The 12-story, limestone-faced building is located at
Fifth Avenue and
72nd Street on a site once occupied by the 1893 residence of
James A. Burden, which had been designed by
R. H. Robertson. The apartment block, built in 1916, was the first apartment building to replace a private mansion on Fifth Avenue above
59th Street. It was converted to a cooperative in 1955.[1]J. E. R. Carpenter was the architect; he would be called upon to design many of the luxury apartment buildings that gave a new scale to Fifth Avenue in the 'teens and twenties of the 20th century.[2] The building won him the 1916 gold medal of the
American Institute of Architects.[3]
The building has the aspect of an
Italian Renaissancepalazzo, built around a central court. Its first four floors are lightly
rusticated; deep
quoins carry the rusticated feature up the corners to the boldly projecting top cornice. A strong secondary cornice above the fourth floor once made a conciliatory nod to the cornice lines of the private houses that flanked it, whose owners had fought its construction in court.[4] When it opened, there were two 12-room apartments on most floors.[1]
Herbert L. Pratt, a Standard Oil Company vice president, rented the largest apartment in the building, starting in 1916, at a rent of $30,000 a year, which occupied the entire top floor, with 25 rooms[4]