The newer tower's juxtaposition with the Coty and Rizzoli buildings was both praised and criticized by architectural writers such as Paul Goldberger and Christopher Gray.

Planning for 712 Fifth Avenue dates to 1983, but the project was delayed for several years because of opposition to the demolition of historic structures at the skyscraper's base.

[12][13] The five-story Rizzoli Building, designed by Albert S. Gottlieb, carried the address of 712 Fifth Avenue before the present skyscraper was built.

On the upper stories, the Rizzoli Building had a piano nobile with three full-height, arched windows, as well as balusters underneath each opening.

[20] The rest of the skyscraper's base is made of solid masonry clad with rough Indiana limestone and is five stories tall.

[25][27] The tower's facade is made of gray Indiana limestone, white Vermont marble, and green and black granite,[28][29] with an aluminum curtain wall.

[10] Real-estate magazine The Real Deal said that the building's appeal to fashion companies came from the fact that "few views beat those from the towers of 712 Fifth Avenue".

The concrete cladding is 4.5 inches (110 mm) thick on average and is placed along the tower's exterior, not connected to the core.

Loads from the columns are horizontally shifted in small increments across a nine-story section of the tower, avoiding the need for a large load-transferring structure.

[38][39] The following March, Albert S. Gottlieb filed plans for a five-story store and office building at that site,[15][16] on a lot measuring 25 by 116 feet (7.6 by 35.4 m).

[15] These included the galleries of Edward Brandus, which a Brooklyn Daily Eagle writer described as making visitors feel "in the presence of a distinguished and refined company".

[46][47] Glassware and silver importer A. Schmidt & Sons leased the ground-floor storefront, as well as part of the basement,[48] in 1934 for fifteen years.

[56] The sale included a covenant that compelled the owners to use the building "only in a first-class manner" and maintain the exterior to a standard set by the Fifth Avenue Association.

[59][60] The store attracted customers with its "marble floors, oak paneling, [and] sparkling chandeliers", as The Christian Science Monitor described its design.

[58] In 1983, developer David S. Solomon began planning a 44-story office skyscraper at the southwest corner of 56th Street and Fifth Avenue.

[27][71] Architectural historian Charles Lockwood criticized the proposal as an "unacceptable preservation solution",[71][77] and Paul Goldberger described the plan as part of a trend in "facadism", in which the "essence" of the landmarks was still destroyed with the demolition of their interiors.

[81] Steadsol Fifth Associates edited their plans again, this time designing 650-foot tower with flat facades because the setbacks would have made the upper floors too small.

[85] 712 Fifth Avenue's completion in 1990 coincided with the beginning of the early 1990s recession,[86] when 14.5 percent of Manhattan office space was vacant.

[89][90] In February 1991, the Henri Bendel store opened;[25] at the time, there were six office tenants, including the Taubman Company.

[91] Because of the relatively small floor size, 712 Fifth Avenue's owners had to charge high rents to make profits.

[92] In 1998, the building was sold to the Paramount Group for $285 million (or roughly $523 per square foot ($5,630/m2), then a record rate for office space.

[70] Two years later, the Lalique windows in the former Coty Building had to be removed for restoration, as the steel frame had rusted and expanded, cracking some panes.

[93] The writer Jerold S. Kayden published the book Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience around the same time, in which he described Henri Bendel as selling merchandise in the atrium.

[12] At the time, the average annual rent for "premium" Midtown office space was $85.28 per square foot ($917.9/m2) per year.

[99][100] The following year, fashion designer Alexander Wang held a party in the vacant space to celebrate a business partnership with Bulgari.

[101] Harry Winston, which occupied the adjacent store at 718 Fifth Avenue, leased the former Henri Bendel storefront in 2020 for $7.87 million.

[105] The AIA Guide to New York City described the skyscraper as rising from the base of the landmark structures, saying that "the two tails (Rizzoli and Coty) wag this architectural dog, internally related to the Fifth avenue charmers, but externally isolated by Harry Winston's heavy handed folly at the corner.

"[25][85] Paul Goldberger of the same newspaper wrote that the building held "more promise for the revival of Fifth Avenue than anything that has happened to that troubled boulevard in the last decade", despite his initial skepticism of the project.

[107] Brendan Gill of The New Yorker wrote that 712 Fifth Avenue was "notable both as contemporary architecture and as a work of historic preservation" and that it offered "an especially attractive argument in favor of facadism".

[108] The author Eric Nash wrote that the multifaceted exterior ""looks right at home with the gray limestone of Rockefeller Center in the background and the marble front of Bergdorf Goodman in the foreground".