2 East 67th Street aka 856 Fifth Avenue
A handsome limestone design by Rosario Candela, 2 East 67th Street was completed in 1928. The façade incorporates an upper-level loggia, a device associated with the Italian Renaissance and not commonly seen in New York City. During construction, the developer was engaged in a lawsuit with a neighbor over who had the rights to the… Continue reading
854 Fifth Avenue, the R. Livingston Beeckman House
One of a relative handful of Fifth Avenue mansions surviving from the Gilded Age, the R. Livingston Beeckman House of 1905 at 854 Fifth Avenue is a temperate essay in French Beaux Arts by Warren & Wetmore, best known for Grand Central Terminal. Unusually narrow for a house of its type, it appears more so… Continue reading
Just Off Fifth: The Lotus Club, 5 East 66th Street
A private club with a focus on arts & letters, the Lotus Club was founded in 1870 and has counted Mark Twain, Orson Welles, Margaret Mead and Wynton Marsalis. The organization takes its name from the poem “The Lotus Eaters” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who describes a land “in which it seemed always afternoon”. Its… Continue reading
One East 66th Street
One East 66th Street is the first building on upper Fifth Avenue to dispense with the fiction of an actual avenue address. A bit of an oddity, the not-quite-Art Deco structure was the last design of the great Rosario Candelo, who completed it in 1930 – yet the building itself was not begun until 1947,… Continue reading
4 East 66th Street/845 Fifth Avenue
A conservative but well-proportioned building, 4 East 66th Street, also known as 845 Fifth Avenue, was designed by J.E.R. Carpenter in 1920. Carpenter was at the front of new zoning changes for this stretch of Fifth Avenue, bringing a lawsuit against the city that resulted in the widespread development of the Upper East Side with… Continue reading