834 Fifth Avenue is an ultraluxury residential apartment building in Manhattan, New York City. It is located on Fifth Avenue at the corner of East 64th Street opposite the Central Park Zoo in Central Park. The limestone-clad building was designed by Rosario Candela, a prolific designer of luxury apartment buildings in Manhattan during the period between World War I and World War II.
834 Fifth Avenue is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious apartment houses in the United States. This status is due to the building's overall architecture, the scale and layout of the apartments, and the notoriety of its current and past residents. The building was contructed in 1931, and was one of the final luxury apartment houses completed before the Great Depression halted such projects in New York City. Its street facing facades are composed entirely of limestone. Elements of Art Deco styling was utilized on the entry ways and portions of the Fifth Avenue facade. The building uses setbacks at the upper floors to create terraces for several apartments and provide visual interest from a distance.
The building is incorporated as a housing cooperative. Tenants technically own shares in the corporation which owns the building; those shares entitle the owner to occupy a designated unit in the bulding. Similar to other ultraluxury apartment buildings in New York City, a person who purchases a unit in the building must pay entirely in cash for the apartment. No mortgage financing is allowed. In addition, the cooperative's board is rumored to require potential buyers to possess liquid assets in excess of ten times the value of the purchased unit.
834 Fifth has 24 apartments on 16 floors. There are three maisonette apartments, units which have entrances from the street as well as from the building's interior lobby. The upper floors contain a preponderence of duplex units and one triplex. The building occupies a plot of land which is approximately 150' by 100' and rises sixteen stories, allowing for very spacious units. The building's apartments range in size from approximately 4,000 sq. ft. to well over 7,000 sq ft. Very few apartments have layouts similar to each other. Many of the apartments are duplex units; in fact, the entire southern side of the buidling along 64th Street is composed of duplex apartments. These duplex units are typically 6,000-7,000 sq ft with large entertaining rooms and four to five bedrooms each. Apartments in the building generally have ceiling heights of eleven feet or greater.
Past and current residents include:
- Laurance Rockefeller (who owned the building before it became a cooperative, and resided in the penthouse triplex for nearly fifty years)
- Rupert Murdoch (founder of the Fox Network, BSkyB)
- Loida Lewis (business woman, philanthropist, widow of Reginald Lewis)
- Leslie Wexner (founder, The Limited)
- John and Susan Gutfreund (former chairman of Salomon Brothers)
- Elzabeth Arden (founder of the eponymous cosmetics company)
- Harold Price (the Broadway producer)
- Carroll Petrie (a philanthropist, widow of the founder of Petrie Stores)
- Alfred Taubman (shopping mall developer, former chairman of Sothebys)
- John Delorean (former automotive magnate)
The co-op gained recent international notoriety when Rupert Mudoch paid $44 million for the apartment formerly owned by Laurance Rockefeller. At the time, this was the largest amount paid in New York City history for a residential property, and was a significant premium to the price paid for another famous apartment, the Rockefeller penthouse at 740 Park Avenue. That apartment sold for approximately $30 million (despite press reports claiming a $36 million price). The 834 Fifth Rockefeller apartment contained twenty rooms spread over 8,000 sq ft of interior space and 4,000 sq ft of terraces.
Apartments in the building rarely come to market, and typically command prices over $3000 per square foot or $15 to $20 million.
Peer buildings in New York City with similar social prestige and architectural quality include 820 Fifth Avenue, 960 Fifth Avenue, 720 Park Avenue and 740 Park Avenue. Other very prestigious apartment houses include 1040 Fifth Avenue, 730 Park Avenue, 770 Park Avenue, 778 Park Avenue, River House, the Dakota, the San Remo and the Beresford.