From the Sunday Times:
The cosmetics company Sephora has signed a 10-year lease for the retail space in the landmarked Beaux-Arts Scribner Building on Fifth Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets, a building that opened in 1913. Sephora expects to move into the 12,482-square-foot space in late July. Scribner, which had a bookstore on the first floor and its publishing offices above, used its elegant building until 1984. The site has not been a bookstore since the 1990’s, when it housed a Brentano’s. The building is now owned by Benetton, which bought it in 1988 and also owns two others in Manhattan.
The exterior of the building, designed by Ernest Flagg, was designated a landmark in 1982 and the interior in 1989. The building once echoed with the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe and many other notable writers who were published by Scribner’s. Among the store’s special touches are vaulted ceilings, a marble staircase and a gilded black iron exterior. In the plaster ceiling is a scroll-shaped ornament with the initials C.S., for Charles Scribner.
—Any other New Yorkers remember Scribner’s, from the days when there were two Doubledays on Fifth? One of the best bookstores in the city, and certainly the most beautiful. I was heartbroken when it closed, and have never set foot in the building again. Since the only thing as important to me as books are lipstick and mascara, I can step through the doors once more!