Fifth Avenue Duplex on the Market
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Famed architects McKim, Mead & White designed the sweeping 12-room duplex at 998 Fifth Ave. specially for the building’s developer, James Lee, who was a grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The property recently went on the market for the first time in decades, according to the listing information.
The grand limestone building at 81st Street, completed in 1912, is one of the first luxury apartment buildings built on tony Fifth Avenue, according to historian Andrew Alpern. The architects, who also designed the Metropolitan Club at 60th Street and Fifth Avenue and the old Penn Station, designed the apartment to Mr. Lee’s specifications.
It includes especially high ceilings, extensive paneling, elaborate moldings, and leaded, stained-glass windows. The oversized gallery, which has a grand curving staircase and a powder room, opens onto a library, a living room with a wood-burning fireplace, and a formal dining room.
“The architects made the building so lavish, well-designed, and constructed to blunt the resistance from the very rich to the idea of living in an apartment house rather than a grand mansion,” Mr. Alpern told The New York Sun. “Around 1910, apartment buildings were looked on as commercial be cause they were mostly rentals, rather than residential, which were considered low-rise houses.”
The apartments at 998 Fifth Ave. were all rentals and originally housed 18 families with rents of up to $25,000 a year. The doorman building was converted into a cooperative in 1953 and designated as an historic landmark in 1974.
It includes many of the conveniences of a house that were intended to make the wealthy residents feel more comfortable. There are wine storage rooms, jewelry safes, large salons, and servants’ rooms in every apartment.
Several famous tenants lived in the building, including the president of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1890s, Watson Bradley Dickerman, a vice president who served from 1889 to 1893 and later as governor of New York from 1895 to 1896, Levi Morton, and financier Murry Guggenheim.
In the unit designed for Lee, the lower level includes a windowed eat-in kitchen, two staff rooms, one staff bath, and a laundry and exercise room. The master bedroom suite, on the upper floor, has a marble bath and a large sitting room. There are three other bedrooms on the upper floor.
Sharon Baum of the Corcoran Group is the exclusive broker. The asking price is $18.5 million, with $7,371 in maintenance costs.