Beekman Place

Beekman Place is a small street located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood on the East Side of Manhattan, New York City.

The Beekman Place area's well-off residents gave way to impoverished workers employed in the coal yards that lined much of the East River.

[6] In 1914, the Beekman estate appeared before the New York Supreme Court to remove the deed restriction on the waterfront lot,[4] but after six years of litigation, they were unsuccessful.

[6] With the construction of the FDR Drive on the East River in the 1940s, the commercial uses of the waterfront were eliminated, and Beekman Place was isolated from the shoreline proper.

To compensate for Beekman Place's loss of access to the shoreline, the city government built a footbridge across the FDR Drive at 51st Street.

[10] Developer William Zeckendorf, who lived in 30 Beekman Place, gave up his land immediately south of the enclave in the mid-20th century to make way for the headquarters of the United Nations.

Early tenants here included "Wild Bill" Donovan of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and John D. Rockefeller III.

[5] 17 Beekman Place, named The Luxembourg House is a five-story building designed by architect Harold Sterner for the former Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and was then later owned by the American composer Irving Berlin and his wife Ellin Mackay, an heiress.

[15] 23 Beekman Place, a nine-story apartment building, includes a four-story penthouse designed by Modernist architect Paul Rudolph.

In 1992, 31 Beekman was sold to the government of Tunisia for use as a diplomatic property;[27] it is now the office of the Tunisian permanent mission to the United Nations.