Designed by Wallace Harrison and J. André Fouilhoux in the International Style, the Rockefeller Apartments was constructed between 1935 and 1936.

The apartment complex, just north of the Museum of Modern Art, was built on land left over from the construction of Rockefeller Center.

The interior was intended to allow fifteen percent more air and natural light compared to contemporary building regulations.

The Rockefeller family had secretly acquired the site by the 1930s, although this was not disclosed until the plans for the apartment complex were announced in November 1935.

The building was sold to the Astor family in 1945 and Henry Goelet in 1953, and it became a cooperative apartment complex in 1954.

Both structures are eleven stories tall and symmetrically arranged with protruding glass-enclosed cylindrical "bows".

[22] According to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), the Rockefeller Apartments' twin-tower layout may have been inspired from the work of German architect Otto Haesler, but the apartments' setback penthouses differed from Haesler's flat roofs.

[3] The curved bows were glazed for two-thirds of their circumference and may have been inspired by Haesler's design for the Georgsgarten Settlement.

[21] On the southern tower facing 54th Street, the entrance is through two doors and contains a metal canopy that cantilevers from above the center of the first story.

[3] On the north tower facing 55th Street, the entrance contains a similar metal canopy and two doorways.

[3] The architects arranged the apartments so they were all illuminated well, even though the layout resulted in fewer units than in comparable buildings.

[1][26] The Rockefeller Apartments' internal structure contains a layer of 3-inch-thick (76 mm) freestanding gypsum, separated from the brick facade by a small air gap.

The cinder-concrete and terracotta partitions, demarcating bathrooms and shafts within the individual units, were made by the National Tile Company, while the 3-inch-thick gypsum and metal lath walls inside the individual apartments were manufactured by the Consolidated Expanded Metal Company.

One-third of the plot was to be reserved for a public walkway, covered by glass during winters and left open during summers.

The elevators are clustered near the center of each tower, while the stair halls are further west and east; these are connected by a single corridor on each floor.

[16][17] The bedrooms facing the streets were equipped with air filters and noise cancellation systems.

In a final blueprint, the internal porches were removed, and two cylindrical bows were added to the rendering of the facade.

[38] The Rockefellers had acquired these city blocks under various aliases, and it was not until November 1935 that the acquisitions were made public.

The announcement came after the 17 West 54th Street Corporation was incorporated in Albany, the New York state capital, to operate the development.

[39][40][41] At the time, all but one building on the site had been demolished,[39] and many lots on the surrounding four city blocks had recently changed ownership.

[39] Rockefeller Center's managers acquired land for the proposed street between 1934 and 1937, but the extension was never built,[42] even though some of the buildings on the route were condemned.

The trustee, the City Bank Farmers Trust Company, took the title on behalf of the Astor estate.

[6][7] Henry Goelet acquired the building from the Astors in May 1953, paying an undisclosed sum in cash.

[55] The LPC held public hearings in 1982 to consider the Rockefeller Apartments and several other structures for city landmark status.

[55] In 2014, the Rockefeller Apartments received a 30-year mortgage for $23.85 million to finance renovations and pay off another loan.

[31] The New York City Department of Buildings issued two notices of violations for the dilapidated windows in the following four years, which were both resolved.

Architectural writer Robert A. M. Stern and the co-authors of his 1987 book New York 1930 said the complex was the first middle-class apartments to be built in Midtown Manhattan in five years.

According to Stern and his co-authors, the apartments "introduced a new elegance to efficiently, organized, modestly scaled accommodations and demonstrated that nonhistorical architecture need not necessarily be harsh and mechanistic".

[15][66] Critic Carter B. Horsley wrote that the project's relatively cheap cost and lack of detailing were positive attributes for the building.

Referencing Mumford's comments, Horsley stated, "As a midblock, mid-rise design, it is very attractive even when the blackbirds are not whirring.