BY JULIE DANNENBERG
Judy Price
This is a monumental year for Avenue Magazine as we celebrate our fiftieth anniversary. Throughout the year and into 2025 we will be checking in with Avenue’s inimitable founder Judy Price. Judy both founded and owned Avenue for almost a quarter of a century. Working for Judy was my first job. For over a decade, I absorbed her unique perspective on everything New York, the greatest city in the world. One of Avenue’s oft-copied signatures was Judy’s distinct and unique sense of design. Her taste extended not only to the magazine but to her personal sense of style: how she dressed, how she lived, what she collected, and how she entertained (which she did a lot with her husband Peter Price). Judy and Peter’s unique apartment at 550 Park Avenue is to this day one of a kind.
Despite being quintessential New Yorkers, Judy and Peter always maintained a home in Paris. Now, the ever-evolving, well-connected, fascinating couple have decided to make Paris their home-base. The Prices have upgraded their Paris apartment and decided to put 550 Park on the market. The residence was truly an extension of the magazine – both in purpose (bringing the most interesting New York figures together) and design (the décor and art is curated and unexpected, like the pages of Avenue). We checked in with Judy in Paris.
I remember seeing your home for the first time. I had been in many Park Avenue apartments and downtown lofts, but I had never seen a downtown-style loft on Park Avenue.
Peter and I were living in the West Village. We loved the community, but those were different times. We did not have a doorman and we kept getting robbed. I thought, let’s go uptown and find an apartment. But I was not comfortable with the idea of living in a classic Park Avenue apartment. I wanted the amenities that come with living in a full-service building but did not want the lost space that comes with a classic Park Avenue apartment. Peter’s father was an architect, and he picked up a lot from him. He had done a drawing of what we wanted: an uptown loft designed around entertaining.
And you did end up doing a tremendous amount of entertaining, a lot of which was for Avenue. How did playing hosts impact your design choices?
I knew that I was going to start the magazine. The whole idea was that it had to be a party space and because I am not so good on my feet, I thought let people be the entertainment. That’s why we took down the walls in the public spaces and why we built a bar in the pantry and purchased commercial appliances.
Every interesting and dynamic New Yorker had been in that apartment.
The brokers tell us that 90% of the people who have viewed the space say the same thing: “I’ve been here before.” So yes, we have done a lot of entertaining. Diana Vreeland lived in the building in a much smaller residence on the other side. I was starting the magazine, and I said, ‘Mrs. Vreeland I am starting what I described as a pictorial New Yorker, and I would be honored to have you join me.’ I thought she was a genius. Then the people from The Metropolitan Museum came along and they had a fund with $7,000 which they offered her to start the Costume Institute. That was a lot of money back then, so that’s how that started. She came here with Andy Warhol and his crowd to Carl Icahn and Peter Marino, so many bold-faced names. One evening I had Dina Merrill and Donald Trump. He had purchased Mar-a-Lago but had never met her. I introduced them. It was a great opportunity for Avenue’s advertisers to mingle. It gave them access that they otherwise might not have had.
You were always ahead of the curve. Before anyone started collecting important mid-century furniture not only did you collect it, but many of the architectural details in the residence reflect it.
Many of the materials repeated throughout our home cannot be duplicated today because you are no longer allowed to import them to the United States such as Brazilian rosewood and some of the marbles on the floor, which we imported from Italy. A lot of things we took for granted as simply being good turned out to be very refined taste. We did it because we thought it was cool.
You describe your home as an uptown loft. Who do you think the buyer will be?
Probably an art collector, maybe someone coming from a downtown loft. Someone like us who wants the amenities and conveniences available uptown but doesn’t want to give up the vast open spaces.
The Price apartment at 550 Park Avenue is listed with Corcoran here.
