130 Fifth Avenue

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156-foot, 11-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1903. Designed by Robert Maynicke as a store-and-loft building for P.K. Wilson & Son Importers, the rusticated brick facade, deeply carved stone, and heavy corner piers give it an appearance of masonry load-bearing construction, belying its modern steel frame skeleton.

The 5th Avenue facade is organized in three sections. Four strongly rusticated piers on massive granite bases create three bays and support a cornice over the 2-story base. Original, arched, hooded entrances remains at both end bays. The northern bay entrance projects from the facade and the hood rests on polished grey granite Doric columns. The southern bay entrance has a similar hood, but is set flush against the facade, resting on carved brackets. The original ground-floor show window frame has modern glass and metal sign infill. At the 2nd floor, colonettes divide the windows in the bays. The midsection is of coursed brick accented by deeply rusticated stone quoins which continue the 3-bay organization seen on the base. The 9th and 10th stories contain three bays in an arcade under variagated stone arches, with decorated spandrels and carved pilasters serving as mullions to separate the windows. At the 10th floor a cartouche caps each pier flanking the bays and a console sits over the center window in each bay. A bracketed and dentiled cornice surmounts the facade.

The 18th Street facade is organized in five bays treated identically to the Fifth Avenue facade. The shop fronts have new glass in the show windows and transoms, but the early form and antefix cresting remains. The ground story of the western bay has a service entrance, with replacement doors. The north elevation is clad in plain brick.

The present building replaced Chickering Hall, famous as a musical and social center. lectures by Oscar Wilde and Matthew Arnold. Here Alexander Graham Bell made the first interstate telephone call in 1877--to New Brunswick, New Jersey. Tenants in the present building have included lace, millinery, suit and cloak businesses, and other general fashion concerns. The ground floor is occupied by a CVS pharmacy; the upper floors by Interbrand which consults for everyone from Wal-Mart to Oxfam.