1295 Fifth Avenue
Posted on October 23, 2017 by — No Comments
A robustly handsome pair of towers finished off in the rough-treated “corduroy” concrete beloved of Brutalist architects, the Arthur A. Schomburg Plaza, also known as 1295 Fifth Avenue, were completed in 1975 as mixed income housing. Architects Gruzen & Partners, working with Casto-Blanco, Piscioneri & Feder, produced a pair of 35-story octagonal towers that are matched with an 11-story building facing Madison Avenue to the east. Despite a clear break with the scale of the immediate neighborhood, the design provides a compelling sense of a visual landmark at a major city intersection and shows that not all incongruous architecture is necessarily bad design.