By Carter B. Horsley
This handsome, mid-block apartment house was built in 1927 and converted to a cooperative in 1948.
It was designed by Emery Roth, the architect also of 870, 880, 993, 1125 and 1200 Fifth Avenue, the Ritz Tower on Park Avenue at 57th Street and the San Remo and Beresford buildings on Central Park West among many others.
The 15-story building, which has stunning views of Central Park, has only 16 apartments and is just to the north of the very handsome Georgian-style mansion designed by Delano & Aldrich in 1913 that was built for Willard Straight and for many years was the International Center of Photography but was converted back to a single-family residence in 2002.
This Carnegie Hill stretch of Fifth Avenue is very attractive as it was fully developed before World War II and has a very consistent architectural character, interrupted only by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s famous curved building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright several blocks south at 89th Street.
This area has many private schools and there are several nice restaurants nearby on Madison Avenue. Cross-town bus service is at 96th and 97th Streets. This is one of the quietest areas of Fifth Avenue. Stewart Mott, a General Motors heir, bought the penthouse in this building after he moved from a four-level penthouse at the Galleria on East 57th Street (see The City Review article on that building.)