Overview

About Barbizon 63, 140 East 63rd Street

This very handsome, 24-story building began as a residential hotel for women and then was operated as a normal hotel and in 2005 it was converted to condominium apartments.

It was designed by Murgatroyd & Ogden and opened in 1927 as the Barbizon Hotel for Woman where no men were permitted above the lobby floor. It gained fame in the 1950s and 1960s when its residents included Grace Kelly, Candice Bergen, Ali McGraw and Liza Minelli. Its rooms were small but it had a nice large lobby and some splendid meeting rooms at the top. Men were finally admitted as guests in 1981.

In their fine book, "The A.I.A. Guide to New York City Architecture, Third Edition," (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), Norton White and Elliot Willensky described the building as "A romantic, neo-Gothic tawny brick charmer, lovingly restored in the 1980s."

In 1988, Golden Tulip Barbizon Inc., sold its majority interest in the hotel to a partnership led by Philip Pilevsky and Arthur B. Cohen. And in 2002 it was renovated at a cost of about $40 million when it become the Melrose Hotel, operated by the Melrose Hotel Company, a subsidiary of the Berwind Property Group Inc., of Philadelphia. The renovation converted the property's 700 or so rooms into 306 hotel rooms.

Melrose spent about $40 million in renovating the building and converted it to the Melrose Hotel, which closed in 2005 when Berwind Property decided to convert it to condominium apartments.

Barbizon/63, as the buildig is now known, has 65 apartments ranging in size from one-bedroom apartments to a duplex penthouse with 5,345 square feet of interior spaces. Other penthouses have terraces with over 900 square feet.

The sponsor of the conversion is Barbizon Hotel Associates, L.P., an affiliate of BPG Properties Ltd.

Nancy Ruddy of Cetra/Ruddy Inc., is the architect for the conversion.

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