Board approved: 834 Fifth Avenue

Our latest in a series revealing the residents of New York City’s most desirable co-ops

One of Manhattan’s most prestigious cooperative apartment buildings, 834 Fifth Avenue is located on the corner of East 64th Street, across from the Central Park Zoo.
One of Manhattan’s most prestigious cooperative apartment buildings, 834 Fifth Avenue is located on the corner of East 64th Street, across from the Central Park Zoo.

The New York Observer once called 834 Fifth Avenue “the most pedigreed building on the snobbiest street in the country’s most real estate-obsessed city.”

Built in 1931, the Rosario Candela-designed building on the Upper East Side features a limestone façade, Art Deco details, a courtyard garden, terraces on the setbacks and a Rockefeller connection.

A conservationist, businessman and third-generation Rockefeller, Laurance Rockefeller, once called a penthouse in the building home. Today that unit is owned by Wendi Murdoch, formerly married to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. But she isn’t the building’s only prominent resident.

Other notables in the building include an oligarch, a Broadway producer, the co-owner of the New York Giants, two Blackstone executives, a hedge fund manager and the estranged wife of an heir to a Swiss money-printing fortune.

Beside their address, these masters of the universe have something else in common: They all paid cash for their units. Like most of New York’s top co-op buildings, 834 Fifth does not allow financing.

Below is a list of the building’s most prestigious property owners.

Wendi Murdoch
Unit price: $34,000,000
Wendi Murdoch is a Chinese-born American businesswoman and an ex-wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. She was Murdoch’s third wife, and he was her second husband. She was the only Chinese executive at Murdoch-owned Star TV in Hong Kong in 1997, according to Vogue magazine. Their marriage lasted from 1999 to 2013 and produced two daughters, Grace and Chloe, who will be among the heirs to Murdoch’s media empire.

Laurie Tisch
Unit price: $29,000,000
Laurie Tisch is a philanthropist and a scion of the family that made its fortune in Loews movie theaters and hotels and now co-owns the New York Giants. The Tisch family has made significant contributions to institutions in the city, and the Tisch name appears on a number of buildings. She is the ex-wife of hedge-fund manager Donald Sussman, with whom she has two adult daughters, Emily and Carolyn. Tisch is on the board of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Children’s Museum of Manhattan.

Wendi Murdoch, Laurie Tisch and Susan Gutfreund

Wendi Murdoch, Laurie Tisch and Susan Gutfreund

Susan Gutfreund
Unit price: Undisclosed
Susan Gutfreund is the widow of John Gutfreund, “the king of Wall Street,” a one-time chief executive of Salomon Brothers, who died in early March 2016. He was 86. She was his second wife. Her previous marriage, to John Roby Penn, whose family owned real estate in Texas, ended in divorce in 1976. Her husband led Salomon until 1991. Finding the 20-room, 12,000-square-foot duplex too large to live in alone, Gutfreund listed it for a jaw-dropping $120 million.

Judith and Harold Prince
Unit price: $24,900,000
Harold Prince is a Tony Award-winning Broadway producer. He and his wife, Judith, née Chaplin, married in 1962 and have two adult children. Prince has won 21 Tony awards in total — more than any other individual  — and has also directed several operas and a revival of “Candide.”

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Philippe and Ana Laffont
Unit(s) price: $30,000,000
Philippe Laffont is a hedge fund manager. He established Coatue Management in 1999 and serves as its chief investment officer. Ana Laffont is a Spanish-born lawyer and chairwoman of Mary’s Meals, a charitable organization. They have six children. The couple owns three units.

Hamilton and Amabel James
Unit price: $24,900,000
Hamilton James, who goes by Tony, is president, chief operating officer and board member at the Blackstone Group and a philanthropist. He also serves as a commissioner of the Port Authority. Amabel James, née Boyce, is an economist. The couple has three children.

Tom and Janine Hill
Unit price: $30,500,000
James Tomilson Hill III, who goes by Tom, is an art collector and native New Yorker and serves as vice chairman of the Blackstone Group. Janine Hill is a director at the Council on Foreign Relations and a lawyer by training. The couple has two adult daughters, Margot Hill Kirby and Astrid Hill Dattilo.

David and Reba Williams, Tracey Hejailan-Amon, Charles and Helen-Schwab

David and Reba Williams, Tracey Hejailan-Amon, Charles and Helen-Schwab

Dave and Reba Williams
Unit price: Undisclosed
Dave Williams is a banking executive, art collector and philanthropist. For 20 years, he led Alliance Capital Management (now AllianceBernstein), an asset management firm, as chief executive. He also served in the U.S. Navy. Reba White Williams is an art historian and writer.

Tracey Hejailan-Amon
Unit price: $15,000,000
Tracey Hejailan-Amon is the soon-to-be ex-wife of Maurice Alain Amon, the scion of a Swiss family that made its fortune in currency printing ink. The two are arguing over their modern art collection, which is estimated to be worth $25 million.

Charles and Helen Schwab
Unit price: $27,700,000
Charles R. Schwab, Jr. is a philanthropist and the founder of the brokerage firm Charles Schwab & Co. In 2015, his net worth was estimated at $6.9 billion. The couple has two children. Helen Schwab is a philanthropist who serves on the boards of charitable and cultural organizations.

Leonard and Emily Blavatnik
Unit price: $77,500,000
Leonard Blavatnik is an Odessa-born billionaire and philanthropist who made his fortune investing in natural resources and industry. The purchase of his apartment broke the record for the most ever paid for a co-op in Manhattan. The couple has four children.

Estate of Dorothy Sahn Siegal
Unit price: Undisclosed
Dorothy Sahn Siegal passed away in 2011. It appears her estate has not sold her unit.She had two husbands, Arthur Sahn, to whom she was married for 29 years, and Abraham Siegal, to whom she was married for 16 years. She had three sons, Adam, Jonathan
and Eric.

Robert and Anne Bass
Unit price: $42,000,000
Robert Bass is an investor, scion of a wealthy Texas family and philanthropist. He serves as chairman of aerospace firm Aerion and president of investment firm Keystone. He founded Oak Hill Capital Partners. Anne Bass is a philanthropist. The couple has four children.

Mimi Haas
Unit price: $12,500,000
Miriam Haas, who goes by Mimi, is a philanthropist and the widow of Peter Haas, a scion of the Strauss family that created Levi’s jeans. She has two adult children from a previous marriage. She serves as a trustee of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and MoMA in NYC and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Mark Rachesky
Unit price: $33,444,500
Mark Rachesky is a financier and a former protégé of corporate raider Carl Icahn. He trained as a doctor but never practiced. He is the principal of MHR Fund Management, which holds a 38 percent stake in California-based Lions Gate Entertainment, the studio that produced “Mad Men” and “The Hunger Games.”