Rosario Candela
Rosario Candela (born March 7, 1890 in Montelepre, Sicily, died October 3, 1953 in Mount Vernon, NY) is considered by many to be the most important architect of residential architecture during the prewar era.
Candela immigrated to New York in 1906, returned to Sicily for study, and returned to the US in 1909. His father was a professional plasterer, which surely influenced his career choice. His talent as an architect must have been obvious, as he gained admission to Columbia University’s prestigious School of Architecture soon after his return to the U.S. He graduated in 1915, and in 1920 launched his own firm. His timing was indeed fortuitous.
Candela’s first major commission was for an apartment house at West 92nd Street and Broadway on the Upper West Side. Shortly thereafter, he received his first commission for an East Side apartment building at 1105 Park Avenue. During the period 1920 – 1925, Candela designed a number of residential buildings on the Upper West Side, primarily on West End Avenue and Riverside Drive. During this period, the West side was undergoing an intense transformation from an area of primarily single-family homes to one characterized by apartment buildings.
The period 1925 -1930 was when Candela’s genius flourished. He designed a large number of what were to become New York’s most prestigious buildings in this five-year window. In 1927 and 1928, Candela designed 19 apartment buildings, including 960 Fifth Avenue (at East 77th Street) and 720 Park Avenue (at East 70th Street). He had more commissions in 1929, but the housing boom had begun to slow prior to the stock market crash in October. Of 27 designs that year, only 12 were completed. These included 740, 770, 778 and 834 and 1040 Fifth Avenue.
Candela worked mostly in a very reserved, classically inspired style. His buildings, however, are more famous for their interior planning than their facades – indeed he came to be viewed as the most talented spatial planner of the period. He is also generally credited with devising the terraced setbacks and signature penthouses one sees all over Manhattan. Although J.E.R. Carpenter is credited with first making use of modern apartment planning concepts, Candela’s name today has a bit more caché. This should really be viewed on a building by building basis. Candela loved duplex apartments, and almost exclusively employed elegant curving staircases to connect the floors. Because of his frequent use of duplexes, his buildings are truly the most complex in totality of any architect working in his time period. By the late 1920’s many of his buildings have completely transformed from units repeating each other as the building rises, to a complex interlocking puzzle of unique layouts.
We all know that the Great Depression ended the glory days of prewar architecture, but the sporadic commissions Candela received during the 1930’s did not diminish in architectural quality. Ultimately, he designed 81 apartment houses in New York City in a remarkably short time period. He designed seven buildings on Fifth Avenue north of 59th Street and 13 buildings on Park Avenue.
New York City Buildings by Candela from the 1920s & 1930s:
Clayton Apartments, 1922
915 West End Avenue, 1922
1105 Park Avenue, 1923
304 West 89th Street, 1923
878 West End Avenue, 1923
522 West End Avenue, 1923
41 Fifth Avenue, 1923
320 West End Avenue, 1924
Charleton Apartments, 1924
875 West End Avenue, 1924
865 West End Avenue, 1924
755 West End Avenue, 1924
334 West 86th Street, 1924
425 Riverside Drive, 1924
240 West End Avenue, 1924
40 West 55th Street, 1924
315 West 106th Street, 1925
Wellston Apartments, 1925
855 Fifth Avenue, 1926
1172 Park Avenue, 1926
325 West 86th Street, 1926
800 West End Avenue, 1926
820 West End Avenue, 1926
607 West End Avenue, 1926
285 Riverside Drive, 1926
Oxford Tower (280 Riverside Drive), 1926
Berkeley Plaza Apts, 39 Plaza Street West, Brooklyn, 1926
Brazilian Court Hotel, Palm Beach, Florida, 1925
W New York – The Court, 1927
775 Park Avenue, 1927
884 Fifth Avenue, 1927
990 Fifth Avenue, 1927 – with Warren & Wetmore
One Sutton Place South, 1927 – with Cross and Cross
The Windsor Park (100 West 58th Street), 1927
The Van Doran, 1927
230 West End Avenue, 1927
2 East 67th Street (also known as 856 5th Avenue), 1928
4 Sutton Place, 1928
25 Sutton Place, 1928
2 East 70th Street, 1928, with Walker & Gillette
8 East 96th Street, 1928
447 East 57th Street, 1928
30 Sutton Place, 1928
47 Plaza Street West, Brooklyn, 1928
Westwind Apartments, 1928
360 Central Park West (North and South Buildings), 1928 including Second Presbyterian Church, 4 West 96th Street
1 Gracie Square, 1929 – with William Lawrence Bottomley
14 Sutton Place South, 1929
1192 Park Avenue, 1929
70 East 96th Street Apartments, 1929
133 East 80th Street, 1929
720 Park Avenue, 1929 – with Cross & Cross
40 East 66 Street, 1929
40 West 67 Street, 1929
740 Park Avenue, 1929 – with Shreve & Lamb
Stanhope Hotel, 1929
1040 Fifth Avenue, 1929
1220 Park Avenue, 1930
770 Park Avenue, 1930
1040 Fifth Avenue, 1930
1021 Park Avenue, 1930
834 Fifth Avenue, 1930
56 Seventh Avenue, 1931
778 Park Avenue, 1931
2 Beekman Place, 1932
3 Times Square (Rialto Theatre), 1935 (replaced by Reuters Building, 2001)
Normandie Theatre (51 East 53rd Street), 1936 (demolished in the 1950s)
19 East 72nd Street, with Mott Schmidt, 1936
Regency Park, 1937
955 Fifth Avenue, 1938
Outside of New York City:
Personal Normandy Style home in Harrison, New York 1930
Personal homes of friends in Bronxville and Tarrytown
Hello! My name is David Lubell. This is my personal blog, a forum for me to talk about my passion for prewar buildings in NYC and related subjects. If any views are expressed here, they are mine, unless clearly presented as coming from someone else. You can read a little bit more 
After receiving a phone call from a persistant hereditary planner back in the 1990′s, we found out that my passion for architecture was indeed from a prominent blood line. Not only was Rosario a great grand uncle (on my mother’s side), but Rosario’s mother was a Pizzurro (Maria). It seems the Pizzurro’s and Candela’s have a long history with inter-marriage. While visiting my family’s hometown of Montelepre, Sicily, we found all of the paperwork and addresses associated with this grand finding. I can only hope that my work, someday will follow this great tradition in Architecture!