Fashion Tower

135 West 36th Street | Garment District | built 1925

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1925
Morris Rosenstein builds the Fashion Tower for the garment trade
Cotton fabrics dealer Morris Rosenstein bought three houses from the Church of the Holy Innocents, as reported on December 18, 1924, paying $375,000 for the land. He hired Emery Roth to design a Gothic-based loft tower that bridged Art Nouveau and Art Deco, with an estimated cost of $1 million. The building quickly filled with apparel firms, including the Lily Fair Dress Company and the Seekenep Silk Company, which leased full floors.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
1925
Terra cotta peacocks and garment-trade figures decorate the facade
Above each side entrance, Roth placed a polychrome terra cotta panel of a peacock, a bird long associated with pride and vanity. Two winged youths in bas-relief, between the third and fourth floors, hold a bolt of fabric reading Fashion Tower, one with scissors and the other with a palette and brushes. The fifth floor carries more elaborate Art Deco ornament.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
2014
A renovation restores the building's damaged entry portal
GRT Architects completed a renovation in the summer of 2014 that rebuilt the entry portal from the ground up, including its peacocks, after a mid-century alteration had destroyed the original. The architects worked from original Emery Roth drawings held in Columbia University's Avery Library. The renovation also kept the facade's terra cotta and elliptical arched openings.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

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