with two bedrooms and a maid's room starts at around $1.5 million. A Classic Eight, with three bedrooms and two maids' rooms, is typically $3.5 million. Even one in ''estate condition'' is more than $2.5 million, she said -- ''that would be in decent shape but facing a brick wall.''

Monthly maintenance charges are steep because ''the buildings are highly serviced,'' she added. ''The doormen wear nice uniforms, and in a lot of cases there is an elevator man as well.''

Even for apartments of similar sizes, the price range is vast, said Maria Theodore, a broker at Brown Harris Stevens. A three-bedroom, nine-room apartment could sell for $4.5 million -- or for $15 million.

Turnover on Park Avenue tends to be low -- and ''apartments sell immediately if they are spacious and sunny,'' she said. ''The ones with outdoor terraces are very much in demand.''

Some buildings include gyms or playrooms -- and people especially like having a maid's room they can turn into an office or laundry room, Ms. Theodore said. ''The huge 12-room apartments -- people want those desperately and they sell very quickly, even above $10 million.''

The institutions that interrupt what is sometimes considered an unvarying streetscape include several churches and schools, the Asia Society, Lenox Hill Hospital and a consulate or two.

The impressive though dilapidated red-brick fortress of the Seventh Regiment Armory, once owned by a city militia, covers the 66th to 67th Street block. The state is entertaining proposals from outside groups to rehabilitate and restore the turreted building, which is currently an exhibition site for occasional antique and craft shows as well as a shelter for homeless women.

Just north of the Armory is Hunter College, a 20,000-student branch of the City University of New York. Its four buildings extend east to Lexington Avenue.

Hunter's central location is ''a major advantage,'' said a school spokeswoman, Maria Terrone. Its slogan even calls it ''the greatest source of wealth on Park Avenue.'' Hunter, which opened in 1870 as a teacher-training school called the Normal College of the City of New York, was renamed in 1914 for its founder, Thomas Hunter. The main building burned down and was replaced by the current North Building on Park Avenue in 1940.

Farther uptown, in a hulking brick building at Park and 94th Street, Hunter runs the Hunter College Elementary and High Schools.

By far the avenue's most singular feature is its landscaped median, decorated with bright flowers in the spring and summer, and white lights for the holidays. These leafy malls are maintained by the Fund for Park Avenue, with contributions coming primarily from the buildings lining the avenue.

''You walk out of your door, and that's the first thing you see -- the trees and tulips and begonias and holiday lights,'' said Ronnie Horowitz, whose family lives at Park and 94th Street. ''It's all very festive.''

But the wide malls do make it tough to cross the street, said Dr. Horowitz, a neurologist at Mount Sinai Hospital, who has two children: Paul, 9, and Pamela, 17.

''Crossing Park Avenue makes me nervous,'' said Dr. Horowitz, who walks Paul to school in the morning. ''You try to make it across and end up standing in the middle. At some point we have to cross over to the west side of the street. My son doesn't pay attention.''

But she loves having ''all the doormen standing outside, so if my daughter walks the dog in the evening, there are people there,'' she said.

While in medical school, Dr. Horowitz lived nearby in hospital housing and did not want to leave the area. ''I like the neighborhood, and it's easy for me to get to work,'' she said. Her husband, Tom Soulos, a biomedical engineer, has a tougher time -- he drives to New Jersey.

The only thing not immediately at hand is ''affordable restaurants,'' Dr. Horowitz said. ''The restaurants closer on Madison Avenue tend to be expensive. You have to walk down to Second or Third Avenue to find a restaurant the kids like, and that's inconvenient if it's freezing outside.''

Farther south, Park Avenue possesses ''more family character than people realize,'' said Peter Price, who moved to the 62nd Street corner with his wife, Judith, in 1970, after their Greenwich Village walkup was burglarized for the third time.

''We decided enough of bohemian romance -- it was time to go uptown,'' he said. They wanted a doorman building within walking distance of their offices in Midtown.

''Friends said, 'You are out of your minds -- you can buy a house in Westchester for the same money,' '' he said. ''But we were city kids and knew we were going to have continuing professional careers and were committed to city life.''

BACK in the 1970's, hardly any children lived in the neighborhood, said Mr. Price, a former publisher of The New York Post. But now, ''in the year 2000, we have baby carriages parked in the lobby,'' he said. ''We had trick-or-treating up and down the elevators. The character of life on Park Avenue is changing. It is getting younger, more active and more civic. There is more engagement in the community.''

Mr. Price is chairman of the Avenue Association, which does beautification and restoration projects. A decade ago, on a stretch of Park Avenue in the 60's, it helped to replace the industrial-looking cobra-head lampposts with bishop's-crook posts cast from molds based on the original drawings. The group also helps to finance the annual holiday lighting on the malls.

Mr. Price, who is also chief executive of the real-estate Web site EdificeRex.com, characterized Park Avenue as a ''walking thoroughfare,'' with its wide sidewalks and relative lack of obstructions. ''If you're walking home, you tend to meet people you know at the stoplight because everybody is traversing that well-trodden path,'' he said.

He refers to the Regency Hotel, which serves breakfast in its dining room and its library, as the ''Regency Coffee Shop.'' The hotel, at 61st Street, is ''the neighborhood place,'' he said. ''It's on the way to work, and everybody passes that point.''