998 Fifth Avenue Apartment House
- Architect
- McKim, Mead & White
- Year
- 1912
- Style
- Renaissance Revival
- City
- Manhattan, NY
998 Fifth Avenue is a luxury cooperative apartment house at the northeast corner of East 81st Street, designed by McKim, Mead & White and built by James T. Lee between 1910 and 1912. The 150-foot, 12-story building is an Italian Renaissance Palazzo-style structure, one of the grand pre-war apartment houses that lined Fifth Avenue facing Central Park.
the building
Limestone facade. The building is sheathed almost entirely in limestone, with a matching terra cotta cornice. Balustrade stringcourses mark the divisions between base, body, and top, and every window above the stringcourse is capped with a pediment or cornice. Panels of escutcheons and light-yellow marble decorate the facade at four-floor intervals.
The lobby. The lobby walls, ceiling, and hallways are finished in tan Bottocino marble, with bronze grilles on the elevators. The interior court is 32.5 feet square and faced in off-white brick. Unlike neighboring buildings on the avenue, 998 Fifth was built with no penthouses.
the style
McKim, Mead & White modeled the building on the Italian Renaissance palazzo, giving a modern apartment house the horizontal massing and stone dress of a Roman or Florentine palace. The stringcourses, pedimented windows, and marble accent panels translate that palazzo vocabulary into a Fifth Avenue elevation.
More on Renaissance Revivalthe architect
McKim, Mead & White was a preeminent American architecture firm, and 998 Fifth Avenue was one of the luxury apartment commissions that helped establish the Renaissance palazzo as the template for New York's grandest cooperative buildings.
significance
998 Fifth Avenue was designated a New York City Individual Landmark (LP-00429) on February 19, 1974.
nearby
- Benjamin N. Duke House
- The Met Fifth Avenue
- House at 49 East 80th Street
- Church of St. Ignatius Loyola
- East 80th Street Houses
- 157 East 78th Street House