I used to grab lunch from the palace next door
Look up at those majestic beehive-shaped domes
If you cross the street from 675 Avenue of the Americas, you can buy chicken soup from a palace.
When I used to dash from the office to grad school, I would often stop at Pret A Manger on Sixth Avenue between 20th and 21st Street to grab a cup of soup—savory tonic for a grumbling belly and a frenzied mind.
Even during those mad pit stops, I would often notice the resplendent edifice that framed this pedestrian food chain. Crowned by two golden beehive-shaped domes, 655–71 Sixth Avenue is the first building below 23rd Street designed to occupy a full city block.
When it opened in 1887, the four-story structure housed the expansive Hugh O’Neill Dry Goods Store. The first floor was dedicated to the Victorian eye candy: silk, laces, ribbon, perfume, feathers, hats, and capes so fancy that they “bewilder the eye and burden the shoulders,” as a New York Times puts it. The second floor housed the clothing section, the above that was dedicated to domestic goods such as rugs and upholstery and the top level were stockrooms.
The first floor was dedicated to the Victorian eye candy: silk, laces, ribbon, perfume, feathers, hats, and capes so fancy that they “bewilder the eye and burden the shoulders.”
The cast iron emporium was commissioned by Irish businessman Hugh O’Neill. (His name is still prominently displayed on the pediment, lest we forget it.) Compared to high-end stores just a block away on Fifth Avenue, the Belfast-born entrepreneur was interested in selling to the middle class and he commissioned the renowned architect Mortimer C. Merritt to build a people’s palace. The building’s footprint is shaped like the letter “C” and hugs a small Jewish cemetery on 21st street. Corinthian columns with generous windows give the building a patrician quality. In 1989, the Hugh O’Neill was bestowed landmark status (pdf, p. 366–370) by the New York Landmarks Preservation committee, noting that its architecture and history gave the Ladies Mile District its “special character.”
But the detail that brings always brings a smile to my mind are those domes — veritable his and hers crowns; golden turbans capping the two corner turrets. The color is a gaudy, that bright yellow kind of gold. Seeing gold on top of buildings is unusual in grey Manhattan: a small gilded cupola in the Flatiron district, the gold-toned ceramic tile of the New York Life Building in midtown, the tips of the Bryant Park Hotel’s ebony edifice and the golden statuette (aka “Civic Fame”) at the apex of the Municipal Building downtown.
The domes are delightfully defiant too, clashing with Merritt’s classical architecture, and conspiring with the wonky “Hugh O’Neill” slab serif lettering stamped irreverently on the building’s forehead.
Those domes — veritable his and hers crowns; golden turbans capping the two corner turrets.
There was actually a time when the O’Neill lost its crowns. When the department store went out of business shortly after its founder died in 1902, the building has sold and converted to offices and lofts. For a short time, the US Army rented the building and transformed it to a sewing factory for making uniforms. Its interiors were later completely gutted and adapted for various occupants. Between 1917 and 1922, the 100-foot domes were removed to give the office building a more austere façade.
In 2004, the building was converted to a condominium. This would be a boring turn-of-events except for the fact that its developers decided to bring back the golden domes!
Here’s an MTV Cribs style tour:
This time, the domes were remade in fiberglass, a bit smaller than the original and without the ornamental grooves. They now crown the two lucky million dollar penthouse units on the top floor. Imagine how magnificent it would be to laze under those domes dreaming of Brunelleschi or Buckminster Fuller.
With a cardboard cup of soup in hand and the eternity of 45 seconds before the traffic light turns, I survey what’s become of the first floor of this once destination department store: A TD Bank branch, an Optyx, a Hale & Hearty, a Vitamin Shoppe and the aforementioned go-to noodle soup source. There’s not much to tempt the eye or the belly anymore.
But turning the corner, I notice the back of the building. Austere, plain and lined with smaller windows, it becomes a solemn backdrop to the Third Shearith Israel cemetery. The stripped down walls were perhaps never meant to be seen but it’s a welcome respite from the loco and rococo around the corner.
