955 Fifth Avenue: Review and Ratings

Review of 955 Fifth Avenue by Carter Horsley

This handsome, mid-block co-operative apartment building at 955 Fifth Avenue between 76^th and 77^th Street was built in 1938 and designed by Rosario Candela, one of the most celebrated architects of luxury pre-war residential buildings in the city. Anthony Campagna was the developer.

The 18-story building has 30 units.

Bottom Line

One of the lasts luxury apartment buildings erected on the Upper East Side before World War II, this Rosario Candela-designed, mid-block building is notable for its subtle and graceful fluting of parts of its façade. It also has a prime location along one of the quieter stretches of Fifth Avenue.

Description

The building has a canopied entrance and a one-story, rusticated limestone beneath three stories of broadly fluted limestone. It has sidewalk landscaping.

It has inconsistent fenestration and no longer has multi-paned windows and permits window air-conditioners.

The building has a distinctive top with a symmetrical setback above the 14^th floor that narrows gracefully with a curved climb to the next floor.  There are two more setbacks at the top of the building and a center, fluted pier from the top floor to the handsome watertank enclosure that also has three narrow vertical accents.

Amenities

The building has a doorman, a gym, and a roof deck.  It is also pet friendly.

Apartments

The typical floor had two identical, two-bedroom apartments, each with a 15-foot-long entry foyer leading to a 26-foot-long living room with a wood-burning fireplace and a 21-foot-long dining room with a semi-circular end leading to a pantry, a 13-foot-long kitchen and two maid’s rooms at the rear of the building.

Apartment 13B is a two-bedroom unit with a 17-foot-long entry gallery that leads to a 26-foot-long living room with a fireplace adjacent to a library with a fireplace.  The apartment has a 19-foot-long dining room with a semi-circular end leading to a 10-foot-long kitchen next to a 9-foot-long laundry and a 9-foot-square staff room.

Apartment 15/16B is a three-bedroom duplex that has a 29-foot-long living room with a wood-burning fireplace across from the entrance to a 42-foot-long terrace adjacent to a 17-foot-long un room entered from the 24-foot-long dining room with a curved end next to a 20-fioot-long kitchen.  The upper level has three bedrooms, one with a bay windows and a 8-foot-wide corner terrace. 

History

In 1997, the two-bedroom duplex penthouse of Robert Redford, the actor, was listed for almost $4 million.

According to Andrew Alpern’s excellent book, “The New York Apartment Houses of Rosario Candela and J. E. R. Carpenter, “this stripped-own art modern limestone-fronted apartment houses replaced the more classically detailed limestone-fronted town houses of Samuel Bridgham and J. Horace Harding.  “Reflecting the strained economic realities of the late 1930s,” Mr. Alpern continued, “the building’s advertising stressed its ‘careful planning to meet the modern trend of simplified living’ and noted that it offered ‘atmosphere and service on a basis of moderation in size and expense never before available.”