One Fifth Avenue

It seems fitting that the first building with an address on Fifth Avenue should also be the street’s first masterpiece.  Famous for its location, the Art Deco tower of One Fifth Avenue is equally impressive for its architecture.  

Designed in 1926-27 by Harvey Wiley Corbett of the firm Helmle & Corbett, One Fifth Avenue perfectly illustrates the bold massing, multiple setbacks and dramatic use of light and shadow that are associated with Corbett’s better-known colleague, the great architectural delineator Hugh Ferris, whose 1929 book The Metropolis of Tomorrow advanced the case for the skyscraper as a form of modern art.  

Historian Christopher Gray has praised One Fifth as “one of the city’s most illusionistic statements,” referring to the trompe l’oeil effects created by alternating bands of different colored brick to give the structure an added sense of modeling. The result is a soaring example of what could be called Medieval Moderne.

Ironically, the original book cover art for Candice Bushnell’s novel One Fifth Avenue, set largely in a fictionalized version of the building, depicts a much more conventional façade.

2 responses to “One Fifth Avenue”

  1. Just lovely. Is it offices or living?

    • landmark says:

      There are a restaurant and some private offices at ground level but the building is residential, as are all the buildings on Fifth Avenue between Washington Square and 12th Street.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.