Scribner Building

597 5th Avenue | Midtown | built 1913

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The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

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.

  1. 1912

    March 10

    Architect Ernest Flagg writes in his diary that the Scribner Building could be the building of his life

    On March 10, 1912, Ernest Flagg noted in his diary that with a free hand he was sure he could make the new Scribner building the best work of his career. The firm's earlier headquarters at Fifth Avenue and 21st Street had also been his design. Daytonian in Manhattan says he apparently got his free hand, producing a two-story street-level facade of glass and iron for the bookstore.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1913

    May 18

    Charles Scribner's Sons opens its seventh headquarters on Fifth Avenue

    Architect Ernest Flagg, who wrote in his diary that he was sure the commission would be 'the building of my life', designed the Beaux-Arts store and office building for the publisher. The ground and second floors held a bookstore with a 30-foot vaulted ceiling and a marble staircase, while upper floors housed the publishing offices.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1937

    Ernest Hemingway punches an editor in the Scribner offices

    Inside the Fifth Avenue building where editor Max Perkins guided the careers of Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway struck fellow writer and editor Max Eastman after a dispute over remarks Eastman had published about his masculinity. Theodore Roosevelt had shopped at the bookstore in its early years, and its rare-book vault at one point held a manuscript of Mozart's Haffner Symphony.

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 1974

    Henry-Russell Hitchcock calls the Scribner bookstore the grandest interior space created in New York

    In 1974 the architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock compared the bookstore's interior to Grand Central Terminal and called it the grandest interior space created in New York. The room had a ceiling rising about 30 feet, ornate iron railings along its balconies and a grand marble staircase.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1982

    March 23

    The Landmarks Commission designates the Scribner Building's exterior after six speakers back it

    New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Charles Scribner's Sons Building on March 23, 1982, after hearings in December 1979 and January 1980. Six witnesses spoke in favor and four opposed. The commission described it as an elegant Beaux-Arts commercial building by Ernest Flagg, the second he designed for the publisher, with many features of the first expanded and elaborated for a more fashionable midtown site.

    “A total of six witnesses spoke in favor of designation. There were four speakers in opposition to designation.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  6. 1989

    July 11

    The Landmarks Commission names the shuttered bookstore interior an interior landmark

    After the bookstore closed, the Landmarks Preservation Commission considered its interior. Benetton, the new owner planning a renovation of the space, said it would not oppose designation, and an attorney described the company as used to landmarks. The commission designated the interior on July 11, 1989. Brentano's leased the space that September and opened two months later.

    Source: Wikipedia

  7. 1989

    January

    The Scribner's bookstore closes after 76 years

    Scribner's bookstore shut its doors at 597 Fifth Avenue, ending a run that had begun with the building's 1913 opening. The Benetton Group, which had purchased the building the previous year, opened a flagship clothing store in the space in 1996 after a restoration of Flagg's landmarked interior.

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 1996

    Benetton spends $4 million restoring the bookstore, rebuilding a staircase and reopening the skylight

    When Benetton made the old bookstore its US flagship in 1996, the Phillips Janson Group restored it for $4 million. A rear spiral staircase removed decades earlier was recreated, and a skylight painted over with tar during the wartime blackout was opened up again. Workers also found Caen stone walls beneath ten coats of paint.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  9. 2016

    Cambridge Analytica runs its New York office from the Scribner Building from 2016 until its 2018 collapse

    Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, kept its New York office at 597 Fifth Avenue from 2016 until the company collapsed in 2018. Anthony Weiner had opened a campaign office on the upper floors of the same building during the 2013 mayoral election.

    “Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, had its New York office at 597 Fifth Avenue between 2016 and the company's collapse in 2018.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  10. 2025

    April

    The landmark Scribner Building is sold to its mortgage lender for $140.4 million

    By mid-2023 the building was in receivership and only 25 percent occupied, with a crumbling facade and a fire-suppression system needing at least $1 million in repairs. A state judge approved a foreclosure sale in August 2024, and in April 2025 597 Fifth Avenue went to the mortgage lender for $140.4 million. Club Monaco was the building's only remaining tenant as of May 2024.

    “…the building was sold to the mortgage lender for $140.4 million in April 2025…”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 178 buildings with stories in Midtown