510 Fifth Avenue Renovation and Adaptive Reuse

510 Fifth Avenue Renovation and Adaptive Reuse
510 Fifth Avenue Renovation and Adaptive Reuse
510 Fifth Avenue Renovation and Adaptive Reuse

Project Facts
  • Completion Year 2012
  • Design Finish Year 2012
  • Size Site Area: 12,522 square feet Building Height: 74 feet Number of Stories: 5 Building Gross Area: 30,000 square feet
  • Landmark Status New York City Individual and Interior Landmark
  • Year Originally Built 1954
  • Collaborators Highland Associates
Project Facts
  • Completion Year 2012
  • Design Finish Year 2012
  • Size Site Area: 12,522 square feet Building Height: 74 feet Number of Stories: 5 Building Gross Area: 30,000 square feet
  • Landmark Status New York City Individual and Interior Landmark
  • Year Originally Built 1954
  • Collaborators Highland Associates

When Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company opened a Manhattan branch location at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street in 1954, the building’s award-winning design ushered in a bold new era of bank architecture. SOM’s design dematerialized the bank’s walls with transparent glass facades, cantilevered floors, luminous ceilings, and a street-level vault. These elements symbolically opened a cloistered world more commonly housed behind masonry walls.

SOM revisited the same bank branch a half-century later, renovating and adapting it for retail use. Drawing on archival research and guided by the original design intentions, the contemporary architects preserved or restored primary components including the facade, Bertoia-designed screen, marble columns, and vault door. The building’s exterior was landmarked in 1997, its interior in 2011, and it now stands as an exemplar of adaptive reuse.