647 Fifth Avenue
The survivor of a pair of double houses erected by the Vanderbilt Family as investment properties, 647 Fifth Avenue was designed in 1905 by Hunt & Hunt, the sons of Richard Morris Hunt, the celebrated Gilded Age architect. A Louis VI mansion distinguished by high-relief Corinthian pilasters and vermiculated ground-floor stonework, it is imposing even… Continue reading
Saks Fifth Avenue, 611 Fifth Avenue
A sophisticated essay in understatement by Starrett & van Vleck, Saks Fifth Avenue is one of the city’s most famous department stores and the one, for obvious reasons, most closely identified with the avenue itself. Founded in 1867 by Andrew Saks as Saks & Co., it was later merged with Gimbel Brothers and relaunched in… Continue reading
601 Fifth Avenue, 603, Fifth Avenue and 605 Fifth Avenue
601 Fifth Avenue, 603, Fifth Avenue and 605 Fifth Avenue are a trio of altered but still notable small commercial buildings. At the center, 603 Fifth Avenue is perhaps the best and still relatively intact above the streetscape, a buxom survivor from the neighborhood’s domestic period. Remodeled from an older brownstone in 1903 as the… Continue reading
597 Fifth Avenue, The Charles Scribner & Sons Building
The Charles Scribner’s Sons Building at 597 Fifth Avenue is one of Midtown’s best surviving commercial buildings from the early 20th century. Designed in 1912 by Ernest Flagg, architect of the Little Singer Building on Broadway and an earlier building for Scribner’s at 153-157 Fifth Avenue, 597 Fifth Avenue is a virtuoso melding of Parisian… Continue reading
595 Fifth Avenue
A handsome little shop with the scale of a townhouse, 595 Fifth Avenue was designed by the little-known firm of Severance & Schuman in an understated, almost abstract classical style. Renovated at the lower levels, it retains much of its simple charm.