THE TISHMAN BUILDING

666 FIFTH AVENUE (between 52nd and 53rd Streets)

Developer: Tishman Realty & Construction Co., Inc.

Architect: Carson & Lundin

Erected: 1957

By Carter B. Horsley

There must be some important rule of marketing that some developers read that emphasized the importance of wrapping to distinguish an otherwise routine product. Here the developers wrapped their rather conventional large office building in embossed aluminum.

Tinsel might have been more effective for despite a patterned treatment of the aluminum facade panels, the effect is more dull than glittery. At Christmas time, however, the 39-story, 1.245,000-sq. ft. building hangs up some brightly colored lighted stars on its facade that add some gaiety and from its completion the building has sported its street number in big red lights above the top floor, which happened to house for decades its "Top of the Sixes" restaurant and bar, which offered very nice views, one of the very few public places with high-level vistas in the city. The facility is now private, however.

The street-level of this development, however, was superb. Here was a great lobby in need of a great building.

It is not unusual for a building's lobby to be completely different stylistically from its facade, but this one made one want to cry out to experiment with its aesthetic in a new building, hopefully somewhere in the city.

Isamu Noguchi, the country's greatest modern sculptor, created three important elements here: the elevator bank ceilings and floors and the planted waterfall screen in the open lobby.

The main design element of the ceilings and the waterfall screen are sinuously cut thin railings, all different, that are used to create a rippling wave effect. (The lobby ceiling effect was clumsily copied on a larger scale at 222 Broadway.)

The ceiling railings are white-painted metal while the waterfall screen railings, shown at the left, are stainless steel.

The elevator bank floors are covered with irregularly cut marble pavers, mostly white, some black and others red. The effect is Mondrianesque.

These effects presage Deconstructivism by a couple of decades.

The "outside" lobby was also important because of its unusual layout and its wonderful large slabs of slate covering the floor. The Fifth Avenue frontage had two broad, unobstructed alleys, shown below, that penetrated deep into the building all the way back to the waterfall and the entrance to the elevator bank areas where the alleys were met by a through-block alley or galleria between 52nd and 53rd Streets. In the middle of the Fifth Avenue frontage, between the two alleys, was a rounded glass retail area that was been handsomely occupied by Alitalia. The retail spaces on the north and south sides of Alitalia had large clear store windows so that the alleys were well lit and did not suffer from blank wells.

Built before the city changed its zoning to encourage open plazas or enclosed public spaces such as atria or gallerias, this building innovatively opened up its ground floor spaces with high regard for the public and visitors. While the facade experiment was less successful, the building has aged well and is an inoffensive, modern background building with an abundance of respect for weary pedestrians.

The building replaced nine buildings and part of the site was once occupied by a mansion designed in 1882 by Richard Morris Hunt for William K. Vanderbilt that was torn down in 1927 for a commercial building and another mansion designed by McKim, Mead & White in 1905 for Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt Jr.

In 1998, however, the southern avenue retail frontage of this building was taken over by the National Basketball Association and the northern retail section was being converted for use by Brooks Bros., the famous Madison Avenue clothing store. The renovations were substantial and at complete odds with the building. Whereas before, the retail spaces were neatly contained beneath the building, the new stores are flamboyant and large. The basketball store's facade, shown at the right, is rather amusing with a design of nets and basketballs, but a unified vision of architecture has given way here, once again, to eye-level design.

In 2000, the owners of the building decided upon another major change and installed a new retail store, Hickey Freeman, at its avenue entrance, which was then closed.

The notion that shoppers on Fifth Avenue can only discern things if they are very large is foolish, but even Rockefeller Center dared to damper with its landmark buildings's retail spaces and incredibly got the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to agree to an enlargement of some of its windows in 1998.

A well-known architect liked to tell the story of Le Corbusier decided to build a country house for his mother and putting up a wall with small window spaces to focus the view. Preservationists should understand that changes can be well done and poorly done but in no case should an architectural decision be made by a marketing manager!

In 2002 the building replaced the large red "666" at the top of the building with "Citi."