653 Fifth Avenue, at the corner of 52nd Street, has been Cartier New York's home since 1917. The building was acquired by Pierre Cartier through one of the most celebrated transactions in the firm's history: he traded a double-strand natural pearl necklace, valued at the time at around one million dollars, for the mansion previously occupied by railroad magnate Morton Plant and his wife Maisie. The necklace went to Maisie Plant, who had wanted it; Cartier gained the building.
Within a few years of completing the trade, the natural pearl market was transformed by the arrival of cultured pearls, and the valuations that made the exchange possible were gone.
Sources
- Francesca Cartier Brickell, The Cartiers (Ballantine Books, 2019), ch. 3 (“Pierre, 1902–1919”) and ch. 11 (“The End of an Era, 1957–1974”)
- Hans Nadelhoffer, Cartier: Jewelers Extraordinary (Thames and Hudson, 1984; revised 2007), pp. 21, 22 et al.
- Wikipedia: 653 Fifth Avenue
