206 Fifth Avenue
Like the other buildings on this block, 206 Fifth Avenue has a Broadway as well as a Fifth Avenue address; unlike the others, the two street facades are by different architects. Originally a house constructed in 1856-57, 206 Fifth Avenue gained its first new commercial elevation at 1126 Broadway in 1892, a Queen Anne eclectic… Continue reading
204 Fifth Avenue
Partially obscured by the scaffolding surrounding its neighbor to the south, 204 Fifth Avenue is a 1913 design by the distinguished architect C.P.H. Gilbert, whose output included many of the townhouses and mansions of New York’s gilded age, including some of the best such buildings in Park Slope and on The Upper East Side some… Continue reading
200 Fifth Avenue
A masterwork of the firm of Maynicke & Franke, 200 Fifth Avenue replaced the palatial Fifth Avenue Hotel, a legendary establishment that was one of the world’s first luxury hotels, boasting bathrooms in every suite and New York’s first hotel passenger elevator, Otis Tufts’ not-very-appealing-sounding “vertical screw railway”. The current building was much praised at… Continue reading
175 – 183 Fifth Avenue, The Flatiron Building
A whole book could be written about the Flatiron Building – and one has. For the purposes of this blog it is enough to say that this masterwork of the famed Chicago architect Daniel H. Burnham was originally known as the Fuller Building after the construction company that commissioned it and took on its present… Continue reading
170 Fifth Avenue, The Sohmer Building
Literally a crowning achievement of Robert Maynicke, 170 Fifth Avenue, also known as the Sohmer Building, is the architect’s most extravagant work on this stretch of Fifth Avenue and a worthy visual foil to the famed Flatiron Building located diagonally to the north. The width of the brownstone house it replaced, 170 Fifth is a… Continue reading