712 Fifth Avenue

712 5th Avenue | also 714 5th Avenue, 716 5th Avenue | Midtown | built 1988

Open on the map9 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. 1886

    August 16

    A $75,000 brick-and-brownstone parsonage is planned for the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church

    John S. Kennedy filed plans on August 16, 1886 for a four-story brick and brownstone parsonage at 712 Fifth Avenue, next to the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, at a cost of $75,000. The pastor, Rev. Dr. John Hall, was a potent force among the church's wealthy congregation, and for more than a decade the house hosted receptions and society events. After Hall died in September 1898 it was never again a parsonage; the church leased it to the millionaire William Baylis, whose family lived there until 1906. The Rizzoli building later took its place on the lot.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  2. 1908

    A parsonage gives way to a store built for a French decorating firm

    Architect Albert S. Gottlieb replaced the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church's 1886 parsonage with a five-story neo-French Classic building for the decorators L. Alavoine & Co. Jeweler Pierre Cartier opened his first American shop as a subtenant on an upper floor the following year, before Cartier moved to a new address in 1917.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  3. 1909

    Pierre Cartier opens his New York branch as a tenant of L. Alavoine & Co.

    Soon after L. Alavoine & Co. moved into the new building, it took on a subtenant: in 1909, according to Daytonian in Manhattan, the Parisian jeweler Pierre Cartier opened a New York branch store here. Within seven years his business needed a building of its own, and in 1916 he arranged to take over Morton Plant's mansion at the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 52nd Street. Alavoine was a decorating and art-dealing firm that had operated in America since 1853.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  4. 1910

    François Coty commissions Lalique glass windows next door

    After signing a 21-year lease on the six-story building at 714 Fifth Avenue, itself converted from an 1871 house, French perfumer François Coty hired glassmaker René Lalique to design three-story Art Nouveau windows of intertwining vines and flowers for the storefront. Coty's perfume business expanded through the 1920s on the strength of that facade.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  5. 1936

    L. Alavoine & Co. installs five complete French rooms for an exhibition

    In 1936 L. Alavoine & Co. staged what was then its most impressive exhibition, temporarily installing five complete French rooms in the building. On November 8 The New York Times wrote that the paneled interiors, brought over from palaces of the Old World, gave a rare chance to see French decorative art at its best. The same year, the art dealer Arthur H. Harlow & Co. moved from 712 Fifth Avenue to Rockefeller Center.

    Source: Daytonian in Manhattan

  6. 1964

    Rizzoli takes over the building and opens its Fifth Avenue bookstore

    Harry Winston, who had bought the building from the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in 1959, sold it in 1963 to the Gotham Development Corporation, acting for the Italian firm Rizzoli Editore. The deed required the premises to be kept in first-class condition and to the standards of the Fifth Avenue Association. Rizzoli, a bookseller and publisher of books on the fine arts, has been in the building since 1964.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  7. 1984

    Developer David Solomon assembles the corner to replace the Rizzoli and Coty buildings with a tower

    Developer David S. Solomon began planning a 44-story tower for the southwest corner of 56th Street in 1983, and his group, Steadsol Fifth Associates, bought both buildings in 1984 intending to demolish them. The Carraro family of Milan, which controlled Rizzoli, agreed to sell after several trips by Solomon to Milan, and the doctor who owned the Coty Building sold in return for a stake in the tower. Assembling the site cost $86 million in total.

    “The owners of Steadsol Fifth Associates, a consortium of which Solomon was part, bought both buildings in 1984 with the intent of demolishing them.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  8. 1985

    January 29

    The city landmarks the Coty and Rizzoli facades to save them from a tower

    As developer David Solomon planned a 44-story tower on the block in the early 1980s, the Municipal Art Society pushed the Landmarks Preservation Commission to protect the two buildings, and the commission designated the Coty and Rizzoli (former Alavoine) facades as landmarks. Revised plans preserved both facades as a base for the new tower, which topped out in 1989. The Lalique windows themselves needed further restoration in 2000, after their steel frame had rusted and cracked some panes.

    Source: Wikipedia

  9. 1991

    February

    Henri Bendel opens at the base of a tower that is mostly empty

    When 712 Fifth Avenue was completed in 1990, the early-1990s recession had left 14.5 percent of Manhattan office space vacant, and 423,000 of the tower's 457,300 square feet were empty, so it was seen as a white elephant. The Solomons withdrew in 1990 and the Taubman Company took over. The Henri Bendel store opened in February 1991, when the tower had six office tenants, one of them Taubman.

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

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All 178 buildings with stories in Midtown