Construction Maison

It is known that Sutton ran a clipper ship line to the California coast in the 1850's that served Gold Rush hopefuls , and that he lived on West 29th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues (a block that was also called Lamartine Place and was set apart from the rest of the city's street grid because of separate numbering). In 1875 a consortium of developers that included James Stokes , William Dodge and D. Willis James began to acquire property on Avenue A in the East 50's, on what is now called Sutton Place . Deed patterns suggest that they were working with a builder, Andrew Kerwin, who in 1879 put up the original Sutton Place enclave , 24 single-family brownstones on the block bounded by 58th and 59th Streets and Avenue A and the East River. Half of them faced the avenue and half faced a new street along the river briefly named Riverview Terrace . A few of those houses survive in recognizable form, three stories high with a stoop. Someone renamed the Avenue A side ...

Hillary Clinton slept here. The year was 2000. Clinton was in the middle of her first political campaign, running to be New York’s junior senator. Steven Spielberg, an enthusiastic donor to Mrs Clinton who had the use of a pied-à-terre in Trump Tower purchased for him by Universal Pictures, barely stayed at the place, despite its views of Central Park, and offered it to the candidate as a crash pad on gruelling campaign days . Trump Tower in New York. Photo: Bloomberg Donald Trump and Clinton were on good terms back then. He donated money to her candidacy and called her “tough and smart”. Moreover, Trump was skilled in the art of spinning his associations with celebrities into publicity. This was particularly true at Trump Tower. Michael Jackson lived in Donald J. Trump’s gleaming Midtown edifice . So have gamblers, a disgraced dictator, a Ponzi schemer and a stock huckster. Credit Photo Illustration by Peter Horvath; photographs by Chad Batka for The New York Times (Trump); Hiroko...