Ward Bennett’s Apartment, New York, NY (1962)

Artist/Designer: Ward Bennett

Project Location: New York, New York

Style/Period(s):
Modern, Minimalism

Primary Material(s):
No Primary Material Assigned.

Function(s):
No Function Assigned.

Related Website(s):

Significant Date(s):
20th Century, 1960-1969, 1962

Additional Information:
Building Address: 1 W 72nd St, New York, NY 10023

Tags: 1962, Screen Interiors, New York, Manhattan, New York City, Dakota Building, Central Park West, 72nd Street

Significant Dates: Apartment completed in 1962, the building was constructed between 1880 and 1884, building added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, interior redesigned by Bennett in 1979 for owner then-owner Reva Ostrow.

Supporting Staff/ Designers: Ward Bennett, Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (building)

Publications in Print:
Alpern, A. New York’s Luxury Apartments: With Original Floor Plans from the Dakota, River House, Olympic Tower and Other Great Buildings. New York, NY: Dover, 1987.
Benjamin, Walter. “Louis-Philippe, or the Interior.” Translated by Edmund Jephcott. In Peter Demetz (ed.), Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, 154–6. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978.
Bennett, Ward. Interview, February 13, 1973. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
For the reprinted transcript, see Elizabeth Beer and Brian Janusiak, Ward Bennett. London
and New York: Phaidon Press, 2017.
Bhaskaran, Lakshmi. Designs of the Times: Using Key Movements and Styles for Contemporary Design. London, England: Roto Vision, 2009.
Borràs Montse. The New Apartment: Smart Living in Small Spaces. New York, NY: Universe, 2011.
Botha, Walter. A Theory of Minimalism. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard
Nice, with a new introduction by Tony Bennett. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1979;
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2010.
Burke, Tom. “Rosemary Has a New Baby.” New York Times, March 16, 1969, D17.
Canby, Vincent. “Director Carefully Matching City Locations to Story.” New York Times, January
4, 1969, 30.
Carlsen, Paul. “A Minimalist’s Paradise.” Interiors 135 (October 1975): 120R–122R.
Chave, Anna. “Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power.” Arts Magazine 64, no. 5 (January 1990):
44–63.
Cromley, Elizabeth C. Alone Together: A History of New York's Early Apartments . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Corkin, Stanley. Starring New York: Filming the Grime and the Glamour of the Long 1970s. Oxford
and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Danilowitz, Brenda. The Prints of Josef Albers: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1915–1976. New York:
Hudson Hills Press, 2001.
Diamonstein, Barbaralee. Interior Design: The New Freedom. New York: Rizzoli, 1982.
Duka, John. “Design Directions for the Eighties.” New York Magazine, October 8, 1979, 47–9.
Ebert, Roger. “John and Mary.” Chicago Sun-Times, December 23, 1969, https://www.rogerebert.
com/reviews/john-and-mary-1969.
Esten, John, and Rose Bennett Gilbert. Manhattan Style. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1990.
Farrow, Mia. What Falls Away: A Memoir. New York: Nan A. Talese, 1997.
Fenske, Gail. The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2014.
Glueck, Grace. “Art Notes: Putting it into Prints.” New York Times, March 6, 1966, A18.
Grove, Valerie. A Voyage Round John Mortimer. New York: Viking, 2007.
Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
2005.
Kael, Pauline. “Fear of Movies.” New Yorker, September 25, 1978, 137–57.
Krauss, Rosalind. Passages in Modern Sculpture. Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1977.
Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing
Expectations. New York: Norton & Company, 1978.
Lasch, Christopher. The Minimal Self: Psychic Survival in Troubled Times. New York and London:
W.W. Norton & Company, 1984.
Lichtman, Sarah, and Pat Kirkham. Screen Interiors: From Country Houses to Cosmic Heterotopias. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2021.
Meyer, James. Minimalism: Art and Polemics in the Sixties. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
2004.
Montse Borras, The New Apartment: Smart Living in Small Spaces (New York: Universe Publishing, 2007)
“Soothing, Serene, Civilized,” Interior Design, 50, no.9 (Sept.1979): 246.
Phillips-Fein, Kim. Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics. New York:
Metropolitan Books, 2017.
Rowland, Mark. “Acting His Age.” American Film, December 1, 1988, 20–5, 60–1.
Shkuda, Aaron. The Lofts of Soho: Gentrification, Art, and Industry in New York, 1950–1980.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
Soper, Kate. What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human. Oxford and Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell, 1995.
Stafford, Jean. “Profile: Ward Bennett.” Art in America 54, no. 6 (November–December 1966):
44–7.
Strickland, Edward. Minimalism: Origins. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1993.
Vercelloni, Matteo. Urban Interiors in New York. Milan: Edizioni l’Archivoloto, 1996.
Wolfe, Tom. “The ‘Me’ Decade and the Third Great Awakening.” New York Magazine, August 23,
1972, 26–40.

Viewers should treat all images as copyrighted and refer to each image's links for copyright information.