Saks Fifth Avenue

History and architecture

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 premier 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 well 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 neo-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. Closing the vista of the avenue from the Channel Gardens in Rockefeller Center, Saks forms, with the Center buildings and with the adjacent St. Patrick's Cathedral, the visual and symbolic heart of Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan.