930 Fifth Avenue is a luxury apartment building on Fifth Avenue on the northeast corner of

East 74th Street 74th Street is an east–west street carrying pedestrian traffic and eastbound automotive/bicycle traffic in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs through the Upper East Side neighborhood (in ZIP code 10021, where it is known as East ...

in the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The eighteen-story structure and penthouse was designed by noted architect

Emery Roth Emery Roth ( hu, Róth Imre, July 17, 1871 – August 20, 1948) was an American architect of Hungarian-Jewish descent who designed many of the definitive New York City hotels and apartment buildings of the 1920s and 1930s, incorporating Beaux ...

and built in 1940. According to architecture critic

Paul Goldberger Paul Goldberger (born in 1950) is an American author, architecture critic and lecturer. He is known for his "Sky Line" column in ''The New Yorker''. Biography Shortly after starting as a reporter at ''The New York Times'' in 1972, he was assign ...

, 930 and 875 Fifth Avenue show Roth in transition from historicist to modern

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

style. The Fifth Avenue location previously held three private residences which were the estates of

Gordon S. Rentschler Gordon Sohn Rentschler (November 25, 1885 – March 3, 1948) was a chairman of First National City Bank, a predecessor of Citigroup. Biography Rentschler was born in Hamilton, Ohio, on November 25, 1885. His father was George A. Rentschler, ...

Jacob Schiff Jacob (; ; ar, يَعْقُوب, Yaʿqūb; gr, Ἰακώβ, Iakṓb), later given the name Israel, is regarded as a patriarch of the Israelites and is an important figure in Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ja ...

and Simeon B. Chapin, and were bought by

Percy The English surname Percy is of Norman origin, coming from Normandy to England, United Kingdom. It was from the House of Percy, Norman lords of Northumberland, derives from the village of Percy-en-Auge in Normandy. From there, it came into use ...

and Harold D. Uris and razed for the new building,("Steel work is nearing completion on this eighteen-story and penthouse apartment building at 930 Fifth Avenue.") which has been described as featuring "a restrained

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( it, Rinascimento ) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Europe and marked the trans ...

style." The building is located within the

Upper East Side Historic District The Upper East Side Historic District is a landmarked historic district on the Upper East Side of New York City's borough of Manhattan, first designated by the city in 1981. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Its b ...

Critical reception

A 1978 review of Roth's work by architecture critic

in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' commented that "the Roth firm took on modernism slowly--

the Normandy The Normandy is a cooperative apartment building at 140 Riverside Drive, between 86th and 87th Streets, adjacent to Riverside Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by architect Emery Roth in a mixture of the Ar ...

apartments of 1938 at 140 Riverside Drive have an Art Deco-like base, but the ornamental housing for the water tower lurches back suddenly to the Italian Renaissance. There were a few other such schizophrenic designs from the 1930s and buildings such as 930 Fifth Avenue and 875 Fifth Avenue of 1940 show a gradual disappearance of the old ornament." In 1981, the ''Times'' remarked of the residential buildings constructed by the

Uris Brothers Uris Buildings Corporation was a New York City commercial real estate development company created by Harold and Percy Uris in 1960 from a predecessor private partnership. They retained 60% ownership in the corporation. One of the last buildings ...

, "930 Fifth Avenue, 2 Sutton Place, and 880 Fifth Avenue, are among the city's best residential addresses today." Residents of the building have included

Samuel and Bella Spewack Bella (25 March 1899 – 27 April 1990) and Samuel Spewack (16 September 1899 – 14 October 1971) were a husband-and-wife writing team. Samuel, who also directed many of their plays, was born in Ukraine. He attended Stuyvesant High School in N ...

Patrick Dennis Edward Everett Tanner III (18 May 1921 – 6 November 1976), known by the pseudonym Patrick Dennis, was an American author. His novel '' Auntie Mame: An irreverent escapade'' (1955) was one of the bestselling American books of the 20 ...

Cornelius Vander Starr Cornelius Vander Starr (October 15, 1892 – December 20, 1968), sometimes known as Neil Starr, was an American businessman and founder of C.V. Starr & Co. (later known as Starr Companies) in Shanghai, China, which became AIG. AIG grew from an ...

Ira Millstein Ira Martin Millstein is an American antitrust lawyer, professor, and author. He is a senior partner at Weil, Gotshal & Manges and the longest-practicing partner in big law, according to Reuters. Biography Millstein graduated from Bronx High ...

Risë Stevens Risë Stevens (; June 11, 1913 – March 20, 2013) was an American operatic mezzo-soprano and actress. Beginning in 1938, she sang for the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for more than two decades during the 1940s and 1950s. She was most ...

, Nancy Hanks,

Woody Allen Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...

and Eldridge Haynes.

References

{{Coord, 40.773814, -73.965561, display=title Art Deco architecture in Manhattan Condominiums and housing cooperatives in Manhattan Emery Roth buildings Fifth Avenue Residential buildings completed in 1940 Residential skyscrapers in Manhattan Upper East Side 1940 establishments in New York City