Park Avenue Plaza
Park Avenue Plaza | |
---|---|
General information | |
Location | 55 East 52nd Street Manhattan, New York |
Coordinates | 40°45′31″N 73°58′25″W / 40.75861°N 73.97361°W |
Completed | 1981 |
Height | 574 feet (175 m)[1] |
Design and construction | |
Architecture firm | Skidmore, Owings & Merrill |
Park Avenue Plaza is an office building at 55 East 52nd Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The 575-foot (175 m) tall, 44-story building was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) for development company Fisher Brothers and was completed in 1981. Despite its name, the building is not actually on Park Avenue, although it abuts the Racquet and Tennis Club building along the avenue. Rather, the building is in the middle of a city block, with entrances on 52nd and 53rd Streets.
The building has a 15-sided massing, with wide diagonal facades to its northeast and southeast, as well as a deep notch on its east. Park Avenue Plaza's facade is made of blue-green reflective panels of glass. The building has one basement, shallower than in other nearby skyscrapers. The building's lowest ten stories include a lobby, atrium, and mechanical equipment, enabling all the office stories to have windows facing Park Avenue. At the base of the building is an enclosed atrium measuring about 30 feet (9.1 m) tall and connecting the two entrances to the building's elevators. Each office story has about 28,000 square feet (2,600 m2) of rentable area; the entire building covers over a million square feet. The building's design prompted mixed reviews upon its completion.
Fisher Brothers acquired the site in the 1970s and proposed constructing a ground-level atrium in exchange for additional space. Construction commenced in March 1979 following negotiations with the Racquet and Tennis Club, which had threatened to build a hotel above its own building. The building was conceived as a speculative development and 90% of the space had been leased before construction was completed. Fisher Brothers has operated Park Avenue Plaza since the building opened in 1981. First Boston, a major tenant, owned a minority stake in the building until 1987. The Boston-based Rockpoint Group bought a 49% stake in 2010, selling it in 2011 to SOHO China.
Site
Park Avenue Plaza is at 55 East 52nd Street
Nearby buildings include CBS Studio Building and Omni Berkshire Place to the west; 488 Madison Avenue to the southwest; 345 Park Avenue to the southeast; the Seagram Building to the east; 399 Park Avenue to the northeast; and Lever House to the north.[3] In addition, an entrance to the New York City Subway's Fifth Avenue/53rd Street station (served by the E and M trains), is directly across 53rd Street.[3][7]
Architecture
Park Avenue Plaza was designed by Raul de Armas of the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).[8][9] It was built for the development company Fisher Brothers.[10][11] The structure measures 575 feet (175 m) tall.[11] To erect a larger building than would have normally been allowed on the site, Fisher Brothers acquired air rights from the Racquet and Tennis Club Building[12] and from the CBS Studio Building.[13]
Form and facade
The building has a 15-sided
The base of the tower is the same height as the Racquet and Tennis Club Building's cornice line.[14] The main entrances are through revolving doors on 52nd and 53rd Streets.[11][14] The facade is made of blue-green reflective panels of glass, alternating with silver mullions.[14] SOM had chosen that color because they had wanted the facade to blend in with those of neighboring buildings, although the color contrasted with the tan-brick facade of the Racquet and Tennis Club Building. At the time of Park Avenue Plaza's completion, Lever House (also designed by SOM) was the only other nearby building with a blue-green glass facade.[8][9] The facade contained a lightly glazed finish, which reflected heat during the summer.[11]
Features
The building has one basement, shallower than in other nearby skyscrapers, since basement offices were generally not attractive to commercial tenants. This reduced the costs of constructing the foundation.[10] The building's lowest ten stories include a lobby, atrium, and mechanical equipment. The mechanical floors cover 241,000 square feet (22,400 m2).[11] By placing the mechanical stories near the bottom of the building, this allowed all of the office stories to have windows facing Park Avenue.[11][15] There is an elevator core at the center of the building with shafts for 21 elevators.[16]
The office stories rise above a set of
Atrium
At the base of the building is an enclosed atrium measuring about 30 feet (9.1 m) tall[11][17] and connecting 52nd and 53rd Streets.[19] The space was built in exchange for a zoning bonus;[8][20] its presence contrasted with neighboring buildings that featured a large open plaza.[21] Fisher Brothers intended for the atrium to resemble a shopping arcade, namely Burlington Arcade in London.[19] The middle of the atrium contains stainless-steel columns.[14][22] There are eight columns with round corner, each measuring 3 feet (0.91 m) wide by 6 inches (150 mm) thick. The atrium contains two glass walls, which measure a combined 300 square feet (28 m2) and contain illuminated glass-crystal tubes. There is also a glass reception desk measuring 66 feet (20 m) long.[22]
The atrium contains a large painting by Frank Stella, a pair of brass sculptures with "organic" motifs by William Crovelli, and a waterfall on the eastern wall.[23] The space contains tables and chairs and was originally planted with small ficus trees.[24] To accommodate the plantings, the atrium had bright lighting with an intensity of about 200 foot-candles.[25] A set of escalators lead up to a mezzanine-level elevator lobby.[8][14] At the time of its opening, the atrium also had one of Midtown Manhattan's few public restrooms.[26] The atrium contains a public shopping arcade, which was not required as part of the zoning bonus.[4] The storefronts cover 20,000 square feet (1,900 m2) and originally contained bow windows as well as brass and granite decorations.[27] The space also has green marble walls with dark green glass.[14][28]
