Bergdorf Goodman Building
754 5th Avenue | also 2 West 58th Street, 742 5th Avenue | Midtown | built 1928
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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.
- 1926
Frederick Brown buys the Vanderbilt mansion site after a plan for a record-tall hotel collapses
Alice Vanderbilt, widow of Cornelius Vanderbilt II, put the family mansion at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street on the market in the mid-1920s, as stores and towers crowded out the old residences. A syndicate headed by Maurice Heckscher contracted in 1925 to pay $7.1 million and filed plans for a 42-story apartment hotel, but it never completed the payment. After a legal tangle, the developer Frederick Brown bought the property in June 1926. The stores that now stand here were built for him.
- 1927
Edwin Goodman signs a 21-year lease and becomes the first tenant, gambling on a site north of 57th Street
Edwin Goodman signed a twenty-one-year lease on the northernmost of Frederick Brown's seven new stores almost a year before the building was finished, making Bergdorf Goodman the first tenant to commit. The rent was more than he could comfortably afford, and no top-tier retailer had gone this far up Fifth Avenue. The Landmarks Commission's report says the move overturned the belief that fashionable shops would fail beyond 57th Street.
“Bergdorf Goodman was the first tenant to commit to renting space in the complex, when they signed a twenty-one year lease…”
- 1927
Ely Jacques Kahn designs seven separate stores in place of a skyscraper on the Vanderbilt site
Brown hired Buchman & Kahn, and Kahn later recalled that his opinion on the overall scheme was never really sought. The plan was a row of stores from 57th to 58th Street, served from a rear alley in the manner of Paris and London shopping arcades, though the alley was dropped during construction. What went up was seven buildings of six to nine stories. It was an unusual choice at a time when Fifth Avenue sites were giving way to far taller towers.
- 1928
Edwin Goodman takes the title of janitor so he can live in a 14-room apartment above his store
As the new store neared completion, Edwin Goodman announced that he would move into a 14-room apartment at the top of the northernmost building. The company made its own garments on the premises, and city law allowed only a janitor to live above such a store, so Goodman gave himself that title. The workaround earned him the nickname of New York's wealthiest janitor. The store opened to the public in early March 1928, and within two months it reported that business had risen by 60 percent.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1928
Bergdorf Goodman opens with French-style salons where no merchandise is on display
Edwin Goodman specified opulent, French-style interiors, and in March 1928 Architecture & Building said the store followed the styles of the Louis and the Empire, with an elliptical rotunda just inside the 58th Street entrance. As in the Paris couture houses, nothing was displayed on the floor. Customers sat in French chairs while a saleswoman, known as a vendeuse, fetched garments one at a time. The rooms were meant to echo the parlors of the Fifth Avenue mansions of the previous generation.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1929
Bergdorf Goodman's sales double at the new store, and Goodman leases more floors and the two shops to the south
According to the Landmarks Commission's designation report, sales at the new Fifth Avenue and 58th Street address doubled. In 1929 Edwin Goodman answered by leasing extra floors in his original building along with the two shops directly to the south. It was the first step in a long process of expansion that eventually gave the store all of the block front except the southeast corner.
“Sales doubled at the new location and, in 1929, Goodman was able to expand his store by leasing the second through sixth floor…”
- 1929
Bergdorf Goodman puts Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia in charge of a new boudoir
By 1929 the store had outgrown its northernmost storefront, so in May it leased the two buildings to the south, which had stood empty since they were finished. Theodore Hofstatter renovated floors two to six, adding offices on the fifth and workrooms on the sixth. The store also opened a shoe department and a boudoir, with Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia as its manager.
“…hired Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna of Russia to run the boudoir.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1931
Fortune magazine finds Goodman's store dressing 18,000 customers, a scale no rival couture house matches
Fortune magazine took stock of Manhattan's couture houses in 1931 and found that none matched Bergdorf Goodman for scale. Rival exclusive houses had comparatively modest incomes and small clienteles, while Edwin Goodman had 18,000 customers on his books. The Landmarks Commission quotes the article to show how quickly the 58th Street store had become a commercial success.
