Ely Jacques Kahn's 1928 Lefcourt Clothing Center - 275 Seventh Avenue

 

The apparel and millinery industry moved northward as the city expanded in the 19th century.  Abraham E. Lefcourt was a clothing manufacturer in the first years of the 20th century, but he changed course around 1910.  He turned to real estate development.  Lefcourt would be influential in establishing the Garment District along Seventh Avenue after World War I.  Among the buildings he would erect was the Lefcourt Clothing Center on the east side of Seventh Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets.  

Designed by Ely Jacques Kahn of Buchman & Kahn in 1927 and completed the following year, the Art Deco-style structure rose 27 floors, filling the blockfront.  Kahn used terra cotta and creative brickwork to adorn the facade with Art Deco details.  At the 18th floor, he began a series of massive setbacks, required by 1916 zoning regulations.

The Lefcourt Clothing Center filled with, mostly, men's and boys' apparel firms.  Among the first was Munves, Marmur and Selonick, a boy's clothing maker operated by Solomon Munves, Jacob Marmur and Stanley E. Selonick.  Personality Clothes moved into the building in 1929.  The firm manufactured the Boom-Boom brand of men's apparel.

Men's Wear, February 6, 1929

Bashowitz Brothers & Co., men's clothing manufacturers, occupied the 15th floor and part of the 16th floor that year, employing 275 workers.  At the time, factory workers were paid in cash and received their pay envelopes each Friday or Saturday.  The firm's offices were on the upper level.  On Friday afternoon, December 19, 1929, the firm's cashier, Herman Helfer, and two assistants, Antoinette Calabrese and Yetta Wexler, 19 and 18 years old respectively, were distributing the week's $5,600 payroll into envelopes.  When the task was completed, they sorted the envelopes and arranged them in a wooden tray on top of a filing cabinet.

Suddenly, three armed young men barged into the office and demanded the cash.  Helfer pointed to the file cabinet.  The New York Times reported, "One of the robbers seized the tray and all three fled a few paces to a corridor leading to the elevators and two stairways."  The article noted, "Sixty sewing machine workers outside the office did not know of the robbery."  The trio fled down a staircase and disappeared.  They were never caught.

The building was designed with retail shops along Seventh Avenue.  Among the commercial tenants in 1932 were Isadore Roth's barber shop, and Lina Millet's printing and stationery store.

The year 1932 saw the first of what would become a major change in the tenant list within the upper floors.  In December, the newly formed Air Express Corporation moved its offices in.  The service operated a fleet of windowless airplanes that daily transported goods from New York to Los Angeles.

In 1919 a group of garment unions organized the Union Health Center, becoming the first to be established by labor unions.  The group opened a clinic at 131 East 17th Street in 1920.  By 1924, nine unions ran the center with a membership of 45,000.  A decade later, in May 1934, total control was transferred to the International Garment Workers' Union.  With its membership having increased to 51,997, the center moved its headquarters into a full floor of 275 Seventh Avenue in 1935.

The New York Times remarked on January 5, 1936, "The site is within easy walking distance of the factories where 110,000 union members work" and noted that its 40,000 square foot space "contains clinical and diagnostic departments modernly equipped to take care of the ills that arise among members of the I. L. G. W. U. and thirty-seven affiliated unions in the printing, building and other trades."  In the previous year, 55,000 patients were treated here.

The staff included 40 physicians, including 12 of whom visited the homes of workers too ill to travel.  Union members paid 35 cents per month for the services (in addition to their regular dues).  For the fee, workers were entitled to "ten week's medical treatment, including medicines and visits by the doctor if he is seriously ill."  The I.L.G.W.U. space also had a meeting room that doubled as a lecture room.  In January 1936, the union announced "a program of lectures on anatomy, physiology, pathology and hygiene."

Garment firms continued to occupy space in the building.  In 1940 and 1941, for instance, tenants included the Hylo Textile Shrinking Company, the Monarch Textile Shrinking Company, the Uniform Coat Makers, Inc., and the Dixie Dress Shops.  Nevertheless, non-apparel firms were changing the personality of the tenant list.  In 1939, publisher Poale Zion Zeire Zion of America was here.  That year they released the Labor Zionist Handbook.

