930 Fifth Avenue
Encyclopedia
930 Fifth Avenue is a luxury apartment building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The eighteen-story structure and penthouse was designed by noted architect Emery Roth
Emery Roth
Emery Roth was an American architect who designed many of the definitive New York City hotels and apartment buildings of the 1920s and 30s, incorporating Beaux-Arts and Art Deco details...

 and built in 1940. According to architecture critic Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger is the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City...

, 930 and 875 Fifth Avenue show Roth in transition from historicist to modern Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...

 style.

The Fifth Avenue location previously held three private residences which were the estates of Gordon S. Rentschler
Gordon S. Rentschler
Gordon Sohn Rentschler was a chairman of First National City Bank, a predecessor of Citigroup.He was born in Hamilton, Ohio. His father was George A. Rentschler one of the principals of the Hooven-Owens-Rentschler engine manufacturer. One of his daughters was married to Dean G. Witter...

, Jacob Schiff
Jacob Schiff
Jacob Henry Schiff, born Jakob Heinrich Schiff was a German-born Jewish American banker and philanthropist, who helped finance, among many other things, the Japanese military efforts against Tsarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.From his base on Wall Street, he was the foremost Jewish leader...

 and Simeon B. Chapin, and were bought by Percy and Harold D. Uris
Harold Uris
Harold D. Uris was an American builder, real estate investor and philanthropist. After earning a civil engineering degree from Cornell in 1925, Harold joined his brother, Percy, who had a 1920 business degree from Columbia University, and their father, Harris, founder of an ornamental ironwork...

 and razed for the new building, which has been described as featuring "a restrained Italian Renaissance
Renaissance architecture
Renaissance architecture is the architecture of the period between the early 15th and early 17th centuries in different regions of Europe, demonstrating a conscious revival and development of certain elements of ancient Greek and Roman thought and material culture. Stylistically, Renaissance...

 style." The building is located within the Upper East Side Historic District
Upper East Side Historic District
Upper East Side Historic District is a historic district that was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Its boundaries were increased in 2006....

.

A 1978 review of Roth's work by architecture critic Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger is the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City...

 in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 commented that "the Roth firm took on modernism slowly--the Normandy
The Normandy
The Normandy, at 140 Riverside Drive and 86th Street, is a luxury residential cooperative apartment building in Manhattan, New York City. It is one of the city's best Art Deco buildings, and the last of the great twin-towered apartment houses built by architect Emery Roth; it was in The Normandy...

 apartments of 1938 at 140 Riverside Drive have an Art Deco-like base, but the ornamental housing for the water tower lurches back suddenly to the Italian Renaissance. There were a few other such schizophrenic designs from the 30's and buildings such as 930 Fifth Avenue and 875 Fifth Avenue of 1940 show a gradual disappearance of the old ornament."

In 1981, the Times remarked of the residential buildings constructed by the Uris brothers, "930 Fifth Avenue, 2 Sutton Place, and 880 Fifth Avenue
880 Fifth Avenue
880 Fifth Avenue is a luxury apartment building on Fifth Avenue at the northeast corner of 69th Street in New York City.It was the final building by architect Emery Roth. The developers were Harold Uris and Percy Uris...

, are among the city's best residential addresses today." Residents of the building have included Samuel and Bella Spewack
Samuel and Bella Spewack
Samuel and Bella Spewack were a husband-and-wife writing team.Samuel, who also directed many of their plays, was born in the Ukraine...

, Patrick Dennis
Patrick Dennis
Patrick Dennis was an American author. His novel Auntie Mame: An Irreverent Escapade was one of the bestselling American books of the 20th century. In chronological vignettes "Patrick" recalls his adventures growing up under the wing of his madcap aunt, Mame Dennis...

, Cornelius Vander Starr
Cornelius Vander Starr
Cornelius Van der Starr also known as Neil Starr or CV Starr was an American businessman and Office of Strategic Services operative who founded the American International Group insurance corporation and a major philanthropic foundation.-Early life:Starr was born in Fort Bragg, California with the...

, Risë Stevens
Risë Stevens
Risë Stevens is a retired American operatic mezzo-soprano.-Professional life:Stevens studied at New York's Juilliard School for three years. She went to Vienna, where she was trained by Marie Gutheil-Schoder and Herbert Graf. She made her début as Mignon in Prague in 1936 and stayed there until...

, Nancy Hanks
Nancy Hanks (NEA)
Nancy Hanks was the second chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts . She was appointed by President Richard M. Nixon and served from 1969 to 1977, continuing her service under President Gerald R. Ford. During this period, Hanks was active in the fight to save the historic Old Post Office...

, Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...

 and Eldridge Haynes
Eldridge Haynes
Eldridge Haynes is best remembered as the founder of Business International Corporation, headquarters in New York City, along with his son, Elliott Haynes as co-founder,and as a spokesman for free trade and advocate for the international business community...

.
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