The long avenue stretches nearly 10 miles, across two boroughs, from East 32nd Street in Manhattan to East 189th Street in the Bronx, where it ends near an Applebee’s.
But it is perhaps best known for the section below 96th Street.
For much of that stretch, a ribbon of lawns, trees and hedges unfurls between the avenue’s northbound and southbound arteries. In recent weeks, slender tiny parkland has welcomed beds of scarlet tulips and sculptures with yellow rubber wrapped around poles.
To be sure, there is not a lot of open space. Although the park runs on and off from Murray Hill to Carnegie Hill, it totals barely more than 4 1/2 acres. And that acreage is squeezed into a space not much wider than a deli, with almost no place to sit.
But if the greenery must be enjoyed in passing, it still adds elegance, brokers, shopkeepers and residents all say.
Also attractive, they point out, is the spaciousness afforded by the physical street, which is 140 feet across, making it among Manhattan’s widest, according to the borough president’s office.
Likewise, the obsessively maintained prewar buildings that line the 3 1/2-mile stretch, Park Avenue’s most populous section, rarely top 20 stories, ensuring lots of light.
“We like the character of the street, and we like the scale of it; it’s one of the most appealing things about the neighborhood,” said Andrew Soussloff, an investment manager who has lived at his current home in a 12-story apartment house with a granite base and terra-cotta trim for 17 years, after 15 years at another Park Avenue address.
Soussloff, 65, demurred when asked to share apartment details. But a five-bedroom in his building is listed for $8.5 million.
“Park is literally right in the middle of New York,” said Sara Kahen-Kashi, 34, an optometrist who in 2013 bought a studio co-op in a prewar former hotel for about $400,000, after five years of renting in the building.
The apartment, with a beamed ceiling and casement windows, might fetch $500,000 today. But Kahen-Kashi isn’t selling.
Although she has rented out the unit for two years, since moving to Long Island, where she lives with her husband and two children, a future pied-à-terre has not been ruled out.
“Park,” she said, “has cachet.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.