Carter's Review

This large and very attractive apartment building at 1060 Fifth Avenue on the northeast corner at 87^th Street has a very large and impressive lobby and an entrance on the side-street. 

Designed by J. E. R. Carpenter, the foremost designer of luxury apartment buildings in the early and mid-1920's, this building was completed in 1928 and converted to a co-operative in 1953. 

The 13-story building has 48 apartments.

Bottom Line

A large, pre-war apartment building with a handsome but conservative façade but very large and very gracious apartments with a canopied entrance on a quiet and attractive side-street in the Museum Mile area of Carnegie Hill.

Description

The brown-brick building has a three-story limestone base and a fenced plaza on the side-street where it also has a canopied entrance and sidewalk landscaping. 

The building has a balustraded roofline.

Amenities

The building has a doorman and a concierge, a gym with a pool and private storage.

Apartments

Many of the apartments have very wide and long entrance galleries and ceiling heights at 10 and 11 feet high. 

Apartment 5B has an entrance foyer that opens onto a 31-foot-long corner living room with a fireplace, an 18-foot-long library with a fireplace and a 24-foot-long dining room next to a 23-foot-long pantry and 24-foot-long kitchen with a breakfast area.  The apartment also has a 28-foot-long corridor that leads to a 23-foot-long family room, four bedrooms, a laundry room and a maid’s rooms. 

Apartment 2A has a 12-foot-square entry foyer that opens onto a 30-foot-long corner living room with a fireplace, that leads to a 22-foot-long dining room and a 13-foot-long kitchen, an 18-foot-long library, and a 21-foot-long bedroom with a fireplace.  The apartment also has a 10-foot-wide home office, a maid’s rooms and three other bedrooms including one that is 22-foot-long with a very large bay window facing east. 

A two-bedroom unit has a 22-foot-wide entrance gallery that leads to a 29-foot-long living room with a fireplace that opens onto an 18-foot—long dining room next to a 11-foot-long pantry and a 13-foot-long, windowed kitchen.  The unit also has two maid’s rooms. 

History

The building replaced the very imposing, gracious and handsome mansion of Henry Phipps, a partner of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie, whose huge home with large fenced garden is now the National Design Museum three blocks to the north on the avenue. 

The three-story Phipps mansion also had a very large driveway and garden on the side-street, albeit with only a low balustraded fence. 

The building’s window pattern on the avenue "masks an intricate set of apartments that permitted higher ceilings and larger-sized rooms on the upper floors where the views over the park were better," noted Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and Thomas Mellins in their book, "New York 1930, Architecture and Urbanism Between The Two World Wars," (Rizzoli International, 1987). 

In 1946, the building has acquired by David H. Knott, who also was the owner at the time of 927 Fifth Avenue, from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. 

An article by Josh Barbanel in the October 5, 2008 edition of The New York Times said that “city records filed last month show that Scott A. Bommer, the founding partner of SAB Capital Management, a hedge fund, sold the city’s most expensive co-op, at 1060 Fifth Avenue, for $48.9 million, six months after buying it for $456 million (just about covering his transaction costs.”  “The co-op consisted of two separate apartments,” the article continued, “but Mr. Bommer and his wife, Donya, a former television anchor in Philadelphia, needed to go through the headache of getting permission to combine and renovate the units.” 

An article by Sarah Kershaw in the September 22, 2011 edition of the cityroomblog of nytimes.com noted that the Boomers bought the five-bedroom co-op at 927 Fifth from William Lie Zeckendorf for $34.6 million.”  The article indicated that in August, 2011, “the Bommers sold a $30 million apartment at the Ritz-Carlton, which they bought in 2008 for $28.5 million."

Location

The building has a superb location, one block north of where most Fifth Avenue parades end and one block east of a large supermarket. It is also one block south of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.