Heckscher Building (now the Crown Building) 730 Fifth Avenue (AKA 728-734 Fifth Avenue, 2-4 West 57th Street)
As the citywide advocate for New York’s architectural, historical and cultural neighborhoods, The Historic Districts Council supports the designation of the Heckscher Building (now the Crown Building) at 730 Fifth Avenue as an individual landmark.
Built between 1920 and 1922 by Warren & Wetmore for the developer and philanthropist August Heckscher, 730 5th Avenue was one of the first buildings whose design was influenced by the stipulations of the 1916 zoning code, which mandated the setbacks that led to New York’s iconic Art Deco skyscrapers. As such, the Heckscher building represents an important link in the architectural evolution of New York City, and in the history of skyscraper design.
Built on the site of the Stevens-Whitney mansion, the Heckscher Building also represents the architectural evolution of grandeur in New York City. The end of the 19th Century saw the proliferation of grand chateaux across 57th Street. The Stevens-Whitney mansion was completed at 2 West 57th Street in 1876, and the Cornelius Vanderbilt II mansion rose across the street at 1 West 57th Street in 1883. Though the Vanderbilt mansion was, and remains, the largest single family home ever built in New York City, when the Heckscher building was completed in 1922, it dwarfed the mansion in terms of height, and heralded the skyscraper form as both the modern incarnation of urban life, and the modern incarnation of wealth, anticipating the vertiginous heights now reached on 57th street by the supertalls of Billionaire’s Row.
Indeed, the Heckscher building was so indicative of a new epoch that the Museum of Modern Art, founded 1929, found its first home on the 12th floor of the Heckscher Building.
image from LPC press release