Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store

Saks Fifth Avenue spans two structures: The original store is at 611 Fifth Avenue, built in 1924, and there is an extension at 623 Fifth Avenue, a 36-story tower built in 1990. Saks co-developed the tower and operates ten of its floors. It is across 50th Street from St. Patrick's Cathedral and across Fifth Avenue from the Rockefeller Center complex, both National Historic Landmarks. The architects created a modern interior for the department store and followed a new city zoning law requiring setbacks for buildings' upper floors for Saks' administrative offices. The tower is often stated to have 36 stories, as the 37th and 38th floors just house mechanical equipment, as does floor 10. each with about of street frontage. The exterior utilizes Indiana limestone, brick, and cast stone. The design is a modest version of neoclassical buildings popular in the 1920s, reported at the time as inspired by the architecture of the late English Renaissance and by lesser-known 18th c. London buildings. On Fifth Avenue, the display windows span the block and are only interrupted by two entrances. The presence of twin entrances, while relatively rare for department stores, emphasizes the building's size and full-block Fifth Avenue frontage. The entranceways are rectangular, with carved spiral moldings and topped with a plain cornice. Sets of doors span the lower halves of the entrances, while the upper halves have windows set behind ornate metal grilles. while the tower has . The main floor is about and includes a handbag department, as well as an escalator to the second floor that was decorated by Rem Koolhaas. The first story has a ceiling height of , while the other stories have ceiling heights of . The building's superstructure is formed by eight sets of columns. Twelve elevators were placed at the eastern end of the building, in the rear. Two enclosed stairways were installed near the Fifth Avenue entrances, and there were service stairs at each of the rear corners. The furnishings were designed in hardwood, while the wall surfaces and columns above contained white finishing. The flat-paneled ceilings had suspended light fixtures and concealed sprinkler pipes. Office space Each of the office stories has a ceiling of . The office tower's two-story lobby is on the 11th and 12th floors, a sky lobby atop the Saks expansion, with four shuttle elevators taking passengers up to this lobby. The lobby originally had a waterfall and 1989 Richard Serra work, Fin, made of curved oxidized iron and weighing 18 tons. The lobby level also has a conference center and cafeteria. As late as 2002, the building had a five-story corporate penthouse for executive offices, with a total of . The offices, on floors 32 to 36, had Swiss pearwood-lined walls, while its elevator lobbies and reception areas had cut limestone walls. The space also featured meeting rooms, a kitchen, and a dining room. ==History==

Origin: A. Saks & Co. Andrew Saks was born to a German Jewish family in Baltimore. He worked as a peddler and paper boy before moving to Washington, D.C., where at the age of only 20, and in the still-chaotic and tough economic times of 1867, only two years after the United States prevailed in the American Civil War, he established a men's clothing store At the time, the site was described in the Real Estate Record as a "new northern outpost for large retail trade". Demolition of the two structures began later that year. Saks merged in April 1923 with Gimbel Brothers, Inc., which was owned by Horace Saks' cousin Bernard Gimbel. Gimbel took over the Herald Square lease, paid off Saks' debt, and bought $8 million of the company's stock. The Saks Fifth Avenue store became a joint venture between Saks and Gimbel. Saks & Company bought the Democratic Club in May 1923. On September 15, 1924, the Saks Fifth Avenue Building opened at 611 Fifth Avenue, with a full-block avenue frontage south of St. Patrick's Cathedral, facing what would become Rockefeller Center. At the time, The Evening World wrote that it did not consider Saks a department store, contrary to popular belief. The newspaper stated that Saks sold no dry goods or furniture, only dealing in clothing and accessories. The new store did not add any of these departments, only doubling the floor space of the existing departments. The store would become known as "Saks-Fifth Avenue" with a hyphen, or "Saks 34th Street". Over subsequent years, several branches of the Saks Fifth Avenue brand were opened, and the Fifth Avenue store became a flagship location. From 1929 to 1969, Sophie Gimbel led the store's custom department. Gimbel, wife of the company president, designed elegant clothes and introduced women's culottes to the American public. On the land underlying the Saks flagship, the Saks Realty Company initially owned the former Democratic Club plot, but the remaining site was owned by the George Kemp Company. In 1935, the Kemp Company bought the Democratic Club plot, thereby obtaining ownership of the entire site. Also in 1935, Saks introduced a ski department with a ski slope and skiing classes. By 1938, Fortune magazine characterized the Fifth Avenue store as upscale, as opposed to "the anthill bargain basement tables on Herald Square", the latter of which ended up closing in the 1960s. The Fifth Avenue site was sold in 1952 to William Zeckendorf, who the following year sold it to the Rockefeller family. Late 20th century In February 1979, Saks announced the flagship store would be