Veteran journalist Michael Gross talks with Elizabeth Spiers about the making of his latest book, 740 Park, an extensive biography of the life and history of the world's richest apartment building.

What's the genesis of the 740 Park book? (How, when and why did you decide you wanted to write about it?)

After writing a book about Ralph Lauren, who came from a quasi-aristocratic Jewish family (thought he didn't know that) and for complex psychological reasons grew up compelled to dress like and act the part of a WASP aristocrat, I thought it might be interesting to write about the sort of people he modeled his look on, ie genuine American aristocrats. My first thought was to choose a great American family and trace its story from the Mayflower (or thereabouts) to the present...hopefully dealing with a Supreme Court Justice, a Buddhist, a murderer, a drug addict or two, and maybe a psycho along the way. My then-publisher didn't think that was broad enough and though she liked the idea of telling a larger story through a microcosm, urged me to find one that let in more light, more people, more kinds of people, which struck me as sage advice.

A few days later, I was in a cab going down Fifth Avenue, looking up at the old apartment buildings, when I passed one where I knew that WASPs had given way to Jews, one of whom had just sold his apartment for millions to Paul Allen of Microsoft, and I decided to write [about] a building. The next step was figuring out which building. It didn't take long before I focused in on 740, which was distinctive not only in terms of its architecture, quality and the price of apartments, but also in terms of the people who lived there. Unlike so-called "good" buildings (ie anti-Semitic buildings), 740 had evolved with the times, which made it a perfect vehicle to tell my story about the evolution of America's capitalist aristocracy.