810 Fifth Avenue Northeast corner 62nd Street; block 1377, lot 1 Architect: James E.R. Carpenter Builder: 810 Fifth Avenue, Inc., 300 Madison Avenue; Abraham Bricken, president; J. Freedman, treasurer. Filed: October 2, 1925 Begun: December 17, 1925 Completed: 1926 This 13-story apartment house with 13 units, most of 13 rooms, was built on the site of the house of Mrs. Hamilton Fish. In April 1924, architect F. Burrall Hoffman, Jr. filed plans for an apartment building on the site to obtain certain tax advantages before they expired, the actual plans for the structure being filed 18 months later by James E.R.
Carpenter. In 1937, architect Wallace K. Harrison filed plans to combine the 12th floor simplex with the 13th floor/penthouse duplex, creating the triplex in which Nelson Rockefeller lived until he divorced his first wife and married Mrs. Margaretta Fitler Murphy. Rockefeller then severed the 12th floor space and added it to a full-floor apartment in the new apartment building adjoining at 812 Fifth Avenue, leaving the restored penthouse duplex to his ex-wife, the former Mary Todhunter Clark (following her death, in 2000 sold for $16 million). In 1963, former Vice President Richard Nixon bought the fifth floor apartment, and five years later Nixon was battling his upstairs neighbor for the presidency of the United States.
Figure 13. 810 Fifth Avenue: lobby rendering. (Collection of Andrew Alpern)
Figure 14. 810 Fifth Avenue. (Wurts Brothers; courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York)