extensively remodeled for $200 million as part of the first major renovation in the flagship's history. Initially, Saks officials planned a nine-story expansion "in the backyard of a former brownstone" behind the existing flagship. The flagship's first escalators would be installed within the expansion, as Saks officials sought to minimize disruption to the main store. These plans brought criticism from observers who worried the expansion would lower the quality of Saks' flagship to that of Bloomingdale's or Macy's. The lots to the east had been proposed as the site of a tower since the 1950s but had not been developed because of a lack of participation by Saks real estate interests. Work on the expansion proceeded before the tower was approved and, in November 1979, a set of new escalators opened in the rear of the Saks flagship. Project architect Hambrecht Terrell then renovated the second floor with a brick corridor containing shops for notable fashion designers. The third floor was also redesigned with a corridor lined with women's boutiques, and the sixth floor was renovated as a moderately-priced clothing section for the "working woman". The store's land lot and the adjoining midblock parcel were in separate zoning districts with different floor area ratios, and so air rights could not be transferred unless the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated it as a landmark. According to the CPC chairman's counsel, if the flagship were a city landmark, the tower would be allowed because its development would assist the preservation of the landmark. After Saks' agreement with Rockefeller Center Properties failed, Galbreath-Ruffin became a partner in the tower project, though Swiss Bank Corporation subsequently bought out Galbreath-Ruffin's stake. A proposal for a 36-story tower was presented by a joint venture of Saks and Swiss Bank in 1986. The former would expand its flagship space into the base of the tower while the latter would use the upper floors as its headquarters. Swiss Bank and Saks spent fourteen months negotiating over the plans. The largest point of contention was the tower addition's 50th Street frontage, which Saks wanted for display windows, but this was ultimately allocated to Swiss Bank for its entrance. and the tower was completed in 1990. The store's selling floors were expanded into the first through ninth stories of the tower. The additions included a restaurant called Cafe SFA on the eighth floor and a beauty salon and spa at the ninth floor. Architectural writer Paul Goldberger criticized the design as bland, saying the Swiss Bank Tower was "so successful at not offending that it ends up having nothing to say". The tower was fully occupied by 1992. The original flagship and the tower addition have a single owner, initially Swiss Bank Corporation, which had leased the ground from Saks for 100 years. Following Swiss Bank's subsequent merger with UBS, the company moved its offices out of the tower. Saks Fifth Avenue completed the $125 million renovation of the flagship store in 2003. A year later, Saks' new CEO Fred Wilson announced plans to undo much of the renovation and spend $150 million to further remodel the flagship. In August 2007, the United States Postal Service began an experimental program selling the "plus" ZIP Code extension to businesses. The first company to do so was Saks Fifth Avenue, which received the ZIP Code of 10022-7463 ("SHOE") for the flagship's eighth-floor shoe department. The building's eighth floor thus became the first instance in the United States in which an individual story of a building had its own ZIP Code. This coincided with the expansion of the shoe department, which had moved from the fourth floor and doubled in size to . Hudson's Bay Company, which took over the Saks Fifth Avenue chain in 2013, took out a loan the following year. The loan gave the Fifth Avenue store a book value of $3.7 billion, more than the $2.9 billion the company had paid for the entire chain. In 2015, Saks began a $250 million, three-year restoration of the flagship store. The company president desired reinventing the flagship, opening up its floors and closing its Cafe SFA to create a new eatery, the Parisian-style L'Avenue. Saks planned a spiral staircase around a glass elevator, linking its first and second floors. It would move around departments and convert some back-room space to retail space. The main floor, which was renovated to contain a handbag department, was completed in August 2019. The value of the building was recorded at $1.6 billion in 2019, amid a general decline in the retail sector. 2020s to present A department for children opened in March 2020, the first in the flagship store's history. Additional work was to be completed in 2021, including a men's shoes department and a basement jewelry section. The coworking firm Convene operated space there for nearly two years beginning in September 2021. After New York state officials announced in April 2022 that they would issue three casino licenses in Downstate New York, Hudson's Bay Company proposed constructing a casino on the top three stories of the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store; however, this proposal was withdrawn in April 2025. The womenswear company Skims opened a shop on the flagship's fifth floor in May 2023, and a video studio opened on the tenth floor that October. In August 2025, Vornado Realty Trust bought 623 Fifth Avenue for $217 million, with plans to instead convert the space back to offices. ==See also==