As early as 1942, the Pioneer Women's Organization had its headquarters in the building.  On January 18 that year, The New York Times reported that the group "had cabled $15,000 to Palestine for the defense program of the Working Women's Council."  Six months later, on July 12, the newspaper reported that the Pioneer Women's Organization had wired another $10,000 to the Working Women's Council in Palestine "for immediate defense measures necessitated by the emergency on the Middle Eastern Front."  The article said, "The money will be used for protection of children and their removal to safety zones, the support of agricultural training farms for women and assistance to families of men in the armed forces."  (The two donations would equal $481,000 in 2025.)

In October 1945, the I.L.G.W.U. bought 275 Seventh Avenue for $2.5 million (about $43.6 million today).  The union explained that the purchase would make possible "the expansion of its union health center," noting that it "is the largest labor medical-care institution in the country."  The New York Times remarked, "The twenty-one clinics comprising the union health center...now occupy the two upper floors in the building."  Now, said I.L.G.W.U. president David Dubinsky, "We intend to convert a large part of the floor space in this structure to meet the vastly increased health-care needs of our membership in Greater New York."

Exactly two years later, on October 14, 1947, The New York Times reported that the "International Ladies Garment workers Union has begun a $1,000,000 expansion project for its Union Health Center at 275 Seventh Avenue."  The facility, described as "the largest ambulatory clinic in the city with the exception of Presbyterian Hospital," would now engulf five-and-a-half floors.  On staff, said the article, were "ten full-time physicians, 110 visiting doctors, thirty-five nurses, thirty technicians, five pharmacists and 200 lay employees."

image via the NYC Dept of Records & Information Services.

Neither Arthur Waldorf nor Bernard Stulberg worked in 275 Seventh Avenue.  Waldorf, who was 40 years old, worked as a bookmaker and was on parole after serving part of a seven-and-a-half to fifteen-year sentence for attempted extortion.  The New York Times said, "he had been arrested five times since 1922, but only had two convictions."

Bernard Stulberg had been arrested four times and convicted once for robbery.  Prior to the 1947 World Series, Stulberg called Waldorf and bet $1,900 to $1,000 that the Yankees would win.  The Yankees won, but Waldorf did not pay up.

On October 8, 1947, the men met on the sidewalk outside the Lefcourt Clothing Center building.

"Where's my thousand dollars?" demanded Stulberg.

"I'm not paying.  We had nothing in writing and you didn't put up any cash."

The New York Times reported, "Stulberg grabbed the bookie and began to shake him violently, Mr. [Assistant District Attorney Harold] Birns said."  Waldorf broke free and ran through the Midtown Barber Shop, into the lobby and out of the 26th Street entrance.  In the meantime, Stulberg had headed him off on the side street.

"I'll fix you," Stulberg blurted.

He then plunged a knife into Waldorf's forehead and right side.  The bookmaker fell to the ground and Stulberg stabbed him again, this time in the breast.  Waldorf ran back into the barbershop and pleaded, "I'm hurt.  Please call a doctor."  He was dead before help could arrive.  The dozens of witnesses, many of them "girls leaving the building for luncheon," alerted a passing plainclothes officer Sebastian Quod.  He arrested Stulberg a half block away after a short struggle.  "Stulberg bit the patrolman's left hand before he was subdued," said the article.

In the meantime, fashion firms continued to share the building with the clinic.  Among them in 1953 was Eastwood & Holt, fur brokers, who occupied the 14th floor.  Over a weekend in April that year, the firm was the victim of an Mission Impossible-type heist.  Thieves broke into the 16-story building at 159 West 25th Street and took the elevator to the roof.  There they leaned a ladder against the Seventh Avenue building and climbed to and smashed the 16-floor windows of the L. E. Uniform Company.  Once inside, they used "a brace and a bit, a crowbar, and other tools, to tunnel through the interior wall to the next-door office of the Fine Fashions Company, and then repeated the same performance to reach the Phyllis Dress Company, whose office faces the street," explained The New York Times.

Amazingly, the robbers lowered one man two stories on a rope.  "He cut the glass of the Eastwood & Holt front windows with a diamond, so as to make no sound audible on the street below."  He selected mink skins, wrapped them into 83 bundles, and sent them back up on ropes before being hauled up himself.  The gang escaped through the same route.

The I.L.G.W.U. Health Center received a distinguished guest on June 6, 1964.  President Lyndon B. Johnson unveiled a plaque here "that duplicates the commemorative medal authorized by Congress in the last bill signed by President Kennedy, on Nov. 25, 1963," said The Times.  The medal's inscription called the clinic the "first ever operated by a trade union in the United States."

