King Kong, of course, is the quintessential New York City pet, but for many Villagers he was no match for the 40-foot-long iguana that perched above the very elegant former Schrafft's low-rise building on the southeast corner of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street.

The iguana was the sculptural creation of Bob Wade, an artist from Texas, and it was erected when the building was occupied by the Lone Star Cafe.

Eventually, the cafe closed and the iguana, starved for lack of attention, deteriorated and did not become a corporate mascot.

Then in 2006 the building at 61 Fifth Avenue was largely ruined by a fire. It was notable for its slightly bowed front and very tall multi-paned second-floor window and it was a fine complement to the limestone monumentality of the Forbes building across the avenue.

Last year the site was sold and recently a rendering of its replacement was shown at curbed.com, a 10-story residential condominium building with four units designed by Alta Indelman for Marek Kiyashka, the president of 61 5th Avenue LLC of Glendale, NY. Her plan was approved by the Department of Buildings May 7, 2009.

The new limestone-and-brick building will have four double-height multi-paned windows on its east and its north facades that hark back to the original Schrafft's window. The ground floor will have retail space and the apartments will have a canopied entrance on the sidestreet.

In his June 29, 2008 "Streetscape" column in The New York Times, Christopher Gray noted that Lewis Mumford, the architecture critic of The New Yorker magazine, once indicated that he preferred "the outright modernism of the competing Longchamps, designed by Winold Reiss," to the Schrafft's building designed by Bloch & Hess that he considered "pretty bad" and "simply 'the new cliche.'"

"New York," Mr. Gray wrote, "is full of institutions that seem indispensable until, only a few decades later, they vanish without a trace. Schrafft's, the lunchroom and candy and ice cream maker, was like that - a vibrant recollection in the minds of people over 50-something, but a mute hieroglyph to those born after Nixon was president."

Frank G. Shattuck, Mr. Gray recalled, "started out in 1898 with a chain of stores selling the candy of the Boston confectioner William G. Schrafft, but soon expanded into lunch service. Unescorted women felt safer in chain restaurants, and from its early days Schrafft's had a feminine cast. The appearance of the first Schrafft's restaurants is unrecorded, but by the 1910s Mr. Shattuck was working with Charles E. Birge, the favored architect of the Hearst real estate interests....The chain sought associations with the well-to-do, or at least comfortable, and the typical restaurant was a relaxed white-tablecloth retreat from the midday hustle of the city....Schrafft's switched to the architects Bloch & Hesse in the 1930s, and they began wiping away the dignified bronze classicism of Mr. Birge's time, replacing it with modernist marble....at 13th Street the chain stuck close to the most conservative kind of modernism, with giant pilasters and multilight windows that would not have been out of place on a turn-of-the-century women's club. A small panel of glass block on the side street was about as modern as it got. But Schrafft's was all about the comfort of creamed chicken, lobster Newburg and banana splits, so the architecture had to be comfortable, too."

During its Lone Star days, the building had a sign on the avenue that declared "Too Much Ain't Enough," which Mr. Gray described as "a most unladylike banner." After the Lone Star nightclub closed, the elegant building was taken over by a delicatessen/food store.

Schrafft's was not the only chain of very pleasant and very respectable eateries in the pre-fast-food era. One of its competitors was Child's. Schrafft's ice cream was very popular and was sold widely.