603 Fifth Avenue - ALDO

 commercial building  Add category

4-story Second-Empire-style commercial building completed in the 1870s as a brownstone mansion. It was sold in 1901 to Jeremiah C. Lyons, who had the stoop removed and lowered the entrance to the sidewalk level. The brownstone cladding was replaced with a chic French limestone façade and a crowning mansard was added. Mary H. Clemens purchased the house from Lyons a year later, and in 1913 she converted the residence “for trade”. The ground floor space in the exclusive Fifth Avenue shopping district became home to Duncan Fraser, “distinctive interiors and decoration", and there was an art studio upstairs. In 1936 Worth & Worth, Ltd., hatters and haberdashers, leased the entire building. By the middle of the 1950s it was home to Shoecraft shoe store, which remained here for over three decades. The lower levels were altered into a modern storefront for the current tenant, ALDO shoes. Two levels of show-windows (with an entrance of glass double-doors in the middle) are framed by white tiles.

The 2nd-3rd floors have quoins at the edges and tripartite windows, with the spandrel in between decorated with a row of roundels in an elaborate field. The 3rd floor is topped by a projecting stone cornice, with modillions and four brackets framing panels. A black cast-iron band with four small, rounded finials tops the cornice. Above rises the top floor, with two small windows in the end bays and a larger center window framed by stone pilasters with brackets supporting a rounded pediment dormer with a central cartouche. The dormer pierces the lower part of the steep-sloped metal mansard roof.