The 12-story, limestone-faced building is located atFifth Avenue and72nd Street on a site once occupied by the 1893 residence ofJames A. Burden, which had been designed byR. H. Robertson. The apartment block, built in 1916, was the first apartment building to replace a private mansion on Fifth Avenue above59th 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 1910s and 1920s.[2] The building won him the 1916 gold medal of theAmerican Institute of Architects.[3]
The building has the aspect of anItalian Renaissancepalazzo, built around a central court. Its first four floors are lightlyrusticated; deepquoins 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]
