Starrett & Van Vleck (active 1907–1957) designed 820 Fifth Avenue (1916), the 12-story limestone cooperative at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and East 63rd Street that is among the earliest full-block-deep luxury cooperative apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue. The building's full-floor configuration — each apartment occupying its entire ~13,500-sqft floor plate — makes it one of the most exclusive residential addresses in Manhattan, with only twelve apartments in the building's century of operation. The firm's broader portfolio is dominated by commercial work, including the Bloomingdale's flagship at 59th and Lexington and Saks Fifth Avenue's Fifth Avenue store; 820 Fifth represents an unusual concentration of luxury residential design ambition for what was primarily a department-store-architecture firm.
Biography
