Tiffany and Company Building

The Tiffany and Company Building is at 401 Fifth Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, United States. It is at the southeast corner with 37th Street. The building's land lot is nearly rectangular, with a recess at its southeast corner, and has a total area of . Nearby buildings include The Langham, New York hotel and 404 Fifth Avenue to the west; the Lord & Taylor Building one block north; the Morgan Library & Museum and Joseph Raphael De Lamar House one block east; 200 Madison Avenue to the southeast; and the Gorham Building at 390 Fifth Avenue to the southwest. One of the first new store buildings in the area was the B. Altman and Company Building, which opened in 1906. Other department stores such as Lord & Taylor, as well as specialty stores such as Tiffany & Co. and the Gorham Manufacturing Company, relocated during the 1900s and 1910s. == Architecture ==

The Tiffany and Company Building was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White for luxury retail store Tiffany & Co. It is the company's fifth flagship store in New York City. The facade is an adaptation of the Palazzo Grimani di San Luca in Venice. The building was originally seven stories tall, though its facade is divided into three horizontal tiers. The top of the roof is above ground; the high ceilings made the building about as tall as a typical 11-story structure. The facade remains intact, but the interior layout has been changed significantly. The addition of one story in the lowest tier makes the building now eight stories tall. Facade The facade is made largely of marble with finishes of iron and terracotta. On Fifth Avenue, the outermost bays provided an entrance to the Tiffany & Co. store. Several storefronts, with black-granite piers and spandrels, were installed in their place. The black granite was removed in 2002 and the original design of the ground story was restored, with new square piers and bronze storefronts. The pilasters at the ground story are lighter in color than those above. On 37th Street, the third and fourth bays from west contained porticos similar to those on Fifth Avenue, while the remaining bays contained storefronts. The center three bays are separated by single rounded columns. The rest of the bays are separated by pairs of square piers, similar to those on Fifth Avenue. The two westernmost bays were modified in 1952 to resemble the storefronts on Fifth Avenue. The third through sixth bays from west remain intact, except for the addition of black-granite spandrels at the mezzanine level. The seventh bay from west (the easternmost bay on that elevation) was retrofitted with a black-granite entrance, removed in 2002. (except the center three bays on 37th Street, which are separated by single columns The columns contain imposts at that level; these imposts support round arches that rise to keystones at the top of the fourth story. Above the fourth floor, at the central bay on 37th Street, This statue had been placed on Tiffany & Co.'s previous headquarters and has been at 6 East 57th Street since 1940. The statue was of a bearded, thin man and was sculpted from wood of a fir tree, painted to resemble the patina of weathered bronze. The feet were made of solid lead. Aside from the Atlas statue, White intentionally did not put any sculpture on the facade. An entablature separated the fourth floor (top of the second tier) and fifth floor (bottom of the third tier). The fifth and sixth stories are designed almost identically to the third and fourth stories, respectively. The main difference is that the engaged piers are covered with panels, and the spandrels of the arches are covered. The facade is topped by an entablature and a cornice with large modillions. The roof appeared to be a tile roof, but it was actually a fireproof metal surface fabricated by the Meurer Brothers. High ceilings and glazed windows allowed natural light to illuminate almost all of the selling spaces on the first to sixth floors. Terracotta and clay were also used for fireproofing. In 1952, two of the elevators were removed while the other four elevators were rebuilt. The entire building was fitted with a pneumatic tube system. The basement contained three small generators and an ice machine; to prevent vibrations, the foundation of the basement was encased in a layer of sand. Each floor had eight ventilation fans. The vault's ceiling was made of masonry. Its walls were thick Inside were 2,036 safe-deposit boxes, each of which was secured by a double combination lock. The vault was so closely guarded that, when the vault experienced a minor fire in 1914, the store's security guards initially refused to let New York City Fire Department firefighters in. The safe remained in place even after Tiffany & Co. relocated in 1940. The space had purplish-gray German marble columns. as well as selling counters decorated with griffin-shaped legs. which were decorated with wood. The center of the ceiling had an oval glass skylight measuring . == History ==

Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young founded the stationery store Tiffany, Young and Ellis in 1837; the store was housed at 259 Broadway in Lower Manhattan. The company began selling jewelry, glassware, and clocks in 1839, and these items comprised most of the firm's sales four years later. This prompted the firm to expand to a neighboring building. Tiffany & Co. moved to 271 Broadway in 1847 With the uptown movement of commerce, Tiffany & Co. built a headquarters at 15 Union Square West in 1870. As late as 1893, Charles Tiffany denied rumors that the company would move yet again to Fifth Avenue and 34th Street, even as other companies were doing so. Tiffany's successor as company president, Charles T. Cook, bought a site at Fifth Avenue and 37th Street from George C. Boldt in April 1903. The site cost $2 million and measured on Fifth Avenue by on 37th Street. Cook planned to build a new headquarters on the site, hiring McKim, Mead & White to "build me a palace". The next month, the Charles T. Wills Company was hired as the building's general contractor. As the site was being excavated that October, the foundation walls collapsed, killing one laborer. The building's cornerstone was laid on March 16, 1904. That month, city inspectors alleged that the Tiffany Building's contractors were violating construction codes by hastily erecting steel frames in the winters and then installing the brick-arched floors in the summers. At the time, New York City law mandated that the top of a development site's steel structure could not progress more than three stories beyond the highest brick-arched floor. The southern lot line, which abutted the home of Henry O. Havemeyer, was originally irregular in shape; this created a situation in which parts of one lot were surrounded on three sides by the other lot. In August 1904, Havemeyer and Tiffany & Co. swapped two of the interior lots to straighten out the boundary of the site. The building ultimately cost $600,000 to complete, excluding the cost of the land. At the time, the seventh floor was not complete. That December, McKim, Mead & White filed plans to remove the marble steps in front of the building. Three months later, the firm filed plans for a seven-story building to the south, later the Gunther Building. Although that site was owned by Tiffany & Co., the Tiffany store did not occupy that land lot. Tiffany & Co. had been one of the earliest stores to move uptown to Fifth Avenue, which at the time was still primarily residential. In 1910, the New-York Tribune reported that the Altman and Tiffany buildings had prompted high demand "of high-class retail houses for locations on the avenue". By the late 1930s, commerce on Fifth Avenue had relocated still further uptown to 57th Street. The new flagship store opened on October 21, 1940. The same day, Tiffany & Co. deeded the 37th Street site to the Astor estate, with National City Bank paying $1.2 million. The interior of the old store was disassembled immediately after the Astors acquired the building. 1940s to mid-1970s For three years in the early 1940s, the ground floor was leased to the American Red Cross, as well as volunteer art exhibitions. In 1945, Alad Holding Inc., led by Alan N. Adelson, leased the building for $2 million and then sold the leasehold to industrial company Textron. Textron then remodeled the first to third floors and, in the interim, opened an office on the seventh floor in April 1946. Textron planned to eventually occupy the entire building and rename it. The company also added an air conditioning system. In July 1949, Textron announced plans to move its men's division to the Empire State Building while keeping the women's division at 401 Fifth Avenue. That November, Textron sold the leasehold, which was then acquired by Charles A. Frueaoff. and the Office of Price Stabilization also briefly occupied the building until early 1952. Henry Goelet of the Goelet real-estate family obtained full ownership of the Tiffany Building in January 1951 in a series of transactions worth $8.5 million. He bought the leasehold from the Frueaoff estate, as well as the fee interest in the land, from the Astor estate, obtaining $1.5 million in short-term financing. In 1952, Goelet detailed his plans to renovate the building. He planned to lower the first story slightly, add a mezzanine above it, remodel the storefronts, and add new air conditioning and elevators. Charles N. and Selig Whinston conducted the renovations, which cost $1 million. Ten tons of bronze and $1 million of marble were removed during the project. and American Bleached Goods opened a second-story office with two showrooms the same year. Other tenants in the 1950s included shoe chain Stuart Brooks Red Cross Shoes, as well as a Horn & Hardart restaurant. Goelet sold the Tiffany & Co. Building in 1957 to a syndicate of Nelson Properties Inc. and Burnebrook Manor Inc. Allied renovated the fifth to seventh floors in 1960, consolidating its marketing department there. Allied continued to occupy the Tiffany Building until 1973, when it moved to 1120 Avenue of the Americas. The surrounding stretch of Fifth Avenue had begun to decline by the 1970s. A Burger King fast-food restaurant had opened within the Tiffany Building by 1976. Late 1970s to present In 1977, Sun Myung Moon of the Unification Church bought the Tiffany & Co. Building for a reported $2.4 million. The Tiffany & Co. Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) as a National Historic Landmark on June 2, 1978. The church promised to restore the Tiffany Building into offices for its daily newspaper, The News World. The New York City Tribune, a subsidiary of The News World, was formed in 1983 and also had its offices in the Tiffany Building. Noticias del Mundo, a newspaper also run by the Unification Church, took some office space as well. If built, it would have been 40 stories tall and made of precast concrete. Most of the facade of the original building would have been restored, except for two bays on the highest tier, which would have been removed to create a light court. The next year, the LPC designated the building as a landmark. Meanwhile, News World Communications acquired three lots beside the Tiffany Building to enable the construction of a tower with . The Unification Church canceled its plans to build a tower above the Tiffany Building in 1990, after the LPC rejected a similar tower over the Metropolitan Club building. The Image Group also produced ''The People's Court'' in the building, and American Eagle Outfitters occupied two floors by the end of the 20th century. and a $95 million loan on 401 Fifth Avenue went to special servicing the same year. == Reception ==

When the building opened, Architects and Builders magazine said the interior color scheme "has been treated by a master hand". James described the building as having been designed "within the conditions of sociable symmetry", complementing McKim, Mead & White's other buildings on Fifth Avenue, including the Knickerbocker Trust Company Building, the Gorham Building, and the clubhouses of the University Club of New York and Metropolitan Club. Henry Olmsted Jr. said: "Architects and Capitalists are awakening to the splendid returns obtained from building construction embodying the best skill and materials money can purchase", with the Tiffany Building being one such example. Architectural critic Ada Louise Huxtable described the Burger King's presence at ground level as part of "the mutilation of Fifth Avenue", By 1990, Christopher Gray had described the building as "a notorious object lesson in how not to treat a landmark"; at the time, the facade was extremely dirty. Even after the lower section of the facade had been restored in the 2000s, Gray described the restored section as being like "a pair of khakis dipped in bleach". == See also ==