505 Fifth Avenue (New York City, New York)

 office building, artwork, interesting place, Modern (architecture)

411-foot, 28-story modernist office building completed in 2006. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox, it is clad in a curtain wall of blue glass, with various angled facets above the 6-story base. The ground floor has large plate-glass show-windows and white round columns, with a metal band across the top. The main entrance is near the east end of the south facade, on 42nd Street, slightly recessed and framed in stainless-steel, with a stainless-steel canopy extending out over the sidewalk. Directly above the entrance, the curtain wall is broken by a bay of more transparent glass, which sets back above the 5th floor (along with the narrow bay at the far east end). The western end of the base on 42nd Street juts inward slightly and then angles back out to the building line at the southwest corner. A flagpole rises from this corner atop the base.

Above the base the 42nd Street façade is planar, while the one on Fifth Avenue is angular, with intersecting facets angling in toward the center. The southern half of the 7th floor is deeply recessed, with the upper floors cantilevered above. Setbacks in the top floors allow for terraces and internal atriums on select floors. On the rear, east elevation the concrete core is exposed. The ground floor is occupied by COS women's apparel, and & Other Stories clothing store. Its lobby features a permanent light installation by noted artist James Turrel called "Plain Dress 2005".