During a little Sunday perusal of the NY T's Real estate section and archives I stumbled across yet another stunning creation by McKim, Mead & White- 998 Fifth Avenue. Read my favorite snippet and search "998 Fifth Avenue" on the NY T's homepage for the full article or google images for jaw dropping floorplans.
"In 1909, Lee and Charles R. Fleischmann bought the northeast corner of 81st and Fifth from the financier August Belmont, who had contemplated building his own mansion there. Lee hired the firm of McKim, Mead & White, which designed many of New York's grandest buildings, ranging from the Metropolitan Club at 60th and Fifth to the old Penn Station.
Residential Fifth Avenue had seen a few apartment buildings by 1910, but nothing like the 12-story 998 Fifth Avenue. McKim, Mead & White developed an all-limestone exterior in the Italian Renaissance style -- the exterior, for its time, looked more like a bank or a private club. Lee had the vision to combine the sensible efficiencies of a multiple dwelling with the scale of a country house, using an architectural language understood by families with housing budgets measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That vocabulary included wine rooms, safes for jewelry and silver, elevators paneled in French walnut, non-tarnishing gold-plated hardware, nine coats of paint, refrigerators six feet wide and eight feet high, and seven bedrooms. In the typical apartment the dining room was 21 by 25 feet, a central oval salon was 16 by 20 and the living room was 21 by 24; all were flanked by a gallery that was 14 by 36. There were six to nine servants' rooms per apartment."
Written by: Christopher Gray.
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