The Charles Scribner's Sons Building, also known as 597 Fifth Avenue, is a commercial structure in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, on Fifth Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets. Designed by Ernest Flagg in a Beaux Arts style, it was built from 1912 to 1913 for the Scribner's Bookstore.
The Fifth Avenue facade contains a glass-and-iron storefront on its lowest two stories with black and gold decoration. On the third through ninth stories, the facade is subdivided into five limestone bays, while at the tenth story is a mansard roof. Among the facade's details are vertical piers with four medallions containing busts of printers: Benjamin Franklin, William Caxton, Johann Gutenberg, and Aldus Manutius. The interior of the first two stories contains a retail space that initially served as a location of the Scribner's Bookstore. The upper stories contain offices, including some space that was initially used by the Scribner's publishing company.
The Charles Scribner's Sons Building was constructed to supersede a previous bookstore at 155 Fifth Avenue. The building was owned by Scribner's until 1984, when it was sold to the Cohen family, which subsequently sold it to the Benetton Group. After the bookstore in the lowest two stories closed in 1989, the building has housed numerous retail shops. A&A Investment Co. bought 597 Fifth Avenue in 2006 and it was sold to Thor Equities in 2011. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated 597 Fifth Avenue as an official landmark in 1982 and designated the ground-floor interior as a landmark in 1989.
Site The Charles Scribner's Sons Building is at 597 Fifth Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, on the eastern side of the avenue between 49th Street to the north and 48th Street to the south. The land lot covers with a frontage of on Fifth Avenue and a depth of . Nearby buildings include 600 Fifth Avenue to the west, 608 Fifth Avenue to the northwest and Tower 49 to the east.
Architecture 597 Fifth Avenue was designed by Ernest Flagg in the Beaux Arts style for the company Charles Scribner's Sons. The building is ten stories tall and is of non-load-bearing construction. It is similar in appearance to the predecessor Scribner's bookstore at 155 Fifth Avenue, which Flagg also designed; both structures have symmetrical limestone facades divided horizontally into multiple sections. Flagg said of 597 Fifth Avenue's design, "I think the building is the best thing I ever did." The structure was erected by steel contractor George A. Just Co. and masonry contractor John T. Brady & Co., with additional materials from painter William F. Eastberg & Co., wiring contractor Peet & Powers, and plastering contractor H. W. Miller.
Facade The facade is largely subdivided into five vertical bays, except at the two lowest stories, which contain a tripartite storefront. The storefront has glazed glass windows, dark ironwork, and brass-colored trim. The center section of the storefront corresponds to three bays in the upper stories. It has a centrally positioned double door, atop which is a broken pediment with the Scribner bookstore's logo at the center. The leftmost bay has another shop window while the rightmost bay leads to a separate lobby for the upper stories. At the top of the storefront are clerestory windows. The window in the center is a broad elliptical arch flanked by fluted columns, with decorative spiral ornament in the corner spandrels. The outer bays are topped by glass roundels. Above the second floor is a cartouche with the words "Charles Scribners' Sons", above a garland flanked by putti. A sill runs above the storefront.
The third story is clad with rusticated blocks of limestone and has five rectangular casement windows. At the tops of the spaces between each window are brackets shaped like lions' heads. On the upper stories, the three center bays are flanked by vertical piers and are more ornate in design compared to the outer bays. The fourth story has a balcony in front of the three center bays, as well as windows topped by triangular pediments on the outer bays. The piers at the fourth story contain medallions with cartouches of the printers Benjamin Franklin, William Caxton, Johann Gutenberg, and Aldus Manutius. See also: and
On the fifth through seventh stories, the center bays are slightly recessed behind the piers, with carved iron spandrels separating the windows on each story. In the center bays, the seventh story is topped by an entablature, while the eighth story contains segmentally arched windows with ironwork railings at the bottom. The outer bays contain smaller windows with simple moldings, as well as window sills supported by guttae. The outermost windows on the fifth through seventh stories are rectangular and those on the eighth story are segmental arches. An entablature, which contains a frieze designed as a pellet molding, runs above the eighth story. There are decorative torch motifs beneath the entablature, at the tops of each pier.
The ninth-story windows are flanked by pilasters, of which the four center pilasters are fluted. The three center windows on this story are each designed as tripartite openings with two small colonettes. A cornice with console brackets runs above the ninth story, topped by a parapet and a copper-edged mansard roof. In the center bay above the cornice is a double-height dormer that projects from the roof. This dormer is flanked by caryatids and topped by a broken pediment containing a lion's-head motif and a cartouche. There are two double hung windows in the roof on either side of the dormer. The corners of the parapet have obelisk-shaped finials.
