La Maison Francaise

610 5th Avenue | also 1 West 49th Street, 9 West 49th Street, 5 West 49th Street | Midtown | built 1937

Open on the map8 entries

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. 1804

    Dr. David Hosack plants his Elgin Gardens on the land that later holds Rockefeller Center

    Between 1804 and 1811 the land between 48th and 51st Streets and Fifth and Sixth Avenues, which includes the block of La Maison Francaise, was Dr. David Hosack's Elgin Gardens. Rising costs forced him to sell to New York State in 1811. Three years later the roughly 12-acre plot passed to Columbia College. The Landmarks Commission says the garden's legacy lives on in Rockefeller Center's rooftop and Channel Gardens.

    “Between 1804 and 1811 this property had been developed by Dr. David Hosack as the famed Elgin Gardens.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1925

    Boarding houses and speakeasies fill the old rowhouses where Rockefeller Center would rise

    Columbia leased out its Upper Estate for houses, and the building there was finished by 1879. By the mid-1920s many of the 298 rowhouses on the future Rockefeller Center site, which takes in the block of La Maison Francaise, had decayed into boarding houses, nightclubs and speakeasies on the northern edge of the theater district. A plan for a new Metropolitan Opera house on the site then prompted visions of a midtown cultural center.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1932

    March

    John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s gifts to France lead to a French building on Fifth Avenue

    Rockefeller's search for foreign tenants led almost naturally to France. After a 1923 trip he had given more than $3 million toward a medical school at Lyons, the restoration of Versailles and Fontainebleau, and repairs to Reims Cathedral, and France had awarded him the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Negotiations for La Maison Francaise, a near twin of the British Building, were completed in March 1932.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1933

    Former French prime minister Edouard Herriot hails the new building as a monument to peace

    The French building was backed by a committee working to develop economic and intellectual relations with other countries, and was dedicated to French industry, art and trade. Edouard Herriot, a former prime minister, called it a monument to world prosperity, freedom and peace. Laying the cornerstone, he said, sealed a friendship between France and the United States that was already over a hundred years old.

    “…hailed by Edouard Herriot, former Prime Minister of France, as a monument to the "prosperity, freedom and peace of the world.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  5. 1933

    June 21

    Twenty-two craftsmen receive gold buttons for building La Maison Francaise

    Twenty-two mechanics chosen for outstanding work on the building received certificates of craftsmanship and gold buttons in a ceremony held inside it on June 21, 1933. The New York Building Congress organized the event. The Times headline credited the awards to John D. Rockefeller 3d, and the honors recognized the tradesmen who had put up the building.

    Source: The New York Times

  6. 1934

    January

    Alfred Janniot's gilded bronze panel and a cartouche of La France mark the Fifth Avenue entrance

    The French sculptor Alfred Janniot's bronze panel over the main entrance was unveiled in January 1934, and his polychrome cartouche above it followed about six months later. The panel shows nearly life-sized muses of poetry, beauty and elegance, with Poesie perched on Pegasus, among the birds and trees of two continents. The cartouche, nearly 10 feet high, shows a yellow-robed La France holding up a torch of freedom. Rene Chambellan's four reliefs on the sixth story depict French historical eras.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  7. 1946

    May 7

    The United Nations Headquarters Commission holds its first meeting at 610 Fifth Avenue

    On May 7, 1946, the commission handling the question of a site for United Nations headquarters met for the first time at 610 Fifth Avenue, the address of La Maison Francaise. The session was held behind closed doors. It took the first steps toward a fresh survey of the site question.

    Source: The New York Times

  8. 2009

    The Librairie de France bookstore closes after three-quarters of a century, citing rent

    The French bookshop Librairie de France had an outlet in La Maison Francaise and was one of several bookstores along Fifth Avenue in midtown. It closed in 2009 after roughly three-quarters of a century, citing rapidly rising rent.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

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All 178 buildings with stories in Midtown