Saks Fifth Avenue ARCHITECT: Starrett & Van Vleck DATE: 1922-24 STYLE: Neo-Renaissance

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.

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.