By the fourth quarter of the 20th century, 275 Seventh Avenue was perhaps home to more offices than factories.  In 1987 Child Care, Inc. had space here, and in the 1990s, the Garment Industrial Development Corp., the National Coalition Against Censorship, and the Consortium for Worker Education were tenants.  Politician Tom Duane's headquarters were listed here in 1993.  Later, Peter Lang Publishing occupied space on the 28th floor, and the Center on Social Welfare Policy Administration Law, and Cancer Care were in the building.  As early as 2012 the Disability Services and Allied Workers Joint Board (DSAW) operated here.

In considering the Lefcourt Clothing Center an individual New York City landmark on May 20, 2025, the Landmarks Preservation Commission noted that the changes to the storefronts, "do not detract from the striking brickwork and massing of this important skyscraper designed by one of New York's foremost Art Deco architects."

photographs by the author

Buchman & Kahn's 1926 Hoffmann Building - 79 Madison Avenue

In 1914, millionaire real estate operator Robert W. Goelet announced that he would erect a "16-story brick fireproof store and loft building" on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and 28th Street.  Architects Warren & Wetmore projected the cost of the project at $350,000.  The firm had recently designed the new Grand Central Terminal, which was completed the previous year.

For some reason, however, the project did not go forward.  Instead, eleven years later, the 79 Madison Ave. Corp., headed by Harris H. Uris, acquired the property and hired Buchman & Kahn to design an office and loft building on the parcel.  On June 6, 1925, the New York Evening Post reported that the architects, "have placed the estimated cost at $3,500,000 for land and building."  The figure would translate to about $60.8 million in 2025.  The article noted, "The building is expected to be ready for occupancy about February 1, 1926."

Buchman & Kahn designed the 16-story building in the Renaissance Revival style.  The three-story base was faced in stone.  The first and second floors were designed as a segmental arcade, the spandrels of which were filled with deep red, veined stone.  The reeded pilasters of the third floor were decorated with carved bands.  They upheld a remarkable intermediate cornice that smacked of Egyptian lotus capitals.  It was adorned with full relief, carved rosettes.

Above the 12th floor--decorated with stone and terra cotta panels--were two setbacks, at the 13th and the 14th through 16th floors.

photograph by Sigurd Fischer from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The New York Evening Post remarked, "The architects have introduced every detail of modern business building design in the layout and plan, including ceiling heights of unusual liberality, [and] four freight and four passenger elevators."  The most noticeable ceiling height of "unusual liberality" was the ground floor, which was nearly double height.  It was leased to the Equitable Trust Company in January 1926.

The Hoffmann Building attracted a variety of tenants.  Initial lessees were apparel-related firms like The Rubber Reducing Corset Co. and Barton's Bias Narrow Fabric Co.  Publisher G. K. Hanchett was also an initial tenant.  The firm published periodicals like Good Hardware and Progressive Grocer.  Other early tenants were accountant Leonard Levine; the French-based fabric firm of Seydoux & Michau; and Anderson, Meyer & Co., Inc., dealers of antimony.  (Antimony is a gray metal, used in alloys.)

The Corset and Underwear Review, April, 1926 (copyright expired)

G. K. Hanchett remained in the building well into the Depression years.  Another publisher, Frederick Warne & Co., which dealt in children's books, leased space in 1944.

The second half of the century saw the tenant list of 79 Madison Avenue filling with focus-related groups.  The City Youth Board was here in the late 1950s through mid-1960s.  At the same time, the Committee for the Monroe Doctrine and the Committee of One Million Against the Admission of Communist China to the United Nations were here.  The 1970s and 1980s saw the Council for Agencies Servicing the Blind, the National Association of Social Workers, and the New York Coalition for Safety Belt Use leasing space.

Image by Wurts Bros., 1936, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In the meantime, Dodd, Mead & Co. signed a lease for the eighth floor in September 1966.  The New York Times reported that the book publisher, "will use the space for new editorial, executive and business offices beginning in February."  The firm would remain for decades.

Occupying space at the time was the public relations firm Marvin Liebman Associates.  During the 1964 Presidential campaign, the firm did the public relations work for the Barry Goldwater organization.  

