133 Fifth Avenue | office building

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9-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1899. Designed by Robert Maynicke as a store-and-loft building, its two facades share a common decorative scheme and are linked by a series of unbroken cornices. These create a tripartite composition comprising a 2-story base, a 6-story midsection, and a 1-story attic.

On Fifth Avenue the limestone facade is divided into three bays. Giant rusticated piers frame the 2-story base which still retains its original ground-floor storefront and 2nd-floor windows. It features a bowed wood and glass shopwindow resting on a cast-iron bulkhead and topped by a curved iron lintel. Flanking the window are wood and glass doors with molded surrounds and elaborate wood overdoors. On the 2nd floor, iron columns and crossbars support single-pane wood-framed pivoting lights and transoms.

Decoration on the smooth-faced upper floors is confined to cornices above the 3rd and 8th floors, projecting sill courses beneath the 5th-, 7th-, and 8th-floor windows, and an iron and stone 6th-floor balcony. Square-headed windows are used on the 3rd through 7th floors, segmental-arched windows on the 8th floor, and round-arched windows on the 9th floor. Crowning the building is a cream-colored galvanized iron Corinthian cornice.

The articulation of the 5-bay 20th Street facade is similar to that of the Fifth Avenue facade, but here the windows are arranged in pairs set off by heavy piers. Original bowed shopfronts survive in all but the easternmost bay. The ground floor is occupied by Rhone clothing store, and West Out East furniture.