Every Building on Fifth

Often mistaken for a wing of 980 Fifth Avenue, 985 Fifth Avenue shares its more controversial neighbor’s setback but seems more deserving of the “excruciatingly banal” epithet. The unusual sculpture in front (pictured above) is by Priscilla Kapel and is titled “The Castle”. The work might be intended as an ironic take on the Gothic… Continue reading

Erected in 1966, 980 Fifth Avenue replaced the Isaac Brokaw Mansion, a substantial if unimaginative chateau, with a building that historian Andrew S. Dolkart called “excruciatingly banal”.  Andrew Alpern’s estimation was even more withering: in his book “New York’s Fabulous Luxury Apartment Houses”, he opined of 990 Fifth Avenue that “all that has remained of… Continue reading

Perhaps the most opulent house on the Cook Block not actually fronting Fifth Avenue, 4 East 79th Street was originally designed by C.P.H. Gilbert in a Beaux Arts style for James E. Nichols that contrasted with the Chateauesque Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion next door.  After its purchase in 1916 by the Harriman Family, architect Herbert Lucas was… Continue reading

The Fletcher-Sinclair Mansion at 2 East 79th Street was designed by C.P.H. Gilbert, whose nearby 3 East 78th Street helped set the tone for the Cook Block overall. An exemplary work in the Chateauesque style, the house is an inventive mixture of French Gothic and early Renaissance elements reinterpreted for a New York townhouse; invented… Continue reading

The last remaining and arguably the best townhouse design on Fifth Avenue by McKim, Mead & White, the Payne Whitney House at 972 Fifth Avenue was designed by Stanford White as a wedding gift from Colonel Oliver H. Payne for his nephew Payne Whitney as a wedding gift.  Built in 1902-1906 on the garden plot… Continue reading