Pouncing pumas and crouching cats!

All the action is packed in this little block in the heart of tourist New York, crouched between Rockefeller Center and the Diamond District. Today, it’s chain retail, weathered limestone, and lots of people.

Much of what’s here arose in the early part of the 20th century, when office buildings and department stores began to replace the grand mansions and at least one church. By the end of World War II, these stores and offices were located in the center of a booming economy, home to publishers, restaurants, and the expanding corporate sector.

Today the stores are recovering from a severe pandemic-related drop-off in foot traffic and at least two of the buildings have been in various stages of foreclosure. But foot traffic is up and the block will see its first “new” building in some time.

Street view here.

This Beaux Arts bad boy was once home to Scribner’s, one of the great American publishing houses of the 20th century. They published some of the most eminent books while working from these dignified offices until they were absorbed by another publisher in 1984.

Ernest Flagg—who also designed the Mills House #1 building in Greenwich Village and the one-time world’s tallest building, the Singer Building—considered it one of his best buildings.

But even as a home to letters, things occasionally went the way of the jungle.

In 1937, critic Max Eastman was sitting in the fifth floor offices of literary editor Maxwell Perkins when Ernest Hemingway stopped in before heading off to report on the Civil War raging in Spain. A few years earlier, the critic had mocked Hemingway’s macho image, saying he had a literary style “of wearing false hair on the chest.”

“Look false to you?” Hemingway challenged, and began to unbutton his shirt, at first in good fun. But when he saw a copy of Eastman’s book “Bull in the Afternoon” on the desk, Hemingway started to get a little mad.

"We were just fooling around, in a way," Mr. Hemingway told the New York Times afterward. "But when I looked at him and I thought about the book, I got sore. I tried to get him to read to me, in person, some of the stuff he had written about me. He wouldn't do it. So that's when I socked him with the book." But, Hemingway continued, he didn’t really hit him that hard. “If I had, I might have knocked him through that window and out into Fifth Avenue.”

Eastman maintained that he fought back valiantly. “I knew that Ernest could knock me out in a half-second in a boxing match, but I can wrestle,” Eastman later wrote in his 1959 memoir. “I grappled with him, clinging so close he couldn't hit me. After some swaying and grunting I threw him on his back across Max Perkins desk, and down on his head on the floor. My fingers were at his throat and I had some vague idea, although by that time no wish, to do him violence.”

The pair just as suddenly ended their row amicably and Perkins directed the secretaries to clean the mess. Hemingway continued on to Spain, and Eastman went off to Martha’s Vineyard. The publisher refused to comment to the New York Times, acknowledging the row, but saying it was "a personal matter between the two gentlemen in question."

It’s hard to say how raw this fight really was. After reading this section of Eastman’s book, I’m convinced this whole episode was a put-on, with Hemingway trying to stir up a little publicity. Ahh well, gotta sell books somehow.¹

The Scribner’s bookstore with its elegant iron-and-glass entrance and vaulted ceiling, was a destination for anyone who wanted to buy a book in a beautiful setting. Patti Smith worked here for a time, writing about it in her memoir, Just Kids:

“It seemed like a dream job, working in the retail store of the prestigious publisher, home to writers like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and their editor, the great Maxwell Perkins. Where the Rothschilds bought their books, where paintings by Maxfield Parrish hung in the stairwell."

The legendary rare book collection hosted a book vault that included a 1782 Mozart symphony, a 1789 broadside from George Washington declaring the Thanksgiving holiday (on sale for over $12,000, inflation adjusted), and a Gutenberg Bible. (See more here.)

After the store closed in 1989, the landmarked interior passed through a cycle of other stores, including a Club Monaco. It’s under renovation again, but you gotta hope for the day it’s again a great place to pick up a book.

More recently, the offices housed a different kind of modern academic. In 2016, this building was home to Cambridge Analytica, the data firm that was credited for using data to partially influence and help deliver the 2016 presidential election to a neighborhood crank living seven blocks north.