Two interesting tenants here as early as the 1980s were Sparkman and Stephens, Inc. and the German Wine Information Bureau.  Sparkman and Stephens, Inc. offered an upscale service--chartering more than 350 yachts including captain and crew.  According to Joanne A. Fishman, writing in The New York Times on May 30, 1982, the winter charters were mostly in the Caribbean.  In the summer months, however, they "run mostly in New England, the Mediterranean, the Baltic, off Norway, Sweden and Denmark and the English Coast."

Buchmand & Kahn placed intricate sunflower screens above the entrance doors. photograph by Sigurd Fischer from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

As its name implied, the German Wine Information Bureau disseminated the nuances of German wines.  In November 1985, New Yorkers who were seriously interested in learning about them could enroll in the German Wine Academy here.  Its five-month seminars took the enrollees to the vineyards and wineries of the German wine regions.  The German Wine Information Bureau operated here at least through 1988.

F. Schumacher & Co. became an important tenant beginning in the late 1980s.  Established in 1889, the privately held textile firm designs and manufactures wall coverings, drapery fabrics, and other interior design elements.  When the interior of Radio City Music Hall was restored, F. Schumacher & Co. reproduced the 1931 original carpets and wall coverings.

On June 30, 1995, Newsday reported that F. Schumacher & Co. "is expanding at 79 Madison Ave. by leasing an addition 16,000 square feet to house office and showroom space."

Modernization of vintage buildings most often attack the lower floors, obliterating the original designs as mismatched storefronts are installed.  But 79 Madison Avenue happily escaped that fate.  Although the magnificent entrances have been streamlined and their ornate screens scrapped, overall Buchman & Kahn's 1926 structure survives intact.

photographs by the author

The 1928 Bergdorf Goodman Building - 58th Street and Fifth Avenue

 

photo by Ajay Suresh

In 1925, Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt had outlived the grande dames of her generation like Caroline Schermerhorn Astor and Marion Fish.  Her massive mansion that engulfed the Fifth Avenue blockfront from 57th to 58th Street, which had been the showpiece of Millionaire's Row at the turn of the century, was now an anachronism.  One-by-one, the mansions of Alice's former neighbors had been replaced with high-rise commercial buildings.  The 80-year-old and her army of servants lived within a Gilded Age time capsule amid a 20th century sea of commerce.

Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt's palatial home was engulfed by 20th century business buildings.  from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

That year, Alice Vanderbilt offered the mansion that had been her home for nearly half a century for sale, saying "it had become a burden," according to The New York Times.  In November, a syndicate headed by G. Maurice Hecksher offered $7.1 million for the property, announcing it would "improve the site with a fifty-six-story apartment hotel," said the newspaper.  The deal fell through, however.

On June 16, 1926, The New York Times reported that the mansion "was disposed of finally yesterday by Mrs. Alice G. Vanderbilt to Frederick Brown."  The real estate operator had paid $6 million, or about $103 million in 2025 terms.  "The fate of the mansion, which was built by the late Cornelius Vanderbilt at a cost of millions of dollars, is undetermined," said the article.

That situation soon changed.  One of the last surviving landmarks of what was once called Vanderbilt Row, or sometimes Vanderbilt Alley, was demolished.  Brown hired Buchman & Kahn to design eight stores and office buildings  on the site.  (The plans would eventually change to seven.)  Ely Jacques Kahn headed the project, designing the grouping visually as a unified structure.  His Modern Classical design greatly drew from French Renaissance prototypes in order to complement the surrounding structures, most notably Henry J. Hardenbergh's Plaza Hotel.

Ely Jacques Kahn's Fifth Avenue elevation clearly depicts the separate buildings, from the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.

Completed in 1928, the buildings were designed in a symmetrical A-B-C-D-C-B-A configuration.  The end buildings, nearly twice the width of the others, rose nine floors, while the middle structures were six stories tall.  On March 11, 1928, The New York Times described, "the exterior of the building is of white South Dover marble with green bronze window trim, balcony and doorway, and a sloping roof of green tiles, thus carrying out the color scheme of other buildings on the plaza."

In the meantime, Alsace-born Herman Bergdorf had opened a tailor shop near Union Square in 1899.  Two years later, his former apprentice, 25-year-old Edwin Goodman, partnered with him and the business was renamed Bergdorf Goodman.   In 1906, Edwin Goodman purchased Bergdorf's interest.  Increasingly he established a reputation of a high-end women's tailor.  In an example of his marketing acumen, in 1914 he was the first Manhattan women's clothier to offer sophisticated, ready-to-wear fashions.

