Park Avenue, 11B

A 1927 apartment with the room proportions that made prewar Park Avenue worth the maintenance, and the shutters to prove nobody has flattened it.

Rosario Candela's contemporaries built this block in 1927 to a formula that has not been improved on: a gallery you arrive into, public rooms in a line off it, bedrooms turned away down their own hall.

The apartment has been lived in continuously and altered gently. The herringbone is original and has been refinished twice. The plaster cornice runs unbroken. The interior shutters still work, which matters more than it sounds — they are what lets a room with three exposures be used at four in the afternoon in June.

The kitchen was redone in 2014 in a way that will date, and we would say so to any buyer who asked. Everything else is as drawn.