993 Fifth Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 993 Fifth Avenue by Carter Horsley

This very distinguished, limestone-clad, luxury apartment building at 993 Fifth Avenue between 80^th and 81^st Streets was designed by Emery Roth in 1930.  It is across the avenue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art whose grand staircase entrance is one-and-half-blocks to the north. 

The 19-story, Italian Renaissance-style building has only 17 apartments, most with two or more wood-burning fireplaces. 

The developer was HRH Construction.

Bottom Line

This is one of the avenue’s most prominent and distinctive pre-war apartment buildings with a great paneled lobby and a very distinctive top.

Description

This building has a very distinctive top and a very ornate base. 

It has a three-story rusticated base and the fourth story has some very attractive decorative window surrounds and the fifth floor has some decorative panels. 

The building has a very impressive three-and-a-half-story decorative entrance surround. 

The 13^th floor has three very attractive window surrounds beneath a balustrated roofline for the first of five setbacks.

The top of the building has a balustraded roofline with corner finials beneath a windowed top floor with a tile roof and a center finial.

The building permits protruding window air-conditioners.

The building has a very handsome, dark-wood paneled lobby and sidewalk landscaping.

In "Mansions in the Clouds, The Skyscraper Palazzi of Emery Roth" (Balsam Press Inc., 1986), Steven Ruttenbaum provided the following commentary about this building:

"The exterior architectural styling of 993 Fifth Avenue was just as lavishly executed as the interior spaces....The entrance was flanked by two-story pilasters and was crowned with three grand cartouches surmounting each other up the façade....Like the base, the upper floors were embellished with classical balustrades and ornate window surrounds that incorporated broken pediments and more cartouches. The water tower itself was capped by a pyramidal red tile roof and was punctuated by urn-shaped finials."

Amenities

The building has a doorman and sidewalk landscaping but no roof deck and no balconies and no garage.

Apartments

Apartment 6A has a 27-foot-long entrance gallery that leads to a 29-foot-long corner living room with a fireplace next to a 19-foot-long enclosed dining room adjacent to a 10-foot-long pantry off the 16-foot-long kitchen.  The apartment also has a 20-foot-long library, three bedrooms, a maid’s room and a laundry. 

Apartment 6B is a three-bedroom unit that has an entry foyer that opens into a 24-foot-long living room and 12-foot-long adjoining open den and a 10-foot-long open dining area off the 12-foot-long kitchen. 

The two-bedroom apartment on the 16^th floor has a 52-foot-long living/dining area with a fireplace next to a 15-foot-long family room and an 19-foot-long eat-in kitchen next to a 15-foot-long laundry room. 

History

In a February 2, 2004 article in The New York Observer, Gabriel Sherman wrote that "the estate of banking tycoon Arthur Altschul is pulling no punches in its efforts to sell the family home at 993 Fifth Avenue, after the co-op board scotched an earlier multimillion-dollar deal to sell the 12-room, 12^th floor apartment in October, 2003. 

Mr. Altschul was a former general partner at Goldman, Sachs and Co., and chairman of General American Investors and the Overbrook Foundation, a charitable group founded by his parents with assets of more than $150 million. Mr. Altschul was a major collector of American late 19th Century and early 20th Century art. He died in 2002 at the age of 81. 

Other prominent residents have included Roy R. Neuberger, who was also a prominent art collector, George M. Cohen, the “Yankee Doodle Dandy song and dance man of Broadway, and Howard Rubenstein, the famous public relations consultant. 

The site was formerly occupied by the mansion of Louis Stern, a founder of Stern Brothers, the dry goods concern.  It was a very ornate townhouse built in 1887 and designed by Schickel & Ditmars.