Brown's first tenant was Bergdorf Goodman, which signed a 21-year lease for the building on the southwest corner of 58th Street and Fifth Avenue in March 1927.  Because the building was still under construction, Edwin Goodman was able to provide design input to Kahn, including an apartment for Goodman's family on the ninth floor.

image by Sigurd Fischer, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

Goodman specified opulent, French-style interiors.  Shoppers would move through rooms that echoed the salons and parlors of the Fifth Avenue mansions of a generation earlier.  Architecture & Building described the store in March 1928 saying, "The interior follow the French styles of the Louis' and the Empire with a savoring of modern French decoration...The principal entrance at the center of 58th Street leads into an elliptical rotunda in the style of the Empire."

On March 1931, Through The Ages captioned this photograph, "Entrance rotunda, Bergdorf Goodman Building.  The walls are of Biegenelle, the base and pilasters of Loredo Chiaro-marble. 

An advertisement in Country Life in America in 1928 reflected the surroundings in which wealthy women here shopped. 

Here women of critical taste may observe clothes of the highest fashion...One may judge, before purchasing, how such clothes will look when worn in one's own drawing room.

Like the most exclusive fashion houses of Paris, there were no goods to be seen.  Architecture & Building explained, "Here, as elsewhere throughout the building, the effect is of beautifully decorated and furnished salons wherein no merchandise is displayed."  Instead, customers sat in French chairs or settees while a saleswoman (called a vendeuse) brought out the items one-by-one for consideration.

Through the Ages magazine, March 1931

The southernmost four buildings were called the Dobbs Building, named after tenant Dobbs & Company, a hat retailer.  Another initial neighbor of Bergdorf Goodman on the block was the upscale restaurant Sherry's. 

In 1932, three years into the Great Depression, Frederick Brown declared bankruptcy and in 1934 he lost the property to foreclosure.  Edwin Goodman took the opportunity the next year to purchase the three northern buildings for $3 million (more than $66.5 million today).  By now his firm's remarkable success had made the staggering outlay possible.  In 1929, he had expanded through the sixth floor of the northern building.  In 1931, Fortune magazine had noted that none of the couturier houses in Manhattan, "has succeeded in clothing women in an exclusive way on so magnificent a scale as that which Mr. Goodman has achieved, with 18,000 customers on his books."

Despite the ongoing Depression, other chic tenants moved into the other buildings.  On July 9, 1934, The New York Times reported that Grande Maison de Blanc had leased the building at 746 Fifth Avenue, "one of the buildings on the Vanderbilt 'chateau' site."  Founded in around 1872, the firm dealt in children's and women's clothing.  Steuben Glass occupied the store next door, at 748 at the time.  It would move across the avenue in 1937, the same year that the Parke-Bernet Galleries took over four floors of the Dobbs Building.

from the collection of the New York Public Library

Other tenants to move in included two women's shops, the Tailored Woman, Inc. and Mary Lewis, Inc., both of which signed a lease in 1939; and the French jewelry firm of Van Cleef & Arpels, which moved into the building in 1940.

All the while those tenants were signing leases, Edward Goodman was methodically purchasing the mortgages of the buildings.  By 1948, Goodman owned the entire blockfront.

On August 20, 1953, The New York Times reported, "Edwin Goodman, who at the age of 24 became a co-founder of Bergdorf Goodman...died early yesterday at his penthouse, atop the store 754 Fifth Avenue."  Calling the 76-year-old, "one of the most eminent figures in American haute couture and merchandising," the article said, "He catered to the wealthiest women of Hollywood and society and employed debutantes and members of royalty."  (The latter referred to vendeuses like Kay Summersby, who became Dwight D. Eisenhower's wartime aide, and the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia.)

Goodman's son, Andrew, took over the helm of Bergdorf Goodman.  At the time, the store extended the width of the Fifth Avenue property, other than the Van Cleef & Arpels shop.  (By 1998, the Goodman penthouse would be converted to a commercial space, home that year to the John Barrett Beauty Salon.)

In 1984, architect Allan Greenberg was hired to undo the decades of mismatched storefronts that had disfigured Buchman & Kahn's lower two floors.  As part of his renovations, Greenberg installed an imposing entrance on Fifth Avenue similar to the original entrance on West 58th Street.  

After seven decades of city grime, in the summer of 1998 Bellett Construction of Manhattan was commissioned to clean the marble facade.  At the time, the original bronze windows and trim on 58th Street were restored.

photograph by Tdorante10

At a time when the word "iconic" is tossed around to the point that it has lost its meaning, Buchman & Kahn's striking marble Bergdorf Goodman Building is one rare structure deserving of that description.

