Carter's Review

This handsome, 19-story, beige-brick apartment house at 1050 Fifth Avenue on the northeast corner at 86^th Street was built as a cooperative in 1960 and commands spectacular views of Central Park. 

The building benefits greatly from expanded views afforded it by the handsome, Georgian-style mansion at 1048 Avenue on the south side of 86^th Street.  That building  was built in 1914 for William Starr Miller and was the home from 1949 to 1953 of the widow of Cornelius Vanderbilt III and then the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research and was converted in the late 1990's to the Serge Sabarsky Museum of German Expressionist Art and is known as the Neue Galleries. 

The 90-unit apartment building at 1050 Fifth Avenue and was designed by Wechsler & Schimenti and building by Bernard Spitzer and Melvin D. Lipman.  It originally had 97 apartments.

Bottom Line

One of the avenue’s nicer post-war apartment buildings with many views of Central Park and a very handsome lobby with a fountain.

Description

The first story of the building, which has an attractive, canopied entrance with lush sidewalk landscaping, is clad in limestone. 

The building has a very large and impressive lobby with iron doors, marble floors and columns and a yellow marble fountain that were formerly in the Morton Plant mansion on the site. 

The building has many terraces, some balconies and a garage. 

Amenities

The building has a doorman, a gym, a laundry, storage and a garage.  It is pet friendly.

Apartments

Apartment 16A has a 14-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 24-foot-long living room with a 25-foot-long terrace that also opens to two of the unit’s four bedrooms.  The apartment also has a 18-foot-long dining room with a corner window next to the 17-foot-long, windowed kitchen and an 11-foot-long maid’s room. 

Apartment 19A is a three-bedroom unit that has a large entry foyer that leads to a large living room with a large angled adjacent library that leads to an angled terrace.  The unit also has a large enclosed dining room next to a large kitchen and a maid’s room. 

Apartment 8E has a 12-foot-wide dining foyer that leads to a 24-foot-long living room, an 11-foot-long kitchen, and three bedrooms. 

Apartment 12C is a one-bedroom unit that has a 13-foot-long entry foyer that leads to a 25-foot-long living room next to a 17-foot-long library that is adjacent to a 17-foot-long kitchen.apartments.

History

The building is on the former site of the large and very handsome, 40-room Rovensky mansion that was designed by Guy Lowell in 1916, an 1904 house designed by Herts & Tallant and nineteenth century townhouses at 1 and 3 East 86^th Street. 

In their great book, “New York 1960, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and The Bicentennial,” Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins and David Fishman, wrote that the mansion was “a last vestige of the avenue's gilded era,” adding that it had been “designed for the shipping and railroad tycoon Morton F. Plant and his second wife, the former Mae Caldwell Manwaring, who married financier John Rovensky after Plant's death in 1918." 

Mrs. Rovensky entertained lavishly in the mansion and also at Clarendon Court, her house designed by Horace Trumbauer in Newport, R.I., that was subsequently acquired by Claus and Sunny von Bulow. 

In a December 14, 1956 article in The New York Times, Sanka Knox wrote that “four times married, Mrs. Rovenksy was a Lillian Russell type of beauty,” adding that “A Hartford girl, she first married Selden M. Manwaring, also of Hartford.  They were divorced in 1914.  She next was married to Morton F. Plant, who died in 1918….In 1917, the Plants built the forty-room house on upper fifth Avenue.  They had been making their home at Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Second Street and, according to reports, sold it to Cartier’s…for a necklace of fifty-five Oriental pearls valued at $1,500,000.” The article added that Mrs. Rovensky’s third husband, Col. William Hayward, died in 1944.  His son, Leland Hayward was a prominent theater producer, who was married to Pamela Digby Hayward, a daughter-in-law of Sir Winston Churchill, who married W. Averell Harriman, who was governor of New York from 1955 to 1959. 

A July 22, 1956 article in The Times said that “Mrs. Mae Cadwell Rovensky, heiress wife of John E. Rovensky, industrialist, banker and economist, died late today at her summer home, Clarendon court.”  The article said that Mr. Rovensky was formerly of Greenwich, Conn.  It also noted that she was a widow of Col. William Hayward, the organizer and commander of the 365^th Infantry of the 93^rd Division, an all-Negro regiment from New York ‘s Harlem in World War I,” adding that from 1921 to 1925 he served as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.  She inherited Clarendon Court from Colonel Hayward and Mr. Plant, a former commodore of the New York Yacht Club, reportedly left her $50 million. 

Location

The building is adjacent to a westbound cross-town bus stop and is in the heart of the Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile with many major institutions just a few blocks away. 

The location here is superb as the park views to the south are not overwhelmed by the reservoir, and a large supermarket is nearby as well as many convenience stores on Madison Avenue. Despite the cross-town buses, traffic on 86th Street is minimal here as the Central Park transverse roads in this area are at 85th and 84th Streets. Noise from parades, however, can be significant in the summer as many parades turn on 86th Street.