Landmarks Preservation Commission December 20, 1984; Designation List 173 LP-1523 SAKS FIFTH AVENUE, 611 Fifth Avenue, Borough of Manhattan. Built 1922-24; architects, Starrett & Van Vleck. Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan Tax Map Block 1285, Lot 1. On September 11, 1984, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the designation as a Landmark of Saks Fifth Avenue and the pr~posed proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Item No. 17). The hearing had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of law. Six witnes ses spoke in favor of designation. There were no speakers in opposition to designation. Statements were received supporting and opposing designation. A representative of Saks Fifth Avenue spoke in favor of designation. DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS Saks Fifth Avenue is one of the grand flagship department stores that turned Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan into the city's and the country's pre- mier shopping street. Saks's move from Herald Square to Fifth Avenue at 50th Street continued the northward push of department stores along Fifth Avenue, and opened its northern stretch to further development. Designed by department store specialists Starrett & Van Vleck and built in 1922-24, Saks had to conform both to the conservative impulse to harmonize with the architectural character of Fifth Avenue, as promulgated by the Fifth Avenue Association, and to the modern requirements of an up-to-the-minute luxury department store, as wel 1 as to the new zoning law of New York which mandated upper floors to be progressively set back from the lot-line. The resulting design was a handsome, but restrained and dignified nee-Renaissance style retail palazzo, with its administrative offices occupying the less visible setback stories above the seventh floor. Saks Fifth Avenue immediately established itself as one of New York's finest stores, and has maintained its reputation to this day, surviving as one of the remaining intact great department store buildings of Fifth Avenue. Saks also stands at the center of Fifth Avenue's famous stretch from 42nd to 59th Streets. Clpsing the vista of the avenue from the Channel Gardens in Rockefeller Center, Saks fiorms, with the Center buildings and with the adjacent St. Patrick's Cathedral, the visual and symbolic heart of Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. Saks Fifth Avenue Saks Fifth Avenue had its or1g1ns in Washington, D.C. in 1867, when nine teen-year-old Andrew Saks opened a small menswear shop with earnings from his newspaper delivery route. 1 By the mid-1880s Saks had expanded his D.C. estab lishment and opened satellite stores in Richmond, Virginia, and Indianapolis, Indiana.

-2- While Saks' s stores we re growl ng, howe,ve r, New-Yo'.rk· was b.ecomi_ng the coun try's center for high-class clothin.g stores. In the decades· following the Civil War a rapid growth in commerce and industry had "brought quick fortunes to many.112 New York entrepreneurs constituted a new elite; unsure of their social standing, however, they struggled to consolidate their hegemony by making conspicuous displays of their wealth. New York's dry-goods merchants recognized the opportunity to make wardrobes a tool of class competition. "In an age when show was so important, great pains in personal adornment became necessary ... (as) each social occasion required a new outfit.113 Shopping became bhe daily pastime for New York's ladies of social consequence. Between the 1880s and 1900, various dry-goods businesses including B. Altman & Company, Siegel-Cooper Company, Best & Company, and A.T. Stewart & Company thrived on "Ladies' Mile" and "Fashion Row,11 the areasjust below and above Union Square along Broadway, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. 4 In 1892, Saks entered the New York clothing market, buying into a manufac turing firm on lower Broadway. Reentering the retail market, in 1900 Saks bought a site on Herald Square,5 and opened a department store, preceding moves there by both R.H

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