Wednesday, February 1, 2012

820 Fifth Avenue

820 Fifth Avenue designed by Starrett & Van Vleck c. 1916 at the corner of East 63rd Street in New York City. Click HERE for more on 820 Fifth Avenue and HERE to see the apartment building on google street view.




Photos from Architectural Review, 1917.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

FYI: The realestalker blog has an older post on this building from May 12, 2009 that has a floor plan of a full floor apartment and extremely detailed information about every known resident at the time. This is one of the most exclusive co-ops on the planet it seems.

The Down East Dilettante said...

Pleasant little apartments, just right for spending the occasional evening in town.

Lora said...

"Pleasant little apartments, just right for spending the occasional evening in town."

Indeed!

The Devoted Classicist said...

I was happy to see the old photos of the interior. I worked on the full-floor simplex apartment at mid-level with the balcony. It is quite the building.

Brian said...

This is one of my favorite buildings in the world. Sadly for me until Mrs. Wrightsman passes it appears that "confirmed bachelors" are not acceptable to the board. Sigh.

For a nice collection of floorplan porn I'd suggest the New York Real Estate Brochure Collection at Columbia.

The Devoted Classicist said...

Wow! I may go blind from the pleasure, but thanks for the floor plan link, Brian!

The Ancient said...

Sadly for me until Mrs. Wrightsman passes it appears that "confirmed bachelors" are not acceptable to the board.

This is what you get for living in a world where the likes of Jayne Wrightsman and Annette de la Renta are social arbiters.

(But then, even a hundred years ago, Mme Verdurin became the Princesse de Guermantes, didn't she?)

The Down East Dilettante said...

But one is mystified---for the likes of Mrs. Wrightsman must depend so heavily upon 'confirmed bachelors' as Walkers, and how did she suffer Denning and Fourcade coming in and creating all that expensive upholstery? And surely a few more of them sold her a few of her FF bibelots and trinkets? Did she find the company of Henri Samuel a cross to bear when they were creating the Wrightsman Rooms at the Met? I have no reason to defend an elderly adventuress of royal pretensions, but surely her objection to 'confirmed bachelors' in the building is urban legend. Confirmed bachelors are necessarily part and parcel of the courts of such women. I'd sooner suspect that the culprit on the board would be some Nixonian Republican type who is likely an anti-Semite also.

Marcus said...

When it opened it was the highest priced apartment house in the world.Each of the full floors is 6200 square feet and has six fireplaces.The top floor could be rented for 25000 $ per year, the average yearly wages in US back then was like 500 $.
The old interiors are definetely from the two duplex maisonettes..