Palms Building vacant?

[Neilr]

Here's a copy of something I posted several years ago.

• Neilr
  
  
  KnnNike,
  IMO, the Garden Court is a very handsome, elegant building and the subdivision of the original large apartments has, in general, been well done.
  Here's a cut and paste of one of my posts from several years ago:
  
  The Garden Court was designed very much in the manner of a prewar Park Avenue apartment house. The building was to be entered by tenants and their guests through one of the two entrances facing the garden on the west side of the building. Each lobby led to a passenger elevator that serviced just two apartments on each floor. Additionally, there were three sets of service elevators and stairs for staff and tradesmen.
  
  
  There were only four apartments per floor. The smallest [[if you can call an 8 room apartment small) was in the center of the south wing, facing east and west. Next in size was in the center of the north wing. It had nine rooms. Next largest in size was the north, Jefferson facing, unit with nine rooms. The largest, also with nine rooms, faced south towards the river. While its room count is the same as the Jefferson facing unit, the trapezoidal shape of the building allowed for larger rooms.
  
  
  The two center apartments have windows facing three directions while the north and south facing apartments have windows facing all four directions. In addition to proving ample light throughout the day, this was an important feature for ventilating apartments before the use of air conditioning.
  
  
  Every apartment had a small Juliet balcony. The end apartments also had a small balcony off of the bedroom hallway. The balconies for the center units were off the kitchens.
  
  
  Alas, as times changed and an East Jefferson address lost some of its appeal, most of the apartments were broken into smaller, more rentable units.
  
  
  To me, the original Garden Court apartments were the equal of those in Indian Village Manor and the Walbri on Covington in Palmer Park.
  
  
• 

[KnnNike]

Here's a copy of something I posted several years ago.

• Neilr
  
  

Lol, blast from the past. I ended up buying that unit, the one that James Harrington Walker originally owned, and we completed a major renovation restoration last year. Found copies of the original blueprints in the Albert Kahn archives, and used those to restore lighting, moldings, etc. that had been lost over the years.

Can't do much about the "chopped up" units, I'm afraid, but the building itself is getting restored to some of its former glory. In the past year, we've spent about $3 million replacing the passenger elevators, restoring the original service drive, and repairing all of the crumbling mortar and parapet wall bollards around the building.

At some point, I'd love to get my home on the local historic house tour list...