57 Fifth Avenue

 apartment building  Add category

4-story residential building completed in 1853 as a townhouse for industrialist, philanthropist, and bibliophile James Lenox. It later became the home of congressman, conservationist, and Civil War Unionist Robert B. Roosevelt (uncle to Theodore Roosevelt). It was renovated into an office building around 1910, with a new facade that suggests an understated mix of the Chicago School of architecture and the Viennese Secessionist Movement. The building was briefly the headquarters of Pearson’s Magazine, owned by Frank Harris, a controversial publisher and journalist. It was converted to residential around the 1970s.

The 2-bay facade is clad in beige brick, with large square windows. A shallow stone pediment spans the top of the building, with a decorative scrolled bracket and foliate carvings, below a brick parapet with a simple panel and a stone coping, stepped up at the ends. The ground floor is occupied by Kermanshah rugs.