Knickerbocker Building (New York City, New York)

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236-foot, 16-story Beaux-Arts office building completed in 1906. Designed by Albert S. Gottlieb as a store-and-loft building, 79 Fifth Avenue, also known as the Knickerbocker Building, is clad in limestone, buff-colored brick, and terra-cotta. It was largely occupied by Stern & Stern Chiffon Importers. The ornament is derived from Renaissance and Viennese Secessionist sources. It was one of the first of many big new loft buildings in the Flatiron area. The Knickerbocker Building was also built with offices and sample rooms on its upper floors.

The building spans eight bays of paired windows on 15th Street, with five bays on Fifth Avenue. It has a 2-story base surmounted by a transitional story, a 9-story midsection, and a 4-story top that includes an extra story added after construction had begun. The limestone base takes the form of a giant pier order with large formal entries in each end bay. The piers are rusticated with overscaled blocks and support an entablature which also forms a series of flat arches above the 2nd-floor windows. Overscaled keystones link the window openings to the cornice. The entryways are Secessionist-inspired with pilasters with simple flat surfaces that enclose and contrast with a rich overscaled bellflower molding and the open doorway. The moldings above the doorways are linked to the cornice with stylized triglyphs. Keystones with floral pendants overlay the capitals and entablatures of the pilasters (the pendant is missing at the northernmost entry). The transitional story has alternating major and minor piers in scored limestone, a fluted frieze, and a decorative feature that links the tops of the piers to the cornice and serves as a rhythmic counterpoint to the 2nd-story keystone-voussoirs below.

At the midsection, the center bays are differentiated from the end bays by having four double-hung windows divided by iron columns and separated vertically by spandrel panels scored in an A-B-A pattern. The 12th floor again has five bays of paired windows, each unified by a denticulated sill. The midsection is terminated in a belt course with a fret course below it punctuated by stylized, overscaled triglyphs.

The top of the facade is in three sections of one, two, and one story. The first section contains five bays of paired windows. The second section is a 2-story version of the 7-story section of the midsection below except as follows: the spandrel panels of its central bays are scored in a staccato pattern, its windows are grouped in two pairs; and its sills are simpler, having no friezes below. The top story consists of five bays of paired windows. The members of each pair are separated by a paneled pier and each pair is separated by a foliate pendant dropping from the dentil course above. The projecting cornice that once terminated the facade has been removed. Visible above the southwest corner of the building is an open sided shelter of recent construction.

The building was mainly occupied by manufacturers and wholesalers of suits, embroidery, chiffron, laces, wool, slacks, china, perfumes and fountain pens. More recently, tenants included advertising agencies and publishing firms. The ground floor is occupied by a Citibank branch, Free People boutique, Coach handbags and apparel, and the New School's Albert & Vera List Learning Center.