712 Fifth Avenue (New York City, New York)

 office building, landmark, skyscraper, 1991_construction

650-foot, 53-story postmodern office building completed in 1991. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, it had to accommodate the landmarked façades of the former Coty and Rizzoli buildings at the base of the tower on Fifth Avenue, and wraps around the Harry Winston building at northeast corner. The Coty and Rizzoli Building facades on Fifth Avenue are described into separate entries.

The new-construction base of the tower, clad in limestone, rises four floors along 56th Street, roughly matching the height of the neighboring buildings. There is a deeply recessed entrance area at the east side of the tall, banded ground floor, with its main opening divided by a pair of rounded, white marble columns. There is a shorter opening on either side. The entrance at the rear of the recessed area has glass doors set in a glass wall. The west end of the ground floor has two bays with loading docks concealed behind retracting doors of frosted glass and stainless-steel. A broad band across the top of the ground floor has two square panels of rough-faced stone, and there is a white marble panel above the entrance, with "712 FIFTH AVENUE" in metal lettering. The upper floors of the base have a large opening centered above the entrance, with a 3-over-4 grid of green-tinted glass and stainless-steel framing flanked by two narrow, vertical bands of glass with thinner framing. Above the two loading dock bays are similar glass columns, buy each only one pane wide.

Above the base the tower portion is set back, with ten bays of square windows with dark-tinted glass and rough-faced panels at the corners. Another 3-bay section at the west end is slightly more recessed and sets back at the 13th floor on the north and south sides to a 2-story mechanical housing. This corresponds with a double-height mechanical floor wrapping around the tower. On the north and south facades, this level has six vertical vents in the middle, with square, gold-colored metal panels above and below. There are four such vents on the east and west facades. At the end bays of the north, east, and south facades there are square vents located adjacent to the gold panels. Narrow rough-faced bands frame the top and bottom of the mechanical floor, and the stone is rough-faced in between the vertical vents.

Above this, the north and south facades have a lighter colored stone in the middle six bays, continuing the grid of square windows. The ends of the facade are very slightly set-back, at the outer edges of the end-bay windows, where there are additional narrow panes attached to each window. The east and west facades also have a lighter-colored middle section, spanning four bays of square windows, flanked by end bays with the same design as on the north and south sides.

The lighter-colored middle section ends at the 45th-46th floors, where there are rough-faced spandrels and rough-faced end panels replacing the narrow edge windows. The 47th floor has a regular row of six windows on the east and west sides, and eight on the north and south. The end bays set back above the 47th floor, creating notched corners, and the middle section of each facade is divided into two fields of windows (two sets of three windows on the north and south, and two sets of two windows on the east and west), with the windows within each field separated by white stone piers with darker stone panels at the intersections. The fields are further divided into 3-story sections from the 48th-50th and the 51st-53rd floors.

The ground floor along the avenue (at the landmarked facades) is occupied by Henri Bendel fashion accessories. Along with the two landmarked facades of the former Rizzoli and Coty Buildings, there is a narrow, 2-bay section at No. 716 that was built at the same time as the tower, but designed to complement the existing facades. It essentially mimics the Rizzoli Building, with subtle changes, to frame the Coty Building's facade. Its major differences are its width (two bays instead of three), the 2nd-floor windows being square-headed instead of arched, squared balustrades instead of rounded, lack of ornamentation at the upper spandrels and pier capitals, and a differing cornice.