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About 875 Fifth Avenue
This 121-unit, cooperative apartment building is on the site of three mansions, one of which belonged to Ogden L. Mills and had been designed by Richard M. Hunt. Hunt had been the mentor of Emery Roth, the architect of the high-rise building now on the site.
Originally, the building had 134 apartments, eight of which were duplexes, with a total of 560 rooms.
The building was completed in 1941 and is notable for its streamlined, Moderne style, highlighted by the glass-brick, rounded corners of the watertank enclosure. There are rounded bay windows above the first setback on the avenue façade and also on most of the sidestreet façade.
The building's avenue frontage is not symmetrical and is nicely modulated by a central section accented by vertical piers.
Roth, who designed many of the most famous towers on Central Park West such as the San Remo and the Beresford, was the architect also of 880 Fifth Avenue, just across 69th Street, and 930 Fifth Avenue, a few blocks to the north.
The entrance is simple but handsome with polished granite fluting and the building's avenue number is in bronze above its fairly unusual revolving door entrance.
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