647 Fifth Avenue
647 Fifth Avenue, originally known as the George W. Vanderbilt Residence, is a commercial building in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is along the east side of Fifth Avenue between 51st Street and 52nd Street. The building was designed by Hunt & Hunt as one of the "Marble Twins", a pair of houses at 645 and 647 Fifth Avenue. The houses were constructed between 1902 and 1905 as Vanderbilt family residences. Number 645 was occupied by William B. Osgood Field, while number 647 was owned by George W. Vanderbilt and rented to Robert Wilson Goelet; both were part of the Vanderbilt family by marriage.
The house is a six-story stone building in the French Renaissance Revival style. The first floor has arched openings topped by a balustrade, while the second and third stories contain fluted pilasters supporting an entablature. The fourth and fifth floors were added in the late 1930s in an imitation of the original design, and a balustrade runs above the fifth story. The adjoining townhouse at 645 Fifth Avenue, demolished in 1944, had been built in a similar style. The entire building is taken up by a store for fashion company Versace, which also built a sixth-story fitting room.
The southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street was planned as a hotel in the early 1900s after the Roman Catholic Asylum vacated the site. After the Vanderbilts blocked the development of the hotel, the southern portion of the site was developed as the Marble Twins, while the northern portion became the Morton F. Plant House. Number 647 was altered for commercial use after 1916 and contained an art gallery and airline ticket agent, among other tenants. Number 645 was largely residential until it was torn down. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated 647 Fifth Avenue as a city landmark in 1977, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 along with the Cartier Building. In the late 1990s, Versace remodeled 647 Fifth Avenue.
Site
647 Fifth Avenue is in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is along the east side of Fifth Avenue between 51st Street and 52nd Street. The land lot is rectangular and covers, with a frontage of and a depth of. The building is on the same block as the Cartier Building on 651 Fifth Avenue to the north, the Olympic Tower to the south, and 11 East 51st Street and 488 Madison Avenue to the east. Other nearby buildings include 650 Fifth Avenue to the west, 660 Fifth Avenue to the northwest, Austrian Cultural Forum New York to the north, 12 East 53rd Street and Omni Berkshire Place to the northeast, St. Patrick's Cathedral to the south, and the International Building of Rockefeller Center to the southwest.Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and Central Park South was relatively undeveloped through the late 19th century. The surrounding area was once part of the common lands of the city of New York. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 established Manhattan's street grid with lots measuring deep and wide. Upscale residences were constructed around Fifth Avenue following the American Civil War. In 1882, three Vanderbilt family residences were completed along Fifth Avenue between 51st and 59th Streets. The surrounding section of Fifth Avenue thus became known as "Vanderbilt Row". By the early 1900s, that section of Fifth Avenue was becoming a commercial area.
The site immediately north of St. Patrick's Cathedral was owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which used the site for the Roman Catholic Asylum. The asylum took up two blocks between 51st Street, 52nd Street, Fifth Avenue, and Park Avenue. It was once one of several public institutions on the midtown section of Fifth Avenue, but by the end of the 19th century, it was the only one remaining. The Roman Catholic Asylum site was placed for sale in 1899 after the institution had secured another site in the Bronx.
Architecture
647 Fifth Avenue is the surviving northern half of the "Marble Twins", a pair of residences erected simultaneously at 645–647 Fifth Avenue. The southern half, at number 645, was replaced by a Best & Co. store and then the Olympic Tower in the mid-20th century. Both houses were designed by Hunt & Hunt in the French Renaissance Revival style. They were constructed by D. C. Weeks & Son. Number 647 is the only remaining Vanderbilt family residence on Fifth Avenue south of Central Park.Facade
647 Fifth Avenue is six stories high. The facade along Fifth Avenue is five stories high and consists of three vertical bays, while the sixth story is recessed on the roof. As originally designed, 645 and 647 Fifth Avenue were both four stories high and contained six bays between them.The first floor was designed as an English basement. Initially, the houses had round-arched windows separated by rusticated and vermiculated limestone blocks. There were consoles on top of each set of rusticated and vermiculated blocks, which supported the second-story balconies. The entrances to the respective houses were via short stoops on the extreme ends of either house, with number 645's entrance on the far right and number 647's entrance on the far left. The openings on the first story of number 647 were enlarged in 1916, and the ground-floor facade was totally rebuilt in 1937. The later design had plate-glass doors on either side of a display window. In the late 1990s, the first floor was rebuilt with vermiculated blocks and arched openings similar to the originals.
The second and third floors are mostly unchanged from the original design. While the balcony was originally made of stone balusters, this was removed in 1937 and replaced with a cast-iron balustrade. The original design of the Marble Twins contained five pilasters, each of which was fluted and was topped by an elaborate capital. These pilasters separated each of the six windows on both stories and were flanked on the extreme ends by broad piers, which each contained a narrow section of another pilaster. The northern pier and the northernmost two and a half pilasters remain intact. The windows on the second and third floors both contain splayed lintels and recessed panels above them. The second-story windows open onto the balcony while the third-story windows contain window sills above corbel blocks.
Originally, 645 and 647 Fifth Avenue were only four stories high. The fourth story consisted of recessed square windows set between carved stone rosettes. Above the windows was a band of dentils, followed by a deep cornice and a balustrade supported by brackets. The modern design of number 647's fourth and fifth stories dates to an alteration in the late 1930s. The fourth-floor windows and rosettes were left in place, but the heavy bracketed cornice was removed. A set of stone panels was installed above the rosettes and the new fifth-story windows were designed similarly to the fourth-story windows. The band of dentils and the balustrade were relocated to the top of the fifth story rather than being destroyed.
Features
The original design had a curving stairway separating the south side of number 647 and the north side of number 645, but this was demolished in the mid-20th century. When number 647 became an art dealership in 1917, an oeil-de-boeuf was installed above a door on the first floor. That door separated a portrait hall in the front, with gray-marble walls, and a sculpture gallery in the rear, with red-damask walls. In 1938, number 647 was converted into a wholly commercial building, and some of the interior columns were removed. The first floor was turned into a retail space with a ceiling height of, including a central mezzanine above the ground level. A freight elevator was installed, connecting the storage basement and the five above-ground stories. The upper floors had ceiling heights ranging from on the second floor to on the fourth floor.In the late 1960s, the interior was redecorated for Olympic Airlines, the Greek national airline. The first story had marble walls and hardwood floors and was decorated with two tile mosaics. One of the mosaics depicted Phaethon, the son of the Greek god Helios, while the other mosaic depicted the sun shining on an island village in the Aegean Sea. The second story had the airline's reservations area, which displayed flight information, as well as an 80-seat showroom that demonstrated in-flight travel equipment. The third floor housed the airline's personnel, while the fourth and fifth floors had communications machinery and general offices.
When the building was renovated for fashion company Versace in the late 1990s, the stairway on the south side of 647 Fifth Avenue was restored. The staircase consists of a marble set of stairs with a bronze balustrade, lit by a skylight on the roof. The interiors were also inlaid with terrazzo floors and, on the fifth story, the home furnishings department received a wooden floor. In addition, a sixth floor with a rooftop garden and cafe was added. A private boutique, a terrace on Fifth Avenue, and skylights and balconies were also installed on the roof. The private boutique was intended as a VIP fitting room and could only be reached by turning a key in the elevator.