But the animal spirits leading to baring one’s chest (and other parts of the body) remained through 2013, when Anthony Weiner had campaign offices here during his run for mayor.

Sorry guys, this cat’s taking a little nap.

The Puma store here has been closed since February, when a burst pipe forced the feline flagship to close, the Real Deal writes. There have been some complex legal wrangling at the property as well, with unpaid steam heating bills and foreclosure litigation creating a big mess, too. More recently, the office portion has also been pretty much empty since the WeWork location left in 2021.

But before its hypebeast era, this was the former home of the American Girl doll store. In 2010, it was selling a “Healthy Smile” set that the New Yorker noted included “stick-on braces, orthodontic headgear to straighten their (perfect) teeth (comes with attached neck strap), retainers in plastic cases, and a faux electric toothbrush.”

In 2011, the store briefly offered horse-drawn carriage rides through Central Park but it curbed those shortly after animal activists invaded the store to discourage the practice.

This store’s gone, but you can still get your totable tots at Rockefeller Center now.

Honestly, the building looks a little weird with the angular glass downstairs slapped against the old stone facade. But change is coming. NY YIMBY reports on plans to fully rebuild the building to be flashy condos, if the legal and financial challenges clear. The new building will look like someone dropped a bit of Miami into dour old Fifth Avenue. Not in a bad way, though.

This is an understated building, and one of the best on Fifth Avenue.

With its clean lines, ornate reliefs, and hidden details, it’s often cited as a transition between Art Deco and International style. The green Vermont verde antique stone layered over white Dover cream banding gives it a timeless layer-cake effect. (This is how people who like fancy watches probably feel when they’re looking at a fancy watch.)

It was built as the Great Depression began and replaced the Goelet mansion, one of the last to stand on this block.

In 1964, 14 Swiss-based companies leased the building together to create a kind of cultural consulate, giving the building its Swiss Center name. The retail on the corner is now an Aritzia flagship with an enormous stuffed cat looming in the window. There’s also a big wooden mushroom inside.

All good, except this insanely cool front entrance was massacred during one of the renovations.

This six-story building was originally built for Childs, a restaurant chain that was massive in the 1920s until it imploded after the founder insisted on selling less meat and more vegetables.

You’d never know it was designed by William Van Alen, the same architect who designed the Chrysler just a few years afterward. But some old photos show what it used to look like before the rounds of renovations. It actually had clean modernist lines and a curved corner glass entrance before the skyscraper next door was built.

Starting in the 1990s, it was lucky enough to be home to a colorful TGI Friday’s. The New York Times architecture critic Christopher Gray described it as a “grimy white and red-striped advertising awnings are a particularly cruel touch for a structure with the elegance of a Parisian dress shop.”

The building was redone a few years ago and it looks much better now, or at least pretty dignified, but still not as cool back in those Childs days.

The building is now home to the Nippon Club, a Japanese social club, and upstairs hosts a restaurant, music hall, and art gallery. Downstairs is Minamoto Kitchoan, which sells wagashi, delicate sweets like red bean pancakes, mochi, and chocolate stick pies.

(This is its second incarnation on this block. It reopened in 2024, after previously being located inside the Swiss Center from 1997 to 2013.)

Inside, it feels like a tiny slice of a Tokyo department store basement, with showcases of exquisite, delicate sweets. If you’re dialed up on spring, try the Sakura Jelly, which features “delicately cherry-blossom-scented jelly topped with a single floating sakura blossom.”

Or, if you want to get in touch with your inner Hemingway try the comparably spartan rice cracker box with flavors of Shoyu soy sauce, Aonori dried green seaweed, Ume plum with crystal sugar, and salt. That’ll put hair on your chest.

What’s Good: For all of the kinda chain-y retail, there’s still the feeling you’re in a crossroads of of so many different people. Also, the Swiss Center is great.

What’s Not: Bring back the bookstore, already! Yeesh.

Block Rating: 6.5/10