Newsday from New York, New York • 229

..1. Tmic r' .4 it -fi- architectural beauty in the rooms themselves, which are typically undistinguished, rectangular spaces expected to serve multiple purposes, like the combined living-dining room. Wood floors are often thin veneers rather than solid wood and walls are hollow Sheetrock. A restored living room In tlM Hotel des Artistes, right top, has a fireplace, baamsd calling and bullHn -bookshelves. Right, another portion of the living room la two stories high, with a staircase.

Vasslli Lambri- nos living room, left. Is also his workroom for painting in Olympic Tower. One new trend in luxury buildings is the glass-sheathed tower, often catering to an international jet set whose needs are well served by small, glamorous pieds-a-terre that offer an array of services. One of the first of these was the Olympic Tower, a 10-year-old, 51-story mixed commercial and residential tower with a prime Fifth Avenue address next to St. Patricks Cathedral.

HE NEWER CROP of these buildings includes Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue and Metropolitan Tower on 57th Street, two imposing glass skyscrapers that stand out for their sheer height 68 and 78 stories respectively and expensiveness, with apartments running into the millions of dollars. These and other new buildings like the Rio, a 40-story condominium still under construction on Second Avenue and 65th Street, provide hotel services like valet, concierge and secretaries. State-of-the-art fixtures, amenities and opulent common facilities are the new symbols of luxury not large apartments. "I think the concept of luxury in the present market is an invention of hype, not reality, said Robert A. Stem, the ar-chitect and historian.

The end of true luxury, Stem said, was the beginning of World War when details that created intimacy were no longer built in: elevators that served only a couple of apartments, high ceilings, hallways that separated en- -tertaining areas from bed chambers and large, gracefully shaped rooms. Formal dining rooms have all but disappeared, replaced by nooks or lost altogether into an undefined area of the living room. "Balconies that look like tongue depressors on the outside of buildings are neither attractive nor useful as a substitute for lost space inside, Stem said. There have been a few exceptions to the new definition of luxury. The Sovereign, a luxury 48-story skyscraper built in therTOs, still stands out for qualities that have largely disappeared: spacious apartments, half of them with two and three bedrooms, with luxuries like entry foyers, formal dining rooms and maids rooms.

But in most of the new crop of luxury high-rises, the entrances mid common spaces are what present an air of elegance: Museum Tower, next to the Museum of Modem Art, displays artworks in its lobby and Metropolitan Tower has tapestries by Fernand Leger. Metropolitan Tower has a private dining club and wine cellar. Still, to some, high-tech luxury does not substitute for old-fashioned elegance. Jef-Bell, an executive recruiter and his Katherine, a gallery director, moved into a one-bedroom apartment in a new Upper East Side luxury building when they got married a few years ago, but decided they wanted more space and elegance. "Life is a series of trade-offs in New York, said Bell, describing their decision to give up their modem apartment with large windows overlooking Central Park and hunt for a prewar apartment.

Finally, when they realized they could not afford the kind of old apartment they wanted, they bought a co-op at 60 EL 88th a new building designed to mirror the ambiance and luxury of prewar buildings. Standing in their three-bedroom apartment, with its teak floors, spacious eat-in kitchen and formal dining room, Juliette balconies in front and backyard deck, the Bells said they believed they had found an ideal solution to their search for luxury. "We have this wonderful brand-new -kitchen, fabulous bedrooms and a marble foyer, said Katherine Bell. "When we were looking at the prewar buildings, youd get a maids room off the kitchen. What we like so much about this floor plan is it has the optimal use of space for us.

If I had to design a layout for an apartment, I dont think I could improve upon it. AH 4- -t AtESiSnScIl built before 1910, were the Renaissance Osborne, across the street with its lavish interi-ceilings in apartments as big as houses; the Dorilton on West 71 Street, with its garishly ornamental Second Empire facade; and on Broadway, the Ansonia, with its distinctively shaped rooms, and the Ap thorp, with its large central courtyard. Even in the early years of luxury apartments, developers had to compete for tenants to buy or rent their costly dwellings. According to an architectural history of New York, "Apartments for die Affluent, in 1910 Douglas Elliman, the developer of 998 Fifth a McKim, Mead White building with fall-floor apartments around a central courtyard, offered Sen. Elihu Root a $10,000 discount on a years rent of $25,000 to draw him, and others of his stature, to the building.

Inside the stately buildings, many of which began to line Park and Fifth Avenues by the 20s, were parlors, studies, libraries, formal dining rooms and servants quarters, often in separate areas. The Depression and a gradually changing society did not stop the quest for luxury, but began to alter and modify its course. Gone were the warrens of servants rooms, the butlers pantry and rooms for special purposes, like music and drawing rooms and the gracious details like heavy moldings, high ceilings and fireplaces. Economy was a factor, as was changing lifestyle. "We have a much different sense of comfort how we spend our spare time, said Wes Haynes of the New York Landmarks Conservancy.

Rooms with elegant woodwork ml fireplaces an architectural and social focal point before the advent of television gave way to standardized boxes, Haynes noted. The new surge' of luxury building is a modem and highly competitive version of the quest to provide opulent city living. Evidence is everywhere, from; the By Duffle Cohen THE HOTEL des Artistes, the elegant apartment building off Central Park that is Dine to the renowned Cafe des Artistes, kitchens were built as tiny as the ones in modem apartments. The reason was luxury. For this was a building of stature, attracting artistic personalities like Rudolph Valentino and Fannie Hurst, who were not expected to cook for themselves.

"The artist simply put his goose on the dumb waiter, with the directions tacked on to it, and sent it to the commissary," said present-day building manager Gil Roller. Tenants swam in one of the first private swimming pools in an apartment building, played squash on a private court and used the theater and ballroom. Except for the kitchens, the space and appointments were lavish. The tenant worked and entertained in duplex "studios with 20-foot ceilings and two-story windows, and, in the most opulent apartments, 60-foot living rooms with fireplaces at either end. The studios were not really practical Roller describes builder Walter Russells 1916 creation as "completely irrational.

As Roller puts it, "It was built out of this world for people out of this world." The quest for luxury in apartment buildings in New York City is more than 100 years old and still going strong. It began after the Civil War, even before the paragon of the citys luxury apartment buildings, the Dakota, was completed in 1884, heralding the new era. Resembling an oversized chateau, the Dakota maintAincd the lpgmmi and many features of a private home, easing the transition for those accustomed to mansions. A surge of apartment construction for the upper class ensued, the onset of a golden era iff apartment life. Inside and out, buildings were artfully crafted with the finest materials.

Some early examples. The Sovereign offers more space and mors graceful layouts than most buildings that went up in the 70s or later. The 200-square-foot apartment, above, has Moot ceilings and a maids room and pantry off the kitchen. convenience for charm and graciousnesa. New luxury buildings have health dubs and personal services like concic onciergez, rljjmnr of ads for luxury co-ops, rentals with names like Horizon, Rio, Mflimreh, avoy-end Copley, to the buzz all around the a dose look at' same ofthe-nOw build ings shows that next to the solid hardwood of old luxury most of the new is a thin veneer.

The most opulent buildings of the past decade" or so have introduced new con- jcepts of luxury, substituting high-tech and features like marble bathrooms with whirlpool baths and stylish European kitchen woo customers, some are even emphasizing "prewar style attributes. But few new luxury apartments measure up to their predecessors in sine, craftsmanship or graciousness. Striking views through floor-to-ceding; windows, are offered: iff place of. i.p fiA a .1 a. if i- i .4 A J.

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