Tiffany & Co. Flagship Store (New York City, New York)

 store / shop, headquarters, interesting place, movie / film / TV location, commercial building, jewelry store/shop

11-story Art-Deco/Art-Nouveau commercial store building completed in 1940 as an 8-story store. Designed by Cross & Cross for Tiffany & Co., it is clad in limestone above a 2-story rose granite base. Tiffany & Co. was founded as a stationery store in 1832 by Charles Lewis Tiffany; by 1853 it had become the noted jewelry store that it is today. On Charles' death in 1902, his son, the glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany, became the firm's artistic director. Tiffany's is largely responsible for establishing the carat as the standard unit of measurement for diamond size.

The company moved to this site in 1940 when the building was completed. It replaced the Collis P. Huntington mansion, built in 1892 to a George B. Post design. The north facade on 57th Street is five bays wide, and then west facade on the avenue has three bays, both with a central entrance. The entrances have tall, beveled surrounds, with "TIFFANY & CO." etched across the tops. The inner edges have polished granite moldings, and there is a large, square window above the doors, which are covered by metal canopies. The display windows on either side have matching granite moldings, with horizontal, fluted metal bands separating the larger upper windows from the shorter lower ones, which are sub-divided into a main show-window surrounded by thinner panes at the sides and tops. Curved, pale green canvas awnings top the show-window openings, and there are projecting flagpoles above the bays flanking the entrances. The east bay on 57th Street has a service entrance instead of a show-window. The 2nd floor has small, square, paired 3-over-3 windows in each bay, below an Art-Deco band course that caps the base. On the avenue side is the 9-foot Atlas statue holding a clock above the entrance, which has graced various Tiffany's stores since 1853; it's wood painted to look like bronze, made by sculptor Henry Frederick Metzler, who also designed ship figureheads.

The 3rd-7th floors have tall, paired 3-over-5 windows in each bay, with dark-grey stone spandrels between the floors at each window. There is a setback above the 7th floor, and the original top floor was replaced with a 4-story addition in 1965. It is also clad in limestone, with bands of windows that wrap around the northwest corner.

Tiffany's flagship store is well known for its window displays, and the store has been the location for a number of films, notably featured in the 1961 Audrey Hepburn movie "Breakfast at Tiffany's". In 2020, a rooftop addition was designed by OMA/Rem Koolhaas with Reed Krakoff who is the brand's Chief Artistic Officer. It replaces an earlier 1980's masonry one.

www.tiffany.com/stories/the-landmark-fifth-avenue/
www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/realestate/tiffany-flagship-...
library-artstor-org.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/#/search/T...