History
Development
Planning
For several years in the 1970s, Fisher Brothers had been negotiating with the Racquet and Tennis Club to buy the unused air rights above the latter's clubhouse.[29] The firm had already acquired a site behind the clubhouse on 52nd and 53rd Streets,[30] and it had hired SOM to design a 15-sided office building facing Park Avenue.[29] The project was one of several large office buildings proposed in New York City after the mid-1970s recession.[31][32] The developers planned to name the building "Park Avenue Plaza", though the Manhattan borough president's office had to approve this name.[33] Fisher Brothers wanted to build an entrance to its office building through the clubhouse, but the firm and the club were unable to agree on this aspect of the design.[34] Instead, the developers' lawyer Samuel H. Liddenbaum requested a Park Avenue address from the borough president's office, and he proposed that the building include an enclosed atrium or galleria.[35]
Negotiations between Fisher Brothers and the Racquet and Tennis Club were halted after the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) announced in 1978 that Fisher Brothers could not only have an address on Park Avenue, but also up to 200,000 sq ft (19,000 m2) of additional office space, if the developers built a 60-foot-high (18 m) galleria.[29][36] The "galleria bonus" would increase the amount of rentable floor area in the new building by 20 percent, raising the floor area ratio from 15 to 18. Fisher Brothers agreed to maintain public restrooms and add a cafe to the galleria.[37] The developers also proposed allocating $100,000 toward the renovation of the Fifth Avenue/53rd Street station.[38][39] The New York City Planning Commission (CPC) voted 4–2 to approve the galleria bonus in May 1978. Two commissioners had voted against the measure on the grounds that the galleria would provide little "public benefit".[38][39]
By early 1978, the new building was planned to cost $82 million.[40] That March, the Racquet and Tennis Club informally proposed the construction of a 38-story hotel above its clubhouse, to be designed by Jonathan Morse, a club member.[29] This would have blocked most eastward views from Fisher Brothers' building.[34] In August, the club submitted formal plans for a 35-story luxury hotel.[36][41] As a result, in November 1978, Fisher Brothers opted not to accept the galleria bonus from the city, and it resumed negotiations with the Racquet and Tennis Club.[36][12] The firm paid the club $5 million to not build the hotel, instead acquiring the clubhouse's air rights.[12] This provided funding for the club's protection while also allowing Fisher Brothers to obtain the same amount of floor space that it would have received through the zoning bonus.[42] The CPC gave Fisher Brothers permission to reduce the atrium's height in exchange for two additional office floors, the construction of which would pay for the air rights.[35][9] Morse refused to say if the club had actually planned to act on the hotel proposal.[34][43] Christopher Gray described the move as "perhaps the biggest game of real estate 'chicken' ever played in New York".[34][36] The city also approved the proposed "Park Avenue Plaza" name.[15]
Construction
In December 1978, the city government's Industrial and Commercial Incentive Board granted Fisher Brothers a $6.6 million tax abatement to be payable over ten years.
In the first phase of construction, workers poured concrete footings atop the bedrock, embedding steel bolts into the footings. Workers then bolted steel girders to the bolts, using two
1980s and 1990s
The ground-floor atrium had opened by August 1981, and tenants had started to move into the building.
By the mid-1980s, a Newsday writer said the atrium was one of several that was bringing "New York's shoppers in off the streets".
First Boston occupied over a third of the building, paying over $60 per square foot ($650/m2) until its lease expired in 1996.
2000s to present
Insurance company
The Boston-based
Fisher Brothers temporarily removed the atrium's seats during the
Reception
The photographer Marvin E. Newman took photographs of Park Avenue Plaza while it was under construction. In an 1981 exhibit of Newman's photographs, the Municipal Art Society described the building as "leaping with tyrannical self-confidence out of the middle of the block".[96] After the building opened, Paul Goldberger wrote in 1982 that the building "is an earnest, if tame, example of the genre of the abstract tower that we are seeing more and more of around the country".[8] The AIA Guide to New York City described the building as "a bulky glass prism".[20] Conversely, architectural critic Martin Filler thought the building's facade was "virtually identical to those SOM has been producing for over 30 years", saying the material drew attention to Lever House, which by comparison "seems pathetically shrunken" by Park Avenue Plaza's presence.[9]
Goldberger characterized the atrium in 1982 as "too small and tight in its feeling to be the enclosed public square that it aspires to be, but it is a lot more grandiose than the average lobby".[8] Goldberger changed his stance several years later, saying: "Years of use have mellowed this space, and it has turned into one of the most viable indoor plazas we have."[97] Richard F. Shepard wrote for The New York Times in 1989 that the atrium had a "warmth that almost contradicts its wall-size waterfall and its manicured interior architecture".[60] Jerold Kayden described the atrium as "an elegant, two-story glass-enclosed space".[4] According to Kayden, the space had all the elements of a successful public space because of its chairs and tables, eateries, waterfall, presence of maintenance staff, and "sense of security".[98]
References
Notes
Citations
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- Stern, Robert A. M.; Fishman, David; Tilove, Jacob (2006). New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium. New York: Monacelli Press. OL 22741487M.