834 Fifth Avenue Northeast corner of 64th Street; block 1379, lot 1 Architect: Rosario Candela Builder: 833 Fifth Avenue Corporation, 551 Fifth Avenue; Anthony Campagna, president; Michael Campagna, vice-president. Filed: September 18, 1929 Begun: October 21, 1929 Completed: May 9, 1931 Of the six houses on the block front between 64th and 65th Streets, Campagna had been able to acquire only the four central ones after two years of negotiating. As a result, the plans he originally filed were for a symmetrical, 120-foot-wide structure on the mid-block site of those houses. After construction work was well along using that first design, the holdout house at the 64th Street corner was acquired from owner Margaret V. Haggin. In April 1930, the plans were changed to accommo-
date the larger site and the building was asymmetrically extended southward. Mrs. Haggin was the second wife and widow of James Ben Ali Haggin, who had died in his 90s about 1915. She moved into a duplex apartment in the newly completed 834 Fifth Avenue, and remained there until her own death in 1965. The original complement of apartments included two duplex maisonettes and an unusually large number of duplex units on the upper floors. Seeking even more space, Laurance Rockefeller retained architects Harrison & Abramovitz in 1948 to create a spacious penthouse triplex at the top of the building and never thought it necessary to move anywhere else. In 1997, an upper-floor apartment in the building sold for $11.9 million, and the 5,000-square-foot north duplex maisonette sold for $4.3 million to the son of Bing Crosby (monthly maintenance of $5,000).
Figure 19. 834 Fifth Avenue. (Wurts Brothers; courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York)