The Fred F. French Building is a skyscraper at 551 Fifth Avenue on the northeast corner with 45th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Designed by H. Douglas Ives along with John Sloan and T. Markoe Robertson of the firm Sloan & Robertson, it was erected in 1927. The building is named for Fred F. French, owner of the Fred F. French Companies, for whom the structure was commissioned.
The 38-story building is designed in the Art Deco style, with Middle Eastern influences, and contains numerous setbacks as mandated by the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The facade is mostly designed with brick walls and limestone trim. The base of the facade is ornamented with two bronze entrances and multiple mythological figures, while the top contains a "tower" with Mesopotamian style bas-reliefs and faience tiles. Other multicolored details such as ornamental friezes ornament the facade. The Middle Eastern design motifs are also used in the lobby, which contains a polychrome vaulted ceiling.
The Fred F. French Building has approximately for rent and is owned by The Feil Organization. It was the tallest building on Fifth Avenue as well as one of the most desired addresses on the avenue upon its completion. By the 1990s, it underwent a complete restoration, subsequently earning the Building Owners and Managers Association 1994/1995 Historic Building of the Year Award. The Fred F. French Building and its interior became New York City designated landmarks in 1986, and the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
Site
The Fred F. French Building is at the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 45th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Its plot is largely rectangular but has a small cutout on the northwestern portion. The building adjoins a 20-story building at 553 Fifth Avenue, which is "L"-shaped and occupies the cutout, as well as a nine-story building at 9 East 45th Street. The building is assigned its own ZIP Code, 10176; it was one of 41 buildings in Manhattan that had their own ZIP Codes .
Architecture
The Fred F. French Building was designed by H. Douglas Ives with Sloan & Robertson in the Art Deco style and completed in 1927. The building is named for Fred F. French, the head of the French Companies, whose other projects in the city included Tudor City and Knickerbocker Village. The Fred F. French Building rises 38 stories, rising tall, and contains several setbacks on all sides as mandated under the 1916 Zoning Resolution. It was one of the first few skyscrapers to be built with a mostly rectangular plan; previous buildings had been erected with largely square plans.
The Fred F. French Building was described by architectural writer Carol Herselle Krinsky as the "only Mesopotamian skyscraper" in New York City. Ives wrote that the building's colorful design took after Middle Eastern architectural features such as ziggurats. The colors used in the Fred F. French Building's facade were intended to evoke that of the Tower of Babel. At the time of the building's development, there was large interest in Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Near East, and other contemporary structures such as the Chrysler Building, Rockefeller Center, and 2 Park Avenue incorporated elements of ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern architecture. Furthermore, modern building codes prevented the inclusion of cornices and other decorative elements that projected more than from the facade, as had been standard in older buildings. Because of the different influences, Ives said he felt "somewhat at a loss" when asked to describe the building's design.
Form and facade
Even though the Fred F. French Building's official address is 551 Fifth Avenue, its main entrance is on 45th Street. The building was designed with profit as the main consideration, so the shorter side along Fifth Avenue was intended for highly valuable retail space. The building consists of a base spanning the 1st to 3rd stories; a midsection from the 4th to the 19th floors, with multiple setbacks; and a rectangular "tower" that is capped by a three-story penthouse above the 35th floor. Each of the four primary elevations of the facade has a different massing. The northern and eastern elevations face other buildings, but the southern and western elevations face 45th Street and Fifth Avenue respectively.
The Fred F. French Building's Middle Eastern decoration was intended to be colorful and noticeable from afar, rather than historically accurate. The facade is accented with terracotta bands of various colors including hues of red and black.