110 Fifth Avenue, The Judge Building

Along with the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street, the Judge Building at 110 Fifth Avenue is probably the most significant skyscraper on the Ladies’ Mile. Designed by the world-renowned firm of McKim, Mead & White in an attempt to match the dramatic structural qualities of Classical Roman architecture, the Judge Building was built in 1888 and faced in granite, brick and terra cotta; it received three sympathetic later stories by Robert Maynicke, who followed the original plan to a degree that renders his additions invisible.

Tampering with the lower floors was largely reversed by a sensitive renovation in the late 1980s. The result is a work of real power and mass: stately and solid.

110 Fifth Avenue was designed for the socially prominent Goelet Family, whose other architectural commissions includes Richard Morris Hunt’s magnificent Ochre Hall, a chateauesque style mansion in Newport, RI, that now serves as the Main Building of Salve Regina College, and another McKim, Mead & White masterpiece, the Goelet Building at East 20th Street and Broadway, just a  few blocks away.

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