95 Fifth Avenue

 office building, 1900_construction, Beaux-Arts (architecture)

122-foot, 9-story Beaux-Arts multi-use building completed in 1900. Designed by Robert Maynicke as a store-and-loft building, it is faced in buff-colored brick with terra-cotta ornament. The Fifth Avenue facade is divided into four zones. The 2-story base contains one bay flanked by rusticated buff-colored brick piers with marble pedestals. In an alteration characteristic of the district, two entrances flank a modern plate-glass show window with aluminum framing on the 1st floor. The retail entrance is deeply recessed The 2nd floor is a single opening containing three windows separated by grey cast-iron engaged columns.

The transitional brick 3rd floor bay continues this pattern. A large segmental-arched bay contains three windows. Console brackets support a terra-cotta balustrade above the 3rd floor, which extends across the facade. Floors 4-8 have three window openings per floor with terra-cotta surrounds supported by continuous sills. The brick has narrow bands that overlap the window surrounds. A terra-cotta cornice with dentils in the soffit caps this section of the building. Banded brick flanks the terra-cotta window surrounds of the 9th floor, which has another dentil course at the top.

The design of the single bay of the Fifth Avenue facade is repeated in six bays on East 17th Street. The corner bays, brought slightly forward, continue the pattern of the Fifth Avenue facade with a frieze in place of the balustrade above the 3rd floor. The four center bays are not banded above the 3rd floor. A metal fire escape covers the 3rd bay from the east from the 9th floor to the 2nd, where it meets one of the projecting display bays. The eastern bay on the ground floor, which is used as a service entrance, has iron gates.

Early tenants of this store and loft building were characteristic of the district and included lace curtain merchants, a publisher, upholsterers, and a cloak and suit merchant.