An Apartment Off Park Avenue With a 50-Foot Skybridge

A deck over a skybridge links two sides of a single apartment off Park Avenue.
Photo: Manuel Pellon Photography/Compass

An apartment built around a 50-foot-long skybridge, which links two buildings on East 77th and East 78th Streets, is so strange that its current owner wondered if it was a one-off. So he put an ad on Craigslist to hire someone who could “walk river to river,” as he told the Daily News in 2007, “and look for any other bridge that connects someone’s private residence” or “ask people walking dogs if they knew of anything like this.” (The answer: there’s at least one other apartment built across a bridge, in a converted hospital complex.)

The bridge is open to the light on the side that’s not visible by passersby.
Photo: Manuel Pellon Photography/Compass

This skybridge, just off Park Avenue, is also a remnant of a building designed for another purpose: to shield famous daughters from the prying eyes of the Upper East Side. The linked buildings that now form a co-op once held a separate dorm and classroom space for Finch College, a school for women that closed abruptly in 1975, citing “financial difficulties.” Grads included Isabella Rossellini and First Daughter Tricia Nixon Cox as well as the offspring of Roosevelts and Vanderbilts. Maids served the dorms, and a dining hall had chandeliers, gold upholstery, and a famous chef. Still, not even a skybridge could keep students out of trouble. ”The last spring term I didn’t spend one night there,” Jane Holzer told Tom Wolfe for a 1964 piece that followed her from Finch into Warhol’s Factory.

The unusual floor plan stretches across a 50-foot-long bridge.
Photo: Compass

The current skybridge owner, Stephen Gullo, told the News that the place was “unbearably ugly” when he first saw it. But he had a flair for makeovers. A nutritionist, he built up a roster of famous clients, including Donald Trump, and became a diet guru with best sellers about managing emotional eating. He felt the apartment “belonged in architectural books” and said he paid close to $1 million to renovate — a cost that included a structural overhaul of the bridge and permission from Landmarks. Adam Kushner, the boundary-pushing architect who put subway doors in his own penthouse, added a wall of glass and steel to the side of the bridge that wasn’t visible from Park Avenue (a Landmarks rule). Then Gullo got permission to top part of the bridge with a long, thin roof-deck (one of four private outdoor spaces in the unit).

Off the primary bedroom, Gullo added an entrance to a private deck that spans a length of the skybridge.
Photo: Manuel Pellon Photography/Compass

The apartment is on the market for the first time since Gullo bought it in 2006, according to the listing. But he apparently doesn’t want press this time around. (The New York Post quoted him anonymously.) Back in 2007, Gullo told the News that the central appeal of the apartment was to fulfill a lifelong dream. “I had always wanted a place with a very short commute,” he said. Gullo turned the smaller unit into a place to meet clients, which he could advertise publicly; after all, it has a separate entrance.

Broker Justin Rubinstein, who is co-listing with Mike Barit, says the office could be perfect for someone who might use a 50-foot-long hallway as an art gallery — for example, an art dealer who could have an office on one side and live on the other. Another idea would be to turn the office into a primary suite. But a buyer who doesn’t have a need for the bridge may still enjoy it as a feature, ideal for showing off at a party (it can safely hold 40 people, according to the News). “It’s truly a one-of-one apartment,” Rubinstein says, and offered me an idea for a headline: “These guys have a 50-foot glass bridge to sell you.”