Landmarks Preservation Commission June 28, 2011, Designation List 444 LP-2406 FISK-HARKNESS HOUSE, 12 East 53rd Street, Manhattan. Built 1871; Architect Griffith Thomas. Remodeled 1906; Architect Raleigh C. Gildersleeve. Landmark Site: Borough of Manhattan, Tax Map Block 1288, Lot 63. On March 23, 2010, the Landmarks Preservation Commission held a public hearing on the proposed designation of the Fisk-Harkness House and the proposed designation of the related Landmark Site (Public Hearing Item No. 4). The hearing had been duly advertised in accordance with the provisions of the law. A representative of the Historic Districts Council spoke in favor of designation, and written testimony in favor of designation was submitted by the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America. Summary The Fisk-Harkness House is a town house originally constructed in 1871 and substantially altered in 1906 to the designs of architect Raleigh C. Gildersleeve, who transformed the building into a grand five-story American Basement-plan house with an asymmetrical neo-Tudor Gothic style limestone facade. Gildersleeve practiced architecture in New York City and New Jersey between 1892 and 1915, and is best known for the Tudor-inspired buildings he designed for the campus of Princeton University. Harvey E. Fisk, the owner of the house at the time of the alterations, was a prominent investment banker attracted to this area of Fifth Avenue because of its residential prestige. This town house is a rare survivor of the period when the area around Fifth Avenue in Midtown was home to Manhattan’s wealthiest citizens, who built mansions or updated existing row houses for their private residences. In 1909 Fisk sold his town house to Standard Oil heir William L. Harkness, whose widow sold the building to an art gallery in 1922. Later occupants of the Fisk-Harkness House included the Automobile Club of America (1924 to 1932); Symons Galleries (1938 to 1949), an antiques dealer; and the Laboratory Institute of Merchandising (1965 to the present), a college of fashion merchandising and business.

DESCRIPTION AND ANALYSIS East 53rd Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues1 The area surrounding Fifth Avenue between 42nd Street and the southern end of Central Park remained rural in character until the second half of the 19th century, when speculative residences and mansions began to be constructed on lots newly mapped by the city.2By 1900, the character of the neighborhood on the blocks north of 42nd Street began to change yet again with the construction of, or the conversion of private residences to, exclusive retail shops, restaurants, and office buildings. The block of East 53rd Street between Fifth and Madison avenues belonged to the city until 1799, when it was sold into private hands for development.3 Historic maps indicate that the immediate area developed sporadically from the 1850s onward; it was not until the late 1860s that residential development intensified, and by 1886 modest brownstone row houses lined the north and south sides of East 53rd Street between Fifth and Madison avenues.4 In 1871 Charles Moran purchased the lot at 12 East 53rd Street, which measured 37 ½ feet wide by 100 feet deep, and hired architect Griffith Thomas5 to erect a four-story row house with a basement, stoop, brownstone front, flat roof, and galvanized iron cornice that would cover virtually the entire lot. The house was generously sized compared to houses built on the standard 25-by-100-foot New York City lot, and by the mid-1880s the house had been made even larger by the construction of an addition extending approximately 19 feet to the rear.6 By the early 20th century, the area had gained the reputation of a first-class business and commercial zone, but the older, affluent residential character persisted as many of the outmoded brownstone row houses dating from the 1860s, 70s and 80s were given new facades, or were replaced altogether with more up-to-date Colonial

… (truncated, full text in PDF)