The 1930 Rolls Royce Building - 32 East 57th Street

 

In 1928, the exclusive Miss Chapin's School still occupied the two former mansions at 32 and 34 East 57th Street.  But the Midtown district, now filled with commercial buildings and bustling traffic, was no longer one of posh homes and private schools.  The following year the newly formed 34 East 57th Street Corporation demolished the old residences and hired the architectural firm of Buchman & Kahn to design a 19-story and penthouse office and showroom building on the site.

Completed the following year, the firm's Art Deco design featured a three-story stone base with a massive show window at the ground floor and sleek metal main entrance.  Honeycomb-like bands above the doors mimicked those executed in stone at the second and third floors.

Rusticated piers in brown-gray brick contrasted with the smooth-faced spandrels.  Above the 12th floor, the structure detonated in a series of setbacks and terraces.  

The Great Depression had struck almost simultaneously with the building's groundbreaking.  Ironically, before construction began the owners had negotiated the lease of the main showroom space with one of the world's foremost symbols of spending and luxury--the Rolls-Royce Company.  Now, in the ground floor of the new Rolls-Royce Building (while other New Yorkers waited in bread lines), wealthy customers browsed among the British-based firm's high-end vehicles--touted as "the best automobile in the world."

Vehicles like the 1930 Phantom II were displayed in the ground floor showroom.  The Motor, September 24, 1929.

Rolls-Royce remained in the space until 1936, when, on August 15, The New York Times reported, "As part of its 1937 sales program the Cadillac Motor Car Company yesterday leased large space for showrooms in the former Rolls-Royce building at 32 East Fifty-seventh Street."  The "store, basement, mezzanine and second floor," would be used for the luxury car maker's sales and display purposes.

photograph by Wurts Bros, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

In the meantime, the upper floor offices were home to a variety of tenants, including the architectural office of Edward Shepherd Hewitt, and the headquarters of Young America magazine.

With the Depression over, the first of a tradition of art galleries within the building began.  On January 18, 1941, The New York Times reported, "In the Rolls-Royce Building, 32-4 East Fifty-seventh Street, H. V. Allison leased space for his own art salesrooms."  The building would soon be known as a center of art.  

In January 1945, the Kraushaar Galleries moved in.  Founded by Charles Kraushaar in 1885 as an art supply store, it now specialized in the modern art.  On January 6, The Sun reported the gallery had been "installed in spacious rooms that are beautifully adapted to the showing of pictures," adding:

Five American painters long associated with these galleries have been chosen to try out the new rooms—and do it impressively.  These artists are George Luks, Maurice Prendergast, William Glackens, John Sloan and Ernest Lawson, and students of American life as well as of American art will be interested in seeing again the "Garden Party" by the George Luks who never repeated himself; the prismatic coloring of Prendergast and the transcriptions from New York history by Sloan, Glackens, and Lawson.

Already occupying space in the building at the time were the Metropolitan-Reynolds Galleries, the Willard Gallery, and the Bignou Gallery.  On the same day The Sun reported on the Kraushaar Gallery's opening, it announced a showing of seven paintings by Richard Pousette-Dart in the Willard Gallery.

By 1947, the Bucholz Gallery adjoined the Willard Gallery, and the Schaefer Gallery had leased space by 1951.  

One space not dedicated to paintings or sculpture was the H. H. Harmer Gallery, here by 1946.  It was perhaps the country's preeminent auction gallery of rare stamps and would remain in the building for years.  On September 12, 1954, for example, the Washington D.C. Sunday Star announced, "Alfred F. Lichtenstein's prize-winning collection of stamps of Canada is to be sold at auction by H. R. Harmer, Inc., 32 East 57th street, New York City, November 1 to 3 inclusive."

In the meantime, the tradition of luxury automobiles had continued on the lowest floors.  In 1956, Jaguar of New York, Inc. occupied the showrooms and would remain at least through 1966.

Allan Frumkin moved his art gallery into the Rolls-Royce Building in the fall of 1959.  When the Frumkin Gallery opened its exhibition of Theodore Halkin painted reliefs in January 1964, The New York Times remarked, "This is cunning, slightly fiendish work."

