120 Fifth Avenue (New York City, New York)

 office building  Add category

153-foot, 11-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1906. Designed by John B. Snook & Sons as a store-and-loft building, it borrows the same 3-story, rusticated limestone base design from its neighbor at 122 Fifth Avenue, which was designed by Robert Maynicke.

On Fifth Avenue, there is a glass, brass, and granite doorway in the northern bay. Above the ground floor the windows are separated by metal-clad mullions. The 2nd-floor window enframements are treated as flat arches, with rusticated limestone voussoirs, under a shallow dentiled cornice. The 3rd-floor windows are simply recessed into the limestone. A limestone cornice with egg and dart molding separates the base from the coursed-brick midsection.The 5th-8th floors are banded off-white brick; the 9th floor is terra-cotta. Each pair of windows in the midsection shares a single stone sill and a metal lintel. A terra-cotta cornice, with block modillions and four ornate consoles surmounted by massive stone blocks, separates the midsection from the 2-story decorative terra-cotta attic section. The 10th & 11th floors are treated as a 2-story flat-arched arcade; the four piers of the facade are finished as pilasters, and each arch carries a voluted keystone. The simple rectangular spandrels between the windows have raised perimeter moldings. The deep green copper roof cornice and features block modillions and egg and dart molding.

Six bays wide, the south facade is treated similarly to the Fifth Avenue facade, except that the mullions are limestone at the 2nd and 3rd floors and brick above.

The building was last renovated in 1987, and now serves as offices. The ground floor is occupied by Vuori apparel.