Interior The building has a gross floor area of according to the New York City Department of City Planning. However, according to The Real Deal magazine, there are of office space and of retail space. Each of the office floors has about of usable area. As designed, the Scribner's bookstore was placed within what is now the ground-story and second-story retail space, and the business, editorial, and financial departments occupied four stories above. For Scribner's executive offices, Flagg designed some furniture such as bookshelves.
Retail space
The retail space is asymmetrical, but the design of the 155 Fifth Avenue store was emulated at 597 Fifth Avenue, in keeping with Scribner's preferences. It was once characterized by Henry-Russell Hitchcock as "the grandest, interior space that had been created in New York", akin to the interior of Grand Central Terminal. The retail space consists of a long nave-like room with a , ornately decorated vaulted ceiling. The ceiling vaults are supported by seven white rectangular pillars on each side. The grilles were originally painted with gold and bronze dust, despite the fact that original specifications had called for green decoration. The floor surface was made of herringbone and oak wood. The bookstore was designed with only one entrance, even though Flagg had wanted two. A lobby for the office stories is on the southern side of the ground floor.
At the eastern end of the ground-story retail space is a central staircase that leads up to a mezzanine display area. A mirrored surface at the mezzanine's eastern wall reflected the entire shop. From the mezzanine, staircases lead to two second-story balconies, one above the north wall and the other above the eastern section of the south wall. An additional balcony is on the western section of the south wall, above the office lobby, and is not connected to either of the other two. The southwestern balcony is accessed by a spiral staircase; a similar staircase originally existed to the northern balcony. All three balconies have decorative cast-iron railings, ornamental moldings, and plaster-paneled ceilings. The ceilings of the balconies are lower than the vaulted ceiling at the center of the room. Consequently, clerestory windows are placed at the top of the central vault's northern and southern walls. At the far eastern section of the retail space, beyond the end of the mansard roof, a skylight was installed.
History
In 1846, Charles Scribner I and Isaac D. Baker formed publishing company Baker & Scribner, which Scribner renamed the "Charles Scribner Company" after Baker's death in 1857. The company was headquartered at several buildings in Lower Manhattan through the mid-19th century. The name of the company was changed to Charles Scribner's Sons in 1878, and the firm moved to 155 Fifth Avenue, near 22nd Street, in 1894. Flagg was hired for the 155 Fifth Avenue project because he was the brother-in-law of Charles Scribner II, the head of the Scribner's bookstore during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At the beginning of the 20th century, development was centered on Fifth Avenue north of 34th Street. Scribner's was among the companies that decided to relocate further north in Manhattan. The Charles Scribner's Sons Building, along with the Gorham, Tiffany, Coty, and Demarest buildings, is among the few surviving stores that were erected for smaller retailers on Fifth Avenue during the early 20th century.
Scribner's usage
By January 1911, Ernest Flagg had written in his diary that Charles Scribner II had discussed the possibility of constructing a new quarters along Fifth Avenue. In February 1912, Charles Scribner's Sons bought the houses at 597 and 599 Fifth Avenue, near 48th Street, from the estates of Sarah M. and Roswell P. Flower, with the intention of constructing a 10-story structure there for retail and offices. Scribner hired Flagg to construct the new building, and a steel contract was awarded in May. The foundations and excavations were nearly completed by the following month, when Flagg submitted building plans to the New York City Department of Buildings. The steelwork was being constructed by August 1912.
The building opened by May 18, 1913, and became the seventh headquarters of Charles Scribner's Sons. In addition to the bookstore and offices at 597 Fifth Avenue, Scribner's had a building at 311–319 West 43rd Street for its printing press. The development of the 597 Fifth Avenue building was described by architectural writer Robert A. M. Stern in 1983 as "sure testimony to the rapid march of commerce to upper Fifth Avenue". New York Times journalist David W. Dunlap, writing in 2012, said 597 Fifth Avenue was like "the Apple store of its day". At opening, the bookstore contained shelves of books arranged along both the ground floor and the balconies. Some retail offices were also placed below the mezzanine.
During much of the 20th century, the building contained a Scribner's bookstore and the offices of Scribner's publishers. Visitors included the authors F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, who met with their editors on the upper stories, as well as Theodore Roosevelt, who was an early shopper. The editors working at the building included Maxwell Perkins, whose fifth-floor office was the site of a fight between Hemingway and Max Eastman over who had more chest hair. The Charles Scribner's Sons bookstore had a rare book vault, which was used to store items such as a manuscript of the Haffner Symphony by Mozart, one of two attested copies of George Washington's proclamation of Thanksgiving in 1789; and a collection of Adolf Hitler's books and papers. The bookstore sometimes held exhibitions, such as a display illustrating the manufacturing process of books, as well as an event where a copy of the Gutenberg Bible was displayed. Some of the upper stories were leased to tenants, such as a perfumer in 1960.