One of the building's most visible and long-lasting galleries was the Pace, which leased space in 1968.  The gallery had been founded eight years earlier in Boston.  Some of the world's most recognized artists were represented here.  Such was the case when an exhibition of Louise Nevelson's painted aluminum sculptures was held in May 1971. 

In an article on June 18, 2018, The New York Times journalist Caroline Bankoff described the Pace Gallery as "a humble Boston shop that has turned into a global empire."  She noted that since establishing the gallery at 32 East 57th Street, Pace had galleries "in Chelsea, London, Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul, Palo Alto and Geneva."

At the time of Bankoff's article, the Wells Gallery also occupied space in the building.

After half a century in 32 East 57th Street, Pace Gallery, now known as Pace/MacGill, left in 2019.  On October 21, 2021, The New York Times reported that the Howard Greenberg Gallery had taken "an entire floor vacated by the Pace Gallery in 32 East 57th Street."  Greenberg opened with a showing of photographs by the first Black photographer hired by Life magazine as a staff photographer.  The exhibition was titled "Gordon Parks: A Choice of Weapons."

Once the destination for Manhattan's wealthiest car shoppers, the Rolls-Royce Building--a sort of sculpture in itself--has been a center of upscale art for more than eight decades.

photographs by the author

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Buchman & Kahn's 1929 Art Deco 261 Fifth Avenue

The glory days of brick and brownstone mansions along Fifth Avenue below 34th Street were gone by the mid-1920's.  A decade earlier loft and store buildings had begun replacing the venerable homes.  In 1928 the three four- and five-story buildings at Nos. 259 through 263 Fifth Avenue and 2 through 6 East 29th Street were prepared for demolition.

Scaffolding girds the old buildings and debris chutes pierce the lower windows of No. 263 as demolition gets underway in 1928.  photo by Buchman & Kahn, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

The properties had been amassed by the newly-formed Fifth Avenue & 29th Street Corp.  The design of the syndicate's 26-story multi-purpose building (it would house showrooms, offices and manufacturing space) was given to the architectural firm of Buchman & Kahn.  There is no doubt that Ely Jacques Kahn took the reins on what would be one of the last of the firm's commissions.  (He would take over the practice in 1930, renaming it Ely Jacques Kahn Architects.)   As Anthony W. Robins put it in his 2017 book New York Art Deco, "The wonderfully fine-grained detail, the sensibility of decorative objets-d'art, could only be Kahn--no other architect produced anything like this."

As construction was well underway in the fall, Kahn was among the speakers at a ceremony at the job site on October 17, 1928.  The New York Times explained "Eighteen mechanics who have shown outstanding ability during the construction of the twenty-five-story [sic] story office building at 261 Fifth Avenue...will receive certificates and gold buttons."  Almost every facet of the construction process was represented among the recipients--a bricklayer, carpenter, plumber, ornamental iron worker, roofer, etc.

The newly-completed building was featured on an advertising piece for the Youngstown Buckeye Company & Youngstown Pipe.  from the collection of the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor

Construction was completed in 1929.  Kahn had produced a jazz age Art Deco structure unlike any other in the city.  Using geometric forms and bands executed in vivid multi-colored terra cotta, the architect harkened to motifs similar to those used by Frank Lloyd Wright.  

Kahn's original Fifth Avenue entrance which included an inverted stairstep design and Art Deco panels...

was replaced during a renovation with a grill which strived to pay respect to Kahn's design.  Top photo by Sigurd Fischer from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York, Bottom photo by Beyond My Ken

The ground floor tenant was the newly-formed Broadway National Bank and Trust Company, which opened for business on June 25, 1929.  Its Art Deco interiors were designed by Louis H. Friedland.  The New York Times reported "Marble columns and pilasters in black and gold are features of the decoration of the main banking room, with an ornamental decorative ceiling."  The bank had spared little expense on materials.  "The grill is of marble, black and gold, with flush French walnut marquetry paneling, surrounded by a screen of gun-metal finish bronze with metal trimmings," said the article.  "The vestibule, on the Fifth Avenue part, is of gray Formosa marble on French walnut marquetry panels covered with metal and bronze trimmings and cornice."  

The 18-foot high walls of the chairman's office were paneled in French walnut mahogany and the ceiling had decorative plasterwork.  Marble pilasters decorated the board room.

As the showrooms and offices filled with businesses typical of the district--carpeting and textile firms, for instance--one stood out.  Amtorg Trading Corporation was among the first to move in.  It was the only organization empowered by the Soviet Union to purchase American goods and to sign contracts for importation of Soviet products.  It was, as well, tasked with providing American firms information about trade opportunities in the U.S.S.R. and to inform the Soviets about American technical advances and information on American firms.

