Coupling their classical training with a famously diverse portfolio of commissions, John and Eliot Cross made their mark on Manhattan's skyline.
Brothers John Walter and Eliot Cross founded their iconic Cross & Cross architectural firm in 1907, just as New York City was on the cusp of enormous change. In the coming decades, an onslaught of new wealth — and a booming real estate market — would transform Manhattan's low-rise neighborhoods of factories, stables, and tenements into cosmopolitan epicenters of elegant new townhouses, high-rise apartment buildings, and cutting-edge commercial towers.
The brothers were well-heeled, white-shoe society men with Ivy League and Beaux-Arts pedigrees and connections. But they were also adept businessmen, supporting their architectural practice with a partnered real estate firm and playing a lynchpin role in residential developments like Sutton Place on the East River. On the society level, they designed grand country houses for the likes of Henry Francis du Pont in Southampton as well as the 40-room home of J. Watson and Electra Webb in Shelburne, Vermont, along with the 1920 childhood home of decorating great Sister Parish in Far Hills, New Jersey. On the Upper East Side, they crafted houses for Lewis Spencer Morris and George Whitney.
Famously, Cross & Cross had no signature style nor specialty. The sheer variety of their designs, spanning from the 1910s and into the 1930s, is downright astounding — gleaming banks and corporate centers, handsome private clubs, country estates, one-of-a-kind apartment houses all over Manhattan, and luxury townhouses on the Upper East Side.
In 1911, their 12-story apartment building at 405 Park Avenue, with a façade that included a four-story limestone base, a middle brick section, and a top-story cornice and interior homes that separated service quarters from the family, became one of the first luxury apartment buildings in New York. They went on to design more than 20 large apartment houses on the East Side, including the inventive 333 East 68th Street.
In 1926, their forward-looking Barclay Hotel, at 111 East 48th Street, included both the expected hotel guest rooms as well as large residential apartments. Harold S. Vanderbilt took a 17-room apartment at the top.
One of the firm’s most celebrated designs is the RCA Victor (now General Electric) building at Lexington Avenue and 51st Street, a soaring Art Deco masterpiece. Another favorite is the Tiffany & Co. flagship store on 57th Street.
One of the most iconic towers of the financial district, the brothers’ 54-story City Bank Farmers Trust Company, was completed in 1931. “From a distance it appears a straightforward limestone skyscraper,” wrote architectural historian Christopher Gray in The New York Times. “But up close, it is rich with silver nickel moderne-style metalwork, and the interiors are a perplexing mix of staid banker and Art Deco classicism.”
Like their contemporaries Rosario Candela and Emery Roth, much of the New York City skyline and cityscape we see and appreciate today was created and nurtured by architecture greats John and Eliot Cross.
BY INHABIT EDITORS
The 15-story limestone-clad co-op by Cross & Cross at 25 East End Avenue was the first apartment building on this far-east avenue that hugs the East River and Carl Schurz Park. This 10-room duplex apartment offers 3,650 square feet of interior space spread across the 10th and 11th floors, with four spacious bedrooms, three full bathrooms, and one powder room. The cozy den and media room both have wood-burning fireplaces, and the living room offers breath-taking views of the river and surrounding cityscape. Stylishly modernized by the well-known architect Harry Elson, the home offers West, East, and South exposures and architectural details that include hardwood floors, high ceilings with decorative moldings, custom cabinetry and closets, flush-mounted ceiling speakers, Lutron motorized shades, zoned HVAC, and new oversized windows that bring in a blaze of natural light. There is also a formal dining room, a modern kitchen with a windowed dining area as well as a breakfast counter, a laundry room, and a primary suite with an enormous walk-in closet. Amenities in the 1928 building include a fully equipped gym, a live-in resident manager, full-time doormen, a storage unit that conveys with the apartment, and ground-floor bike storage.
Apartment 11G/10D at Yorkgate (25 East End Avenue), designed by Cross & Cross in 1928.
25 East End Avenue, 11G/10D
CO-op | 4 BEDS | 3.5 BATHS
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Represented by Andrea D'Amico and Pamela Marcus.
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71-story 20 Exchange Place, an Art Deco landmark, was the headquarters of City Bank–Farmers Trust — predecessor of today's Citigroup.
Original marketing materials for Yorkgate, completed in 1928, emphasized the building's masterful floor plans and sweeping views over the East River.