- 1935
Edwin Goodman buys the three northern buildings for $3 million after Frederick Brown loses the property
Frederick Brown declared bankruptcy in 1932 and lost the property to foreclosure in 1934. The following year Edwin Goodman paid $3 million for the three buildings at the northern end, which comes to more than $66 million in current money. Fortune magazine had noted in 1931 that no other Manhattan couturier had dressed women on so grand a scale, with 18,000 customers on his books. Goodman went on buying up the mortgages, and by 1948 he owned the entire Fifth Avenue blockfront.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1940
Van Cleef & Arpels moves into the building, joining a growing list of luxury tenants
While Bergdorf Goodman grew, the other storefronts filled with luxury tenants. Steuben Glass was at number 748 until it moved across the avenue in 1937, the year Parke-Bernet Galleries took four floors of the Dobbs Building. In 1940 the French jewelry firm Van Cleef & Arpels arrived, and it has been in the building ever since.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1944
A bright yellow front door for the Mary Lewis dress shop draws complaints from neighboring merchants
In February 1944 the dressmaker Mary Lewis leased space at 746 Fifth Avenue and opened a six-story shop there that April, in one of the storefronts that Bergdorf Goodman would later absorb. The shop's yellow front door, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, drew complaints from other business owners, who said it did not fit the design of the building as a whole. Mary Lewis added a shoe shop at the rear of the store the following year.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1953
Edwin Goodman dies in the penthouse atop the store, and his son Andrew takes over the company
Edwin Goodman, who co-founded Bergdorf Goodman at 24, died early on August 19, 1953, at his penthouse above the store, aged 76. The Times called him a leading name in American haute couture and retailing, saying he dressed the wealthiest women of Hollywood and society and put debutantes and royalty on his payroll. His saleswomen had included Kay Summersby, later Dwight D. Eisenhower's wartime aide, and Grand Duchess Marie of Russia. His son Andrew took over the store.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1984
Architect Allan Greenberg rebuilds the Fifth Avenue base to make seven storefronts read as one store
Between 1984 and 1985 Bergdorf Goodman hired the architect Allan Greenberg to replace the first two stories along Fifth Avenue, which a string of tenants had altered over the decades. He carried the rusticated base of the original northern pavilion across the five middle buildings and added a grand entrance toward 57th Street, loosely modeled on the 58th Street doorway. Greenberg wrote that he wanted the result to look as if it had always been there.
“Greenberg's design extended the rusticated first and second story of the northern pavilion, Bergdorf Goodman's original store, to the five intermediate buildings…”
- 1984
The Muppets Take Manhattan is shot at Bergdorf Goodman
The 1984 film The Muppets Take Manhattan was shot at the Bergdorf Goodman Building, one of several screen appearances for the store. A 1960s CBS special had earlier shown Barbra Streisand performing on its main floor, and the building was used again as a filming location for The Nanny Diaries in 2007.
“…the 1984 film The Muppets Take Manhattan was shot there…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1997
The Goodman family's former penthouse becomes a hair salon and day spa
After the Frederic Fekkai salon in the building closed in 1996, the ninth floor reopened in 1997 as a Susan Ciminelli day spa and a John Barrett salon. The space had been the Goodman family penthouse, first home to Edwin Goodman and then to his son Andrew, who moved in after taking over the company in 1953. The family's former private rooms were turned into salons.
“…the John Barrett salon and the Susan Ciminelli day spa opened on the ninth floor the next year, within the former Goodman family penthouse…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2016
The Landmarks Commission designates Bergdorf Goodman, 46 years after its first hearing on the building
The Landmarks Preservation Commission first heard the case for designating Bergdorf Goodman on June 23, 1970, and continued it that July, when the owner opposed. The proposal then sat on the commission's backlog until a special hearing on November 5, 2015. Nine people spoke in favor, among them representatives of Borough President Gale Brewer and the Historic Districts Council, while four spoke against on the owner's behalf. The designation list is dated December 13, 2016.
Further reading
- Bergdorf Goodman BuildingWikipedia
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