The Kelly Connection

October 28, 2007
Big Deal, Josh Barbanel, New York Times

IS the story of Grace Kelly, the future princess, at the Manhattan House, a quintessential Manhattan real estate story?

That is the question that Dr. Jim Sperber, an internist in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., who is also a Grace Kelly fan and the son of a Prudential Douglas Elliman broker, raised in an e-mail message about her stay in the early 1950s at Manhattan House, the first and perhaps grandest white-brick apartment complex on the Upper East Side.

Now that Manhattan House — with 584 apartments, many with balconies, spread across five 20-story towers — is in the midst of a condominium conversion, the sponsors are celebrating Grace Kelly’s years there and have signed an agreement with the Princess Grace Foundation, to permit the use of her image in promotional materials.

But after learning of this development, Dr. Sperber, who has many interests, including providing medical care to an 8-foot 4-inch farmer in Ukraine, went through his collection of Grace Kelly books — assembled from garage sales — and pointed out that Miss Kelly’s father, John B. Kelly Sr., a three-time American gold medalist rower, helped build the Manhattan House.

Mr. Kelly, a wealthy Philadelphia contractor from an Irish family, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor of Philadelphia in the 1930s, founded Kelly for Brickwork, which was a subcontractor on the project. Many Manhattan House residents believe that his company manufactured the distinctive white bricks used on the building, but Toby E. Boshak, the executive director of the Princess Grace Foundation, said that his firm was hired as a construction contractor to do the brick work and put up the distinctive white walls of the project.

As for the notion that he used his pull, as any father might, to get his daughter into a coveted apartment in the building, the evidence is far from certain. On the one hand, biographies detail a difficult relationship that Grace Kelly had with her father, and she yearned for financial independence from her family. On the other hand, family background was carefully reviewed at the Manhattan House and other prominent buildings in Manhattan.

Patricia Lynch, a former television news investigative producer for NBC Nightly News, who has lived in Manhattan House since 1975, said that when she applied for admission 25 years after Grace Kelly moved in, the building had a long waiting list and connections were needed to get to the top of the list. She said that she wore white gloves for an interview in which the building manager queried her about her parents and her family background, even though she had written two books and was financially independent at the time.

One biography, “Grace,” by Robert Lacey (Putnam Adult, 1994), said that Miss Kelly, who was in her early 20s, was “installed” there by her father in an apartment that her mother decorated. Another book, “The Bridesmaids,” by Judith Balaban Quine (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), who was a bridesmaid at her wedding to Prince Rainier in Monaco, said that the Kellys had given their daughter “permission” to leave the Barbizon Hotel and move into Manhattan House, but wanted her to find a roommate. The book also suggested that the apartment was decorated to the taste of Miss Kelly’s mother, Margaret.

In an interview, her first Manhattan House roommate and another bridesmaid, Sally Parrish Richardson, said that she moved in after Miss Kelly and did not know how she got the apartment.

The Manhattan House sponsors have commissioned four designers to create model apartments “with the spirit of Princess Grace,” bringing their “unique vision of grand, high-style living at Manhattan House.”

But by some accounts, despite her increasingly glamorous life, Grace Kelly’s furnishings at Manhattan House were, alas, quite plain. “The living room was without charm, character or gender,” Ms. Quine wrote. “It wasn’t ugly; it was utterly bland. Furniture, fabrics and colors alike were all resolutely practical. Everything seemed brown.”