Located on the corner of 39th street and Seventh Avenue, this project involved renovations to the façade and lobby of one of the Fashion Center’s premier buildings, designed in 1930 by Buchman and Kahn.

The second floor, which contains merchandizing display areas, was refenestrated as part of the project, making it more visible from the street. This floor is at a much grander scale than the ground floor, which had the effect in the original design of compressing the street level entry, and making it seem inhospitable by modern standards.

To ameliorate this difficulty, the entrance was demolished and redesigned to be far more transparent. The low plaster relief of the Art Deco ceiling was restored, illuminated and painted, and shallow dropped-ceiling planes with edge lighting were designed at the entrance and the elevator vestibule to strike a balance between historic and modern elements.

The effect of this intervention is to draw the eye into the long interior with an insistent perspective, making a virtue of the low lobby section. To create an appropriate sense of arrival, a long front desk clad in waterjet cut bronze and wood with a charcoal granite top separates the two elevator vestibules, and a full height bronze screen terminates the procession, lit so that it will glitter at the end of the vista.