But there was more going on in the offices of Amtorg Trading Corporation.  On July 28, 1930 the Queens newspaper, the Daily Star, reported "Federal officials charge that the Amtorg Trading Corporation, which has been under the searching scrutiny of the House of Representatives committee investigating Communistic affairs, is implicated in [an] alleged smuggling plot."

Two men, Jacob Kreitz and a man named Winfield, "who is said to be a Soviet agent," had been arrested for smuggling Russian-made watches into the country.  U. S. Attorney Charles H. Tuttle declared "he has ascertained that Wolode Asaturov, described as a controller in the Amtorg company, played a role in the alleged illegal importation."

Colorful terra cotta ornamentation adorns the upper floors.

In Kreitz's pocket when he was arrested was "a little black book" which contained the names and addresses of 25 Soviet agents in the United States.  Sewn into the underside of his coat lapel was a four-inch ribbon which read "The bearer of this badge is a trustworthy servant of the Soviet and may be trusted with any secrets."

Despite Federal suspicions of espionage, Amtorg Trading Corporation continued to operate from No. 261 Fifth Avenue.  On April 24, 1931 The Daily Record reported "Russia Soviet Republic has placed orders with Rochester manufacturing firms amount to $600,000 so far this year...All contracts for Russia are placed through the Amtorg Trading Corporation, 261 Fifth Avenue, New York.  Many more large contracts for Russia are expected to be placed here."

Apparently not every worker in the office was entirely content.  On April 28, 1932 45-year old clerk, Pauline Lodge, threw herself from a window in Amtorg Trading Corporation's 18th floor offices.  Police found a note in her pocket which read:

To the city:  Bury me like a dog, but don't disturb the people where I stay.  Pauline Lodge.

When the manager of the office was asked about the tragedy, he simply said she was "disgusted with life."

Two views of the lobby.  photos by Sigurd Fischer from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

With the repeal of Prohibition, Amtorg Trading Corporation seized the opportunity.  On November 3, 1934 The Advocate reported that the Soviet Russia Vodka Wine & Liquor Corp. had opened in No. 261 Fifth Avenue with a license to sell wholesale liquor.

In the meantime, the more expected tenants in the building included the Native Laces & Textiles, Inc., Pacific Mills, and Botany Worsted Mills throughout the 1940's.  A much different wartime tenant was the Vulcanized Rubber & Plastics Company.  

While textile and home goods firms continued to call No. 261 Fifth Avenue home at mid-century, the tenant list broadened.  In 1951 Screen Stories magazine was published here, followed by Modern Screen and Filmland magazines by 1958.  At the same time the Decorative Cabinet Corp. was leasing space.

Throughout the next decades firms like Jolo Plastics Corporation, makers of mattress and pillow coverings, counter coverings and protective items; Cameo Curtains, Inc.; and Ex-Cell Home Fashions were in the building.  In 1988 Ex-Cell introduced its Skirt-It product, what Taconic Newspapers called "an innovative sink skirt" that "transforms an ordinary sink into a spacious decorative vanity, hiding unsightly plumbing and pipes and adding fashion flair, in a matter of minutes."  (The ambitious home decorator could purchase towels, shower curtains and window curtains to match.)

No. 261 Fifth Avenue became part of the massive property holdings of Harry B. Helmsley.   In 1982 he admitted to a reporter "I'm cheap," and as evidence pointed out that he changed the name of the New York Central Building at No. 230 Park Avenue to the New York General Building so he would have to change only two letters on the facade.  (It was later renamed the Helmsley Building.)

It was perhaps this notorious parsimony that resulted in No. 261 Fifth Avenue's being little altered.  Upon his death in 1997 it passed to his widow, Leona M. Helmsley.  It was purchased by Investment Properties Associates the following year, which resold it prior to 2000.

The lobby as it appears in 2020.

In 2008 a restoration and renovation was begun by Israel Berger Architects, PC.  Included was the amazingly-intact lobby, with its original lighting and other fixtures.  The gold leaf of the lobby ceiling was carefully redone by YVStudio.  The six-year project brought Ely Jacques Kahn's striking Art Deco design back to its 1929 appearance.  

The re-fabricated entrance more closely resembles the 1929 original.

photographs by the author