Rockefeller Apartments
17 West 54th Street | Midtown | built 1937
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1935
The Rockefellers commission an apartment house near Rockefeller Center
Nelson Rockefeller had been given the job of attracting tenants to Rockefeller Center, and the family owned land to the north between 54th and 55th Streets with no fixed plan for it. Remodeling the old houses was weighed, but studies favored apartments close to midtown offices. The 1935 commission was the first for the new firm of Harrison & Fouilhoux, whose plan gave residents 15 percent more light and air than the building code required.
- 1936
Excavation for the Rockefeller Apartments runs at what the press calls railroad time
Digging began in March 1936 and was finished by the end of the month, a pace the press called railroad time. A surgeon signed one of the first leases that month. Steelwork started in early April with a third of the apartments rented, and the frame was complete by the end of May with 86 percent leased. The building was ready for tenants by October 1.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1936
Nelson Rockefeller sells the apartments with a model suite on an RCA Building setback
To fill the new building, Nelson Rockefeller had a real-estate firm canvass every company with offices in Rockefeller Center, according to Daniel Okrent's history of the Center. He also placed a full-size replica of a typical suite on a setback of the RCA Building and charged admission to tour it. The campaign worked: when the Rockefeller Apartments opened on October 1, 1936, every apartment was rented.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1938
A resident is arrested in a midtown extortion ring after a broker goes to police
Police believed they had broken up an extortion gang in midtown when three young men were arrested on August 26, 1938, among them 24-year-old Benjamin Jolly of the Rockefeller Apartments. Two nights earlier, broker Stephen Hart had met Jolly on Broadway and taken him home. When Jolly's partners, brothers William and Lawrence Lee, demanded money at Hart's Wall Street office, Hart alerted detectives and paid them in marked bills, unlike earlier victims who had stayed silent.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1940
Actor Louis Calhern and his wife, Natalie Schafer, live in the building
By 1940 the actor Louis Calhern, who had already appeared in 21 Broadway plays, and his wife, actress Natalie Schafer, lived at the Rockefeller Apartments. Schafer's last play while living here was Lady in the Dark, starring Gertrude Lawrence, which ran 467 performances and closed in May 1942. That year Calhern's alcoholism ended the marriage, and Schafer moved to Los Angeles, eventually becoming best known for her role on television's Gilligan's Island.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1945
The Astor estate buys the Rockefeller Apartments for about $1.675 million
The estate of William Waldorf Astor purchased the Rockefeller Apartments in 1945 for roughly $1.675 million, with the City Bank Farmers Trust Company taking title as trustee. The Rockefeller family had built the complex only nine years earlier.
“In 1945, the estate of William Waldorf Astor bought the Rockefeller Apartments for about $1.675 million.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1948
Pianist Olga Samaroff dies at her home at 24 West 55th Street
The pianist and teacher Olga Samaroff died of a heart attack on the evening of May 17, 1948, at her home at 24 West 55th Street, part of the Rockefeller Apartments, after giving several lessons that day. She had joined the Juilliard faculty in 1924 and had been married to the conductor Leopold Stokowski from 1911 until their divorce in 1923.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1954
The apartments go co-op over the objections of some tenants
The Astor estate bought the complex in 1945 and Henry Goelet purchased it in May 1953, the same year management announced a plan to convert it to a cooperative. Tenants would pay a one-time fee of $5,500 to $16,500 to join, and 51 of them organized to oppose the plan. The conversion took effect in June 1954 anyway and created 70 units.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1964
Architect Robert Cutler and his wife host a reception here for debutantes' mothers
Robert Ward Cutler, an architect and a past head of the New York chapter of the AIA, and his wife Doris lived at 17 West 54th Street. Doris had founded the Doric Debutante Cotillion, and in late November 1964 the couple received the mothers of the six young women to be presented at the Metropolitan Club that December 26.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1969
Lawyer and playwright Benjamin M. Kaye is among the late-1960s residents
By the late 1960s the building's tenants included Benjamin M. Kaye, a founder and senior partner of the law firm Kaye, Scholer, Fierman, Hays & Handler. He also wrote for the stage, with plays including She Didn't Say No! in 1926, The Curtain Rises with Jean Arthur in 1933 and On Stage in 1935, and he wrote song lyrics. He was also credited with having teamed Richard Rodgers with Lorenz Hart.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1970
Muriel Shubert, widow of producer Jacob Shubert, dies at the Rockefeller Apartments
Muriel Knowles Shubert, born in Huron, Ohio, met her future husband when she began working for the Shuberts as a chorus girl in 1919. After Jacob J. Shubert died in 1963 she moved to 17 West 54th Street, where she lived until her own death on March 26, 1970.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1984
The Landmarks Commission designates the Rockefeller Apartments over its own board's objection
On June 19, 1984, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Rockefeller Apartments, after a February 1982 hearing at which eight witnesses backed designation and no one spoke against it. The building's own board of directors, however, filed a statement opposing the landmark. The report called the building a major example of the International Style and Wallace Harrison's first independent venture into modern architecture.
“Eight witnesses spoke in favor of designation. There were no speakers in opposition... The board of directors of the Rockefeller Apartments submitted a statement opposing designation.”
- 1989
Michael's opens on West 55th Street and becomes a power-lunch room for media figures
After nearly ten years of negotiations with the owner of the Italian restaurant at 24 West 55th Street, restaurateur Michael McCarty opened a New York branch of his Santa Monica restaurant Michael's in fall 1989. It drew talent agents, book editors and media figures such as Tom Brokaw. The Hollywood Reporter later recounted that Al Roker had his first date with Deborah Roberts there in 1994, and that Irving Azoff and James Dolan hatched there the partnership behind Azoff MSG Entertainment, formed in 2013.
Source: hollywoodreporter.com
Further reading
- Rockefeller ApartmentsWikipedia
- The 1937 Rockefeller Apartments - 17 West 54th Street Daytonian in Manhattan
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