828 5th Avenue #PARLOUR

The Berwind Mansion was built as the New York residence of the industrialist and coal magnate Edward J. Berwind in 1896 in the Beaux Art style by the architect Nathan Clark Mellen. The building has been described by the architectural historian, John Tauranac, in The New York Times as "unabashedly Louis XV and about as close to Versailles as residential New York has to offer." The rooms in this parlour floor apartment within the mansion were deemed museum pieces at the time of their construction, and the architectural features on the walls, four remarkable ceilings, three fireplaces and the hardwood floors not only remain intact but have been restored with an incomparable accuracy and artistic eye. The most spectacular floor of the mansion, with 18' ceilings, these rooms retain the original enfilade of splendid entertainment spaces running the entire 110 foot length of the building., but now also include modern kitchen and bath facilities. The apartment is comprised of the vast original gold ballroom, capable of seating some 80 people for a concert, and containing a carved white marble fireplace mantel topped with a medallion containing an urn with flowers, the huge, vaulted foyer with its elaborate white and gray marble fireplace with two green and gold bronze figures and capped by a marble relief depicting Neptune and his court, a rotunda with a unique carved ceiling, suitable for intimate dining, and a paneled sitting room/bedroom overlooking Fifth Avenue with another unique fireplace mantel in grained brown marble and carved oak. With three tall windows facing west over Fifth Avenue and Central Park and eight tall windows to the north along East 64th Street, this apartment is flooded with light. Charles Young of the I.M.Pei Group fashioned a gourmet stainless steel kitchen, a powder room, a glorious master bathroom in onyx and alabaster, and two ingenious mezzanine bedrooms, each with an ensuite bath accessed by a staircase or interior elevator. The elegant building lobby contains the original details of the French Renaissance style and has a 24 hour doorman.With its incomparable location directly on Fifth Avenue, this apartment and the mansion in which it is situated represent one of the last remnants of the classical architecture of The Gilded Age.