A resident of 834 Fifth Avenue once
worked with him on 960 Fifth
nearby apartment houses at 720,
asked, “Why would you move out of
Avenue) to design a symmetrical,
740, 770, and 778 Park Avenue—
834 unless you’ve died?”2
tapering, sixteen-story superluxury
exuberant architecture reflecting the
apartment house, one that would
bubble of the 1920s economic boom,
tried unsuccessfully for two years to
break out of the mold of the cornice-
dotted with terraces and featuring
buy all six town houses along the
topped palazzo that had been firmly
spectacular duplex and triplex
blockfront between Sixty-Fourth and
established by 998 Fifth Avenue
penthouses that were unquestionably
Sixty-Fifth Streets, but the corners
at its completion in 1912. Here would
mansions in the sky.
remained holdouts. Moving ahead,
be a skyscraper further refining designs
he hired Rosario Candela (after having
Candela already had underway for
Developer Anthony Campagna
The building ended up asymmetrical when Margaret V. Haggin capitulated after construction started and sold her town house on the corner of SixtyFourth Street to Campagna. Completed in 1931 after two years of construction, the 187,000-square-foot structure had twenty-four palatial homes with sizes ranging from 4,000 to 7,000 square feet, including two maisonettes and several spectacular duplexes. Stockbrokerage kingpin Charles Schwab had a penthouse. Bing Crosby’s son Harry lived in one of the maisonettes. Phantom of the Opera producer Hal Prince had a home there. Leslie Wexner, president and CEO of Limited Brands, moved there from an 18,000-square-foot Stanford White–designed town house at 25 East Seventy-Eighth Street. In 1948 Laurance S. Rockefeller hired the architecture firm Harrison & Abramovitz, later known for the corporate office towers it designed in the 1950s and 1960s, to create a sprawling triplex penthouse, now the home of News Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch. Apartment 3/4C has huge public rooms for entertaining. A 31-footlong entry gallery framing a grand curved stair opens to a living room and library facing Central Park, bookended by marble fireplaces. Combined, the rooms are almost 60 feet long. Higher up, above the park’s treetops in the 4,750-squarefoot 13/14A, a private elevator landing opens onto a double-height foyer facing a grand circular stair. To the right is a 19-by-29-foot living room centered on a dramatic fireplace, beyond which is a library with its own terrace facing the park and midtown. Upstairs, both the master bedroom and master bath also face the park. This all-limestone building overlooking the Central Park Zoo is one of the most desirable on the avenue and one of Candela’s finest.
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