907 Fifth Avenue is a luxury residential

housing cooperative A housing cooperative, or housing co-op, is a legal entity, usually a cooperative or a corporation, which owns real estate, consisting of one or more residential buildings; it is one type of housing tenure. Housing cooperatives are a distinc ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, United States. The 12-story, limestone-faced building is located at

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping stre ...

and 72nd Street on a site once occupied by the 1893 residence of James A. Burden, which had been designed by

R. H. Robertson Robert Henderson Robertson (April 29, 1849 – June 3, 1919) was an American architect who designed numerous houses, institutional and commercial buildings, and churches. Life and career Robertson was born in Philadelphia of Scot ...

. The apartment block, built in 1916, was the first apartment building to replace a private mansion on Fifth Avenue above 59th Street. It was converted to a cooperative in 1955.

J. E. R. Carpenter James Edwin Ruthven Carpenter Jr. (January 7, 1867 – June 11, 1932) was the leading architect of luxury residential high-rise buildings in New York City in the early 1900s. Biography He studied at the University of Tennessee and at the Mas ...

was the architect; he would be called upon to design many of the luxury apartment buildings that gave a new scale to Fifth Avenue in the 'teens and twenties of the 20th century. The building won him the 1916 gold medal of the

American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...

. The building has the aspect of an

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

palazzo A palace is a grand residence, especially a royal residence, or the home of a head of state or some other high-ranking dignitary, such as a bishop or archbishop. The word is derived from the Latin name palātium, for Palatine Hill in Rome which ...

, built around a central court. Its first four floors are lightly rusticated; deep

quoin Quoins ( or ) are masonry blocks at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic detail to a corner. According to one 19th century encyclopedia, t ...

s carry the rusticated feature up the corners to the boldly projecting top cornice. A strong secondary cornice above the fourth floor once made a conciliatory nod to the cornice lines of the private houses that flanked it, whose owners had fought its construction in court. When it opened, there were two 12-room apartments on most floors.

Notable residents

* Huguette M. Clark (1906–2011), the reclusive heiress, owned all of the eighth floor and half of the 12th. *

William C. Durant William Crapo Durant (December 8, 1861 – March 18, 1947) was a leading pioneer of the United States automobile industry and co-founder of General Motors and Chevrolet. He created a system in which a company held multiple marques – each s ...

(1861–1947), pioneer of the US automobile industry; co-founded General Motors and Chevrolet, founded Frigidaire. *

Richard Gilder Richard Gilder Jr. (May 31, 1932 – May 12, 2020), was an American philanthropist and co-founder of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. He also headed the brokerage firm Gilder, Gagnon, Howe & Co., whose specialty is tradi ...

(1932–2020), philanthropist * Rudolph J. Heinemann, art dealer. * Tali Farhadian Weinstein (born 1974 or 1975), former US federal prosecutor *

Frederick Iseman Frederick J. Iseman is an American businessman, philanthropist, and the founder of CI Capital Partners (formerly Caxton-Iseman Capital) private-equity firm. Early life and education Iseman is the son of Joseph S. Iseman, a noted New York City ...

, financier, bought Clark's former apartment #8W in November 2012 for $22.5 million * J. Frederic Kernochan (1842–1929), attorney and socialite *

Herbert L. Pratt Herbert Lee Pratt (November 21, 1871 – February 3, 1945) was an American businessman and a leading figure in the United States oil industry. In 1923, he became head of Standard Oil of New York; his father Charles Pratt was a founder of Astr ...

, a Standard Oil Company vice president, rented the largest apartment in the building, starting in 1916, at a rent of $30,000 a year, which occupied the entire top floor, with 25 rooms * William H. Remick (1866–1922), president of the New York Stock Exchange. *

Boaz Weinstein Boaz Weinstein (born 1973) is an American hedge fund manager and founder of Saba Capital Management. He rose to prominence at Deutsche Bank in the early and mid 2000s with his credit default swap and capital structure arbitrage trading strategi ...

, hedge fund manager and founder of Saba Capital Management, bought Clark's twelfth floor apartment, 12W, for $25.5 million in 2012. *

Samuel Barber Samuel Osmond Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. The music critic Donal Henahan said, "Proba ...

(1910–1981), composer.

References

{{Fifth Avenue Residential buildings in Manhattan Condominiums and housing cooperatives in Manhattan Fifth Avenue Upper East Side Residential buildings completed in 1915 1915 establishments in New York City