set on 2.3 acres of land , the building housed 334 apartments , including fifty-six duplexes on the top eight floors , some as large as nine rooms and many with wood-burning fireplaces ; their lavish size and logical plans represented a level of accommodation that was extremely rare in the postwar era ... .despite its hulking mass and the slightly brooding quality of its dark-tinted glassy facades , so much more like commercial office buildings than like the palazzoesque prewar apartment buildings that had set the standard of fashion along fifth and park avenues , the u. n. plaza , as the development was commonly referred to , quickly became a fashionable address for the power elite , including many high-level corporate executives ... .the first wave of residents included the lawyer christian herter jr. , the novelist truman capote , the philanthropist mary lasker , the former attorney general william rogers and senator robert f. kennedy .