91-93 Fifth Avenue

 office building, 1896_construction, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

122-foot, 8-story Beaux-Arts office building completed in 1896. Designed by Louis Korn as a store-and-loft building, with a gorgeous facade of limestone, white brick and terra-cotta. Elaborately detailed design elements such as engaged columns and "sexy caryatids" make the building a prominent feature of Fifth Avenue.

The 2-story base is faced in limestone and capped with a projecting cornice. The 1st floor contains doorways at the north and south ends flanked by pilasters and crowned with friezes containing swags and garlands. A foliate frieze supports the large center bay of the 2nd floor which contains three sections separated by decorated stone mullions. The three center windows have transoms above the foliated transom bar. A single window opening with a classical surround rises over each door.

Floors 3-5 continue the pattern of a wide central bay, flanked by narrower bays; here the end windows of the center bay are slightly canted. The single end bays are flanked by white brick pilasters set on terra-cotta pedestals. Swags and lion's heads decorate the spandrel panels.

A cornice supports the caryatid figures of the 6th floor, which flank five bays each containing paired aluminum framed windows. The caryatids support the pedestals of the engaged pilasters and Corinthian columns that mark the bays of floors 7 & 8. A balustrade connects the pedestals, obscuring the windows behind. The 8th-floor openings are round-arched; the engaged columns support the original metal modillioned roof cornice and frieze with swags and dentils.

Early tenants included prominent publishers such as the Oxford University Press and Clarendon Press. Other tenants included cloak and suit merchants and upholsterers. Anson Randolph moved his bookstore here in 1896.

The ground floor and second level are currently occupied by J. Crew. For many years in the mid-to-late 2000's was an installation of gloves along the main staircase which was made of thousands of vintage women's leather gloves that the company sourced especially for the decoration.