956 Fifth Avenue

First completed in 1926 to designs by I.N. Phelps Stokes, whose own residence was at 953 Fifth Avenue, midway down the block, 956 Fifth Avenue was transformed into a 15-story high-rise after the zoning laws for this section of Fifth Avenue were successfully overturned to allow taller apartment buildings. The addition was managed by architect… Continue reading

955 Fifth Avenue

A sleek late design by Rosario Candelo, 955 Fifth Avenue is a subtle building with extensive fluting on its façade and a gracefully setback crown. The building was completed in 1938, one of the few on Fifth Avenue erected during the Great Depression.

953 Fifth Avenue

Another “stretched” townhouse in appearance, 953 Fifth Avenue is a Beaux Arts sliver containing only half a dozen apartments and was designed by Isaac Newton Phelps Stokes, who also maintained a duplex here for himself and his wife. A society architect who also wrote the six-volume history The Iconography of Manhattan, Stokes was one of… Continue reading

952 Fifth Avenue

A pleasant Neo-Renaissance design, 952 Fifth Avenue was completed in 1923 and is the work of the architect Henry Otis Chapman.  Despite its small scale, it was built as an apartment house on a previously vacant site and is the only one on Fifth Avenue erected under a 75-foot height limit created to protect the… Continue reading

950 Fifth Avenue

Another of the many high-quality designs by J.E.R. Carpenter, 950 Fifth Avenue is an unusually slender building for its height, suggesting, particularly at the lower floors, a stretched version of the mansion it presumably replaced.  Like the Harkness Mansion at 1 East 75th Street, the narrow lot occasioned a side entrance, but here the building… Continue reading