40 Fifth Avenue

 apartment building, Georgian (architecture), 1929_construction

163-foot, 15-story Neo-Georgian residential building completed in 1929. Designed by Van Wart & Wein (in collaboration with McKim, Mead & White as supervising architect), it was completed just a month before the Wall Street crash. The first floor is of rusticated stonework and, above that, at the central portion of the Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street facades, smooth stonework--ashlar--extends up for two more stories with the corners of brick set off with stone quoins. The building is currently managed by Douglas Elliman.

The fourth floor has band courses of stone, top and bottom, and stone window trim, leaving the spaces between the windows as an effective series of brick panels. Above this, the brick walls rise sheer in running bond with headers every sixth course and brick quoins at the corners. Metal balconies, at alternate floors, adorn this otherwise plain wall. At the upper floors balconies and other trim provide a positive termination leading to the set-back central tower. This tower rises through a high base to an arched and pedimented loggia above which may be seen a Georgian type church belfry serving as the crowning feature. Some have likened the top tower to a sort of mini-Independence Hall.

www.ellimanpm.com/buildings/40_Fifth_Avenue
dlc.library.columbia.edu/nyre/cul:x3ffbg7bsn
www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/pdf/GV2.pdf#page=4