{"id":493270,"date":"2026-01-05T04:07:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:07:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/493270\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T04:07:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:07:17","slug":"behind-the-curtain-wall-w-nyc-architect-richard-roth-jr-alexanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/493270\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind the Curtain Wall w\/ NYC Architect Richard Roth Jr.: Alexander’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Every month, Untapped New York will release\u00a0a new essay<\/a>\u00a0from Jo Holmes about the life and work of the late architect Richard Roth, Jr. of Emery Roth & Sons. Each essay explores a different building or developer from Richard\u2019s career, intertwined with stories of his personal life and snippets of exclusive interviews conducted by Holmes and Untapped New York’s Justin Rivers (which can be viewed in our\u00a0on-demand video archive<\/a>). Check out the whole series\u00a0here<\/a>!<\/p>\n

A Flagship Store<\/p>\n

Richard Roth Jr. was undoubtedly a people person. While he was proud of the work he did, he was also delighted by the relationships forged throughout his life. One such friendship grew from his involvement with Alexander\u2019s <\/strong>department stores<\/strong><\/a>, specifically the flagship building in Manhattan. It was through that project that he met Op artist Stefan Knapp, who would become a lifelong family friend. In fact, many of Richard\u2019s closest friends were artists. He found commissioning artworks for the lobbies and plazas of the buildings to be among the most gratifying parts of the job.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1963, Emery Roth & Sons<\/a> ran a competition to design a building for popular retailer Alexander\u2019s in Midtown Manhattan. It would become the flagship store. Until then, the main store had been in the Bronx, with an additional \u2018out of town\u2019 location in New Jersey. Subsequently, Richard designed Alexander\u2019s stores in Valley Stream (1967) and Kings Plaza (1968), as well as the branch housed in the Mall at the World Trade Center<\/a> (1974).<\/p>\n

\"PageImage from the Roth Family Archives<\/p>\n

The winning design for the Midtown site at 731 Lexington Avenue (on the corner of 58th Street) and incorporated a piece of artwork on the fa\u00e7ade. Sandy Farkas, son of Alexander\u2019s founder, George Farkas, wanted to use designs by Salvador Dali. <\/p>\n

\u201cDali had done 17 murals which he\u2019d sold at a sort of bargain basement price to Sandy,\u201d Richard said. \u201cSandy wanted to transpose those murals onto the side of the building\u2014<\/strong>he wanted to turn them into mosaics as he\u2019d seen in Florence.\u201d Richard was concerned by how long that process would take, given the sheer size of the murals. \u201cIt seemed Dali didn’t want to do it either,\u201d Richard explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

An Awkward Encounter<\/p>\n

Sandy decided to ask another artist, Stefan Knapp, to recreate the Dali murals. Knapp was a Polish-born painter and sculptor who developed and patented a technique of painting with enamel paint on steel. He created a series of murals for London\u2019s Heathrow Airport in 1959 (\u2018Murals 1959\u2019) and for the New Jersey Alexander\u2019s store. Unsurprisingly, Knapp was not thrilled to be asked to replicate another artist\u2019s work\u2014even Dal\u00ed\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI walked into a meeting with Farkas at Alexander\u2019s head office at 500 7th Avenue and found Dali there. Knapp, whom I had really just met the week before, was sitting outside. It was pretty awkward,\u201d Richard remembered. \u201cIn the end, nobody did it\u2014<\/strong>and the Farkas family sold the Dali pieces for a fortune!\u201d <\/p>\n

Instead, Alexander\u2019s commissioned an original work by Knapp. The piece was composed of more thant 400 large white panels with rows of colorfully enamelled steel domes. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote in The New Yorker that “the whole thing looked like a billboard filled with eyeballs or hubcaps or salad bowls. It was easily the most monumental piece of Op Art in New York.”<\/p>\n

Op Art, or Optical Art is an abstract style that became popular in the 1960s. It is characterized by geometric shapes and high contrast colors that often create optical illusions that warp the viewer’s perception. In addition to Knapp, other artists working in this mode included Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley, and Yaacov Agam.<\/p>\n

\"AA panel from Knapp’s mural on display at the Museum of the City of New York, Photo Courtesy of Robyn Roth-Moise<\/p>\n

Alexander’s Manhattan store opened in 1965, shortly before the company went public in 1968. Since founder George Farkas always purchased the land and property for his stores rather than leasing the storefronts, creating a valuable real estate portfolio. Interstate Properties took over the stores in 1980 to maximize the value of the company\u2019s real estate. <\/p>\n

Steven Roth (no relation to Richard) was at the helm of Interstate at the time and would later become the largest commercial landlord in New York City at the helm of Vornado Realty Trust. Donald Trump even held a significant stake for several years, but, having used it as collateral, was forced to hand it over to settle a loan in 1991. <\/p>\n

The flagship store, along with all other Alexander’s locations, shut down in 1992 when the company was forced into bankruptcy. While the stores have disappeared, some of the artwork survives.<\/p>\n

A New Lease of Life<\/p>\n

One of the Stefan Knapp panels from the Manhattan store is at the Museum of the City of New York. According to Paul Goldberger, writing in The New Yorker in November 2000, Manhattanite art collector Barbara Jakobsen acquired 80 of the domes from art dealer Mark Macdonald and reconstructed a panel in her garden. Macdonald got hold of the domes from the demolition contractor. The panels on display at MCNY were donated by Jakobsen and unveiled in 2023.<\/p>\n

A few panels from a vast mural that once graced the New Jersey Alexander’s store have been restored and installed at the new Valley Hospital in Paramus. More of Knapp\u2019s work can found in the collections of museums around the world<\/a>, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and the Tate Gallery in London.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe author Jo Holmes (left) and Richard’s daughter, Robyn Roth-Moise (right), posing with Knapp’s work at the Museum of the City of New York<\/p>\n

