27-story skyscraper at 1 Fifth Avenue, July 25, 1928.

The towering lower Fifth Avenue apartment building was designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett and erected in 1927.

Clever uses of colored brickwork were a hallmark of the Art Deco buildings of the late 20s. At 1 Fifth Avenue, Corbett employed an unusual trompe l’oeil effect: adjacent vertical stripes of dark and light colored brick which created the illusion of shadows created by projecting brickwork.