358 Fifth Avenue
The sad remains of one of the city’s best bank buildings, 358 Fifth Avenue preserves nothing to make the viewer realize that McKim, Mead & White’s triumphantly monumental Knickerbocker Trust Building once stood here. The upper floors preserve some pleasant details from a 1921 12-story addition by the same firm, but the lower levels are… Continue reading
333 Fifth Avenue
A thoroughly trashed brownstone retaining nothing of architectural note save its cornice, 333 Fifth Avenue is still one of the area’s most popular locations, due to the popularity of the Papaya Dog chain, which dishes up tasty street food to tourists lining up for the Empire State Building a block to the north. A rather cheerfully… Continue reading
313 Fifth Avenue
A once-proud brownstone mansion, 313 Fifth Avenue was constructed for the Murdock Family in 1853 and was considered an outlier in terms of location, at the very northernost bounderies of respectable addresses. The building’s later tenants included the art gallery Fishel, Adler & Schwartz, whose exhibition roster included Claude Monet. A well-intentioned paint job and… Continue reading
304 & 306 Fifth Avenue
It’s probably too soon to come to a final opinion about 304 Fifth Avenue (seen here during an early stage of construction), although its 1983-PoMo vibe is not entirely encouraging. We’ll take another look when the last scaffolding is down. The site was previously home to a unique example of a mural-decorated façade with an… Continue reading
251 & 253 Fifth Avenue
The battle-worn relic at 251 Fifth Avenue, now linked to the even more vandalized 253 Fifth Avenue, is a rare surviving work by the architect George B. Post, one of New York’s earliest great architects. Built in 1872 as an early example of “French Flats,” the progenitor to the New York luxury apartment house, the… Continue reading