Over the course of the Alexander\u2019s project, Knapp became a great friend of the Roth family. Richard was fascinated by Knapp\u2019s life experiences. As a teenager, he had spent time in a Siberian gulag. Released in 1942, he ended up in the United Kingdom and joined the Royal Air Force, serving as an officer and Spitfire pilot. After the war, he stayed in London and studied at the Royal Academy and the Slade School of Fine Art.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were as close as two people could be,\u201d said Richard. Knapp even lived in the Roth\u2019s apartment for a time. Richard was Godfather to Knapp\u2019s son Robin. Richard and his wife, Alene, spent many summers with Stefan and his wife, Cathy, when the Knapps had an apartment in Le Lavandou in the South of France. <\/p>\n

Richard recalled a scary incident where Knapp had a life-threatening tooth infection. Richard remembered seeing a body bag in the hospital room. Thankfully, Knapp made a full recovery after a surgery performed by the head of dental surgery at Lenox Hill. (Shockingly, the surgeon himself was killed in a flying accident just a few hours after the operation.)<\/p>\n

An Artistic Temperament<\/p>\n

Perhaps given his own artistic abilities, it\u2019s no surprise Richard had many friends in the art world. \u201cMy friends were not so much in the architecture field. I had more friends who were artists\u2026You know, we had a lot in common. We could talk. And I enjoyed their company.\u201d<\/p>\n

Occasionally, he would work in exchange for pieces of art. \u201cOne of my closest friends was Richard Anuszkiewicz, and he asked me to design his studio in New Jersey in exchange for a painting. I said yes, why not?\u201d <\/p>\n

Anuszkievic was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor of Polish descent, one of the founders of Op Art. Life magazine described him as \u2018one of the new wizards of Op\u2019 in 1964. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Florence Biennale, and Documenta. His works are in permanent collections around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was out there supervising it one weekend, and I noticed that people were digging underneath the foundation.\u201d The studio was built on a hill behind the house. \u201cI asked Anuszkievic what they were doing. He said, ‘My father\u2019s doing that\u2014<\/strong>he’s creating a basement.’ I said, ‘It\u2019s gonna fall over!'” Anuszkiewicz\u2019s father\u2014<\/strong>then in his late eighties\u2014<\/strong>was trying to create more space. \u201cLuckily, I got up there before the whole thing just toppled down the hill!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI also designed the Fischbach Gallery on 57th Street in exchange for a painting,\u201d Richard said. The Fishbachs were the largest electrical contractors in New York City at the time, and Richard had actually designed an extension for their house in Westchester. \u201cAnd I designed an apartment for Harry Fischbach, the father, in exchange for getting electric work done in my apartment!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard was good friends with gallerist Denise Ren\u00e9. \u201cShe ran one of the leading modern art galleries in Paris. She represented all the optical art painters.\u201d Ren\u00e9 was opening a gallery in New York, and Richard acted as an unpaid consultant. In return, Denise gave Richard and his family a number of items, including some small steel sculptures by Hungarian \u2018cybernetic\u2019 artist Nicolas Sch\u00f6ffer. A while later, Sch\u00f6ffer himself came to a gathering of artists at Richard\u2019s New York apartment, where one of his pieces was on display on a coffee table. \u201cAll of a sudden, he turned it round. Apparently, we\u2019d always had it back to front!\u201d laughed Richard.<\/p>\n

Another friend was the sculptor Art Brenner, who lived in France for a good many years. \u201cPart of the fun of going to Paris was to see Art. He ended up living on a barge there. His original studio and apartment at 17 Rue d\u2019Aboukir was around the corner from Les Halles, and it was wonderful,\u201d described Richard. He was thrilled to have experienced the famous market before it was demolished in 1973. <\/p>\n

In 1974, Richard commissioned Art to create a large sculpture to sit outside a hotel near the Philadelphia airport. Unfortunately, Richard\u2019s clients had altered his designs for the hotel. \u201cThey decided to cheapen the fa\u00e7ade,\u201d said Richard. \u201cSo, I said, ‘Art, I want you to make something as big as possible because they\u2019ve screwed up the building and I wanna hide the building as much as possible.’ So, he did this huge thing about 30 feet by about 20 feet in height. And it was orange, so your eyes go right to it.\u201d The sculpture, which Brenner called \u2018Atlas X,\u2019 has since been moved to another nearby hotel\u2019s parking lot and painted blue\u2014<\/strong>likely to coordinate with the Hilton branding. Richard had a small maquette of the sculpture.<\/p>\n

\"AtlasAtlas X by Art Brenner, Photo by Robert MorbeckA Lifelong Passion<\/p>\n

As someone who had contemplated a career as an artist, Richard instinctively took a keen interest in any artwork planned for his buildings. One of the reasons he enjoyed working with maverick developer Melvyn Kaufmann was Kaufmann\u2019s passion for incorporating \u2018decorative\u2019 features. For 77 Water Street, they worked with lighting designer Howard Brandston, graphic designer Rudy de Harak, and sculptor Pamela Waters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Richard was especially excited by the installations at The Pan Am building, including the sculpture \u2018Flight\u2019 by Richard Lippold and a large mural by Josef Albers. He loved the \u2018dandelion\u2019 fountains he\u2019d commissioned for the plaza at 1345 Avenue of the Americas, formerly Burlington House. \u201cThey really were beautiful and, when it was hot, and the wind would blow, people would sit to the lee of them so the water would spray on them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Become a paid member to listen to this article Every month, Untapped New York will release\u00a0a new essay\u00a0from…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":493271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-493270","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115840525666635156","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}