Bonwit Teller Building on Fifth Avenue

Sometimes these articles have a political overtone, but that is not the intent: this series is strictly about locations, not people. There are a lot of stylish buildings that have come and gone in New York City. Their artistic merits are debatable, though. Some people will view them as iconic, others as mediocre imitations of good art. One such building was the Bonwit Teller building located on the northeast corner of 56th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. This story reverberates into the present, so let's take a closer look at it. The above photo of Bonwit Teller's entrance was taken in 1977, but, except for the people and vehicles around it, just as easily could have been taken 30 years earlier. However, the Bonwit Teller building was soon to encounter someone with grander ambitions than just owning a fading department store. Let's make a comparison of the Bonwit Teller building on Fifth Avenue from 1977 to 2018.

Bonwit Teller was one of a plethora of department stores that originated in Manhattan, grew with the expanding middle class, and then faded and died during the latter half of the 20th Century. The list is massive and includes, among many others, Gimbel's, Alexander's, and B. Altman and Company. The culling process continues to this day, with recent reports that Barney's New York is evaluating bankruptcy options. So, department stores flourishing and then going out of business in New York City is nothing new. Bonwit Teller was founded in 1895 at Sixth Avenue and 18th Street by Paul Bonwit. It was an upscale department store that became famous for catering to the "carriage trade" from its flagship Fifth Avenue location. The changing tastes of the public during the 1980s doomed it, and it is fair to say that Bloomingdale's took away much of its business. Right around the time of the photograph at the top of this page, Bonwit Teller began experiencing growing financial troubles that led to a continuing "musical chairs" type of ownership change. The Bonwit Teller parent company filed for bankruptcy in 1989 and the brand is now extinct.

During its death throws, Bonwit Teller tried to survive by selling its flagship location on Fifth Avenue at 56th Street. This was 1979, and there was a rising power in Manhattan real estate. His name was Donald Trump. Mr. Trump (as everyone with any connection to Trump, er, Mr. Trump routinely called him) had had his eye on the Bonwit Teller property. This was to be Mr. Trump's first major acquisition in Manhattan, coming a year before he bought the Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Terminal and turned it into the Grand Hyatt New York. So far, so good, just a routine NYC real estate transaction, right? Well, not quite.

The 11-story Bonwit Teller building was built in 1929 by Whitney Warren and Charles Wetmore, famous architects more known for the Beaux-Arts Grand Central Terminal. That year was the height of monumental construction in Manhattan, right around the time that the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building were either just completed or about to be built. The Bonwit Teller building never received nearly the architectural acclaim as Grand Central, but it did have some fancy art deco features. For instance, it had some limestone reliefs of women on the facade which arguably (we'll get to that) were true works of art. Another flourish was the 15x25-foot grillwork over the entrance. Not everyone agreed that these admittedly low-key stylistic flourishes were true art.

Among those who considered the reliefs and grillwork artistic and thus worthy of preservation as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When the Met learned that Mr. Trump was planning to raze the building, it offered a "gift" in exchange for these items. However, the building's new owner didn't agree with the Met's artistic appraisal and wasn't interested in any "gifts" that wouldn't compensate for the cost of preserving the reliefs and grillwork. After casually offering the items to the Met if they could be removed, Mr. Trump's company demolished the building as planned. The grillwork and reliefs were not preserved.

Now, this is not an attack on anyone, particularly not Mr. Trump. He owned the building and had every right to do with it as he wished. That, after all, is what ownership means. The artwork in question wasn't protected because it wasn't particularly distinguished, though beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The preservation movement was in full swing by 1979 and the city had its chance to act if it wished, and it didn't. People didn't come to New York City to see the reliefs or the grillwork completed by artist Otto J. Teegan in 1930. On the other hand, it certainly was memorable to some people and a classic expression of the brief art deco fad that was better expressed in the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building. It turned out that the only opinion that mattered was Mr. Trump's. He later offhandedly called it "junk." As noted above, the artistic value of the building's special touches was arguable, and Mr. Trump had finished arguing about it.

Well, the location of the Bonwit Teller building is the site of a famous building now, more famous than the Bonwit Teller building ever was. It is the Trump Tower. Now, once again, opinions will differ as to the artistic merits of Trump Tower versus the old Bonwit Teller building. However, if there is one site in Manhattan that replaced one iconic structure with an even more iconic structure, it - arguably - is the old Bonwit Teller site.

Donald Trump with his model of Trump Tower in 1980.

I hope you enjoyed this entry in our "the more things change, the more they stay the same" series. We strive to be apolitical in these posts and simply report the then-and-now. Thanks for reading and please visit some of our other pages in this series!

2022

Park Avenue at 56th Street, Manhattan

Park Avenue at 56th Street, Manhattan, 1982.

