Construction is rising on 665 Fifth Avenue, a 469-foot-tall commercial building that will house the US headquarters for Rolex in Midtown, Manhattan. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects with Adamson Associates as the architect of record and developed by the Rolex Realty Company, the 28-story structure will yield 199,000 square feet of office and retail space for the world-famous watchmaker. The property is located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 53rd Street.
Early foundation work was still underway and below street level at the time of our last update in early December, when progress remained largely hidden behind the wraparound sidewalk fencing. Since then, the cellar levels and substructure were built, and recent photographs show crews assembling the scaffolding and shoring around the thick core walls. Jutting out from the bottom portion of the core will be several floor slabs, some of which won’t extend to the perimeter in order to create tall atrium spaces and soaring ceiling heights within the multi-story podium, as seen in the main rendering. The rest of the building features staggered setbacks and a fairly repetitive stack of floor plates that should make the tower climb at a brisk pace. YIMBY predicts 665 Fifth Avenue to top out sometime within the first half of 2025.
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
Photo by Michael Young
The following diagrams show the interior programming layout. Offices will occupy floors five through 25, followed by a double-height dining and event space with an adjoining terrace on the top two stories of the tower. A 50-foot-tall mechanical bulkhead and flat roof parapet cap the building. There also appears to be a small rear yard tucked in the southern corner of the property, as noted in the site plan diagram.
665 Fifth Avenue. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects.
665 Fifth Avenue. Designed by David Chipperfield Architects
The nearest subways from the development are the B, D, F, and M trains at the 47-50th Streets-Rockefeller Center station along Sixth Avenue, as well as the E and M trains at the 5th Avenue-53rd Street station to the east.
665 Fifth Avenue is engineered to achieve LEED Platinum certification and has an anticipated completion date of December 2025, as noted on site.
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Rolex is headquartered in NYC? That I did not know. I thought that the watch company was Swiss. As for the building, so much more could have been done to make the building less boring and more attractive, especially for Rolex. The boxy looking design is both uninspired and common.
Rolex USA
Clearly says US headquarters.
Glass City
Fairly attratctive, but there is no way this will be Rolex “headquarters” (that’s in Geneva).
Clearly says US headquarters.
Read the title again Stanley
I believe this building will turn out much better than the usual band of naysayers here portends
Rolex is a world famous watch, and this building under construction is structurally related: Thanks to Michael Young.
If those who are confused would do a quick google-this building will be the Rolex USA Headquarters. Rolex USA is a separate subsidiary company. Automobile manufacturers, rather uniformly, use the same corporate structure. I am near certain others do as well.
I’m not expecting much, but will refrain from judgement until it’s finished.
Looks beautiful. The smart use of glass gives it a crystalline appearance that works so well for a brand like Rolex. Having said that, I hope that the historic 7 story building directly across 53rd Street , as seen in the photos, can escape the wrecking ball. They can build whatever schlock they want to next to it, but please leave that important corner as an anchor to maintain the aesthetic heritage of Fifth Avenue.
Remind me of Fumihiko Maki’s works
665 you say. They were soooo devilishly close!
Rolex take a licking …but just keeps ticking.
If you are making reference to the devilish number, 666 Fifth Avenue is (or was) directly across the street. It was the Tishhman Building, since it was built, around 1960. Then Jared Kushner (how appropriately) bought it for a huge sum of money and changed the address to 660 Fifth Avenue.
In the rendering above, The Tishman Building is prominently drawn across the Avenue. And just as clearly, the Piaget Building is right behind it. That was built by the Shah of Iran and as far as I can tell, is still owned by the Government of Iran, or legal reasons, by Melli Bank.
True. But the red skyscraper was officially owened by the royal “endowment” charity, the Pahlavi Foundation. Then then priests came and the ownership was transferred to the dreaded Revolutionry Guards units, or rather their “edowment” charity, the Mustazzaafin Foundation. After the 9/11 events, US said they were blocking or confescating the building. So, I am not sure it is still owned by that terrorist organization. Do you?
Don’t know. The US GOV. tried to seize it in 2013, but that was overturned on appeal in 2019. Don’t know what happened next, but the silence would make me believe that it’s still owned by “Alavi” Foundation, the new name for the Shah’s Pahlavi Foundation, and by Melli Bank, in other words, by the Gov. of Iran.
Simply Rolex….the BEST