Park Avenue has changed a lot over the years even though it sometimes doesn't seem like it. When I saw the photo above from 1982, it looked pretty standard, as if it could have been taken last week. However, some key features of this photo have changed and are in the process of changing, so I decided to see what the same scene looks like now. Fortunately, the street number on the building at the left is very prominent, so this was an easy location to pinpoint. This is a comparison of Park Avenue at 56th Street from 1982 to 2018.

Park Avenue at 56th Street in August 2018 (Google Street View).

Well, some things are changing on Park Avenue. The large building on the left, 425 Park Avenue, is in the midst of a major reconstruction as of mid-2019. The building seen in the 1982 photo was built in the 1950s and reflected all of the worst design aesthetics of that era: monotony, uniformity, and drabness. It was a generic office building which in 1982 housed, among other large professional businesses, the Finley, Kumble law firm. It had its litigation department on the second floor and real estate and other departments on the 7th floor and some other high floors. It was a favored law firm of Donald Trump and was the firm that won/lost him the USFL case in the 1980s (the USFL "won" $1, but that meant the NFL had to pay it $10 million in the USFL's legal fees). The law firm was one of the first massive, multi-state law firms which later became standard, but Finley, Kumble dissolved in bitter acrimony about five years after that photo.

425 Park Avenue in August 2018 (Google Street View).

The "new" 425 Park Avenue looks like a completely new building. It certainly has little in common with the old one. However, appearances can be deceiving. The core of the old building remains. The quirks of New York City zoning laws have impacted the design, requiring the new building to have the same square footage as the old building. The new building will have two restaurants, which is somewhat curious since the venerable Four Seasons and some other nearby top restaurants have found the current environment difficult and recently have gone out of business. Rather than the drab box of the former 425 Park Avenue, this one will have some originality in its exterior that harkens back to the great structures of the early 20th Century which continue to give the city character and individuality. The wheel turns, and sometimes it turns back in its original direction.

430 Park Avenue, NYC, August 2018 (Google Street View).

Also just barely visible in the 1982 photo is the building on the right. It is 430 Park Avenue, notable for its unusual green exterior. Its appearance and even its very existence have a lot to do with how zoning laws work in Manhattan. It was built in 1916 as the "Avenue Apartments" by famed architects Warren and Wetmore and drastically reconstructed in 1953, around the same time that 425 went up in the 1950s. It was renovated in 2001/2002. It is very boxy because it was grandfathered in under old zoning laws that did not require setbacks. That's why these reconstructions usually retain the inner core of old buildings when it might be cheaper and more efficient to just raze the whole thing and start over. Because the original building was built in the 1920s, the current building can tower over Park Avenue in a way that new construction cannot. It also has high ceilings due to its history as a pre-war apartment building, 12'-16'. One of the building's oddities due to its history is that it is only 60 feet deep, so it is tall and thin. We should all have that shape after 100 years! It would be easy to predict that 430 Park Avenue will soon share the fate of 425 Park, but its fairly recent remodel and maximal usage of its footprint suggests that it isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The building's appearance also is famous for another reason, though.

The Saul Bass title sequence from "North By Northwest" was filmed at 430 Park Avenue. Reflected in the building is traffic on Park Avenue (courtesy MGM).

Incidentally, 430 Park Avenue may look oddly familiar to you, but perhaps you just can't place why. There may be a reason for that because 430 Park Avenue was the building used by Saul Bass for the credits of "North By Northwest" (1959). The sheer green exterior in the international style that you see today was brand new and cutting-edge when they were filming "North By Northwest." That title sequence is considered one of the best ever made. The entire opening part of the title sequence has a green background - including the MGM roaring lion part - because that is the color of 430 Park Avenue. So, to film buffs, it would be tragic to change the exterior of this iconic building, though that will happen eventually because nothing lasts forever. It is still there today, at least, looking exactly as it did in the 1950s.

417 Park Avenue, NYC, in August 2018 (Google Street View).

There are other buildings visible in the 1982 photo that are pretty much unchanged over the past 35 years. The Pan Am Building at the end of the Street is now the Met Life Building. However, it really hasn't changed much otherwise (they had only recently shut down the heliport on top of it due to a tragic accident). The white building just past 425 Park Avenue, 417 Park, was built in 1917 when Park Avenue was still almost exclusively a high-class residential area. It just toodles along, decade after decade, while these transient office buildings come and go around it. The most enduring buildings in Manhattan tend to be high-class residential ones because emptying them for reconstruction or demolition is a herculean task. It is now the last luxury residence that remains along Park Avenue from Grand Central Terminal North to 57th Street and gives the street a little character that the big boxes of the 1950s tried (and ultimately failed) to destroy. It also led the way in converting from an apartment building to a coop way back in 1946, long before that became popular. It is buildings like 417 Park that give the avenue its signature look and show that, once you do something right, there's no reason to change it.

I hope you enjoyed this entry in our "the more things change, the more they stay the same" series. Park Avenue is a prime example that the facade of New York's grand avenues may change with passing fads, but the anchors persevere. Please visit some of our other entries in this series to see how cities evolve over time!

2019