New York Architecture Images- Exxon Building

New York Architecture Images- Midtown

Exxon Building

architect

Harrison, Abramovitz & Harris

location

1251 Sixth Ave., bet W49 and W50.

date

1971

style

International Style II

construction

229m, 750ft, 54 floors. steel structure, limestone
The vertical facade striping consists of narrow limestone-clad piers as vertical structural members, with a similar structural system used on the other buildings within the new complex. The windows and opaque spandrels form continuous glass stripes -- an automatic washing machine that slides down the facade is used in washing the windows .

type

Office Building

Part of the Rockefeller Center Extension (also known as XYZ plan)

notes

-	1251 Avenue of the Americas was built in 1967-1971 as the second building in the Rockefeller Center Extension across Sixth Avenue, with the Exxon oil company as the main occupant.
-	The first plans for the three new office towers, called the Exxon Building, McGraw-Hill Building and Celanese Building, were made in 1963 by Harrison and Abramovitz. The plan arranged the buildings around a large sunken central plaza (with entrances to the new buildings, as well as the Rockefeller Center concourse), with the centermost one placed north-south, at right angles with the established Manhattan gridline. In the realized plan, however, all the buildings were placed east-west on adjacent blocks.
-	Due to the buildings' excess bulk, as opposed to the allowances given by zoning, the western ends of the plots were to be used as north-south public promenades running through each block.
-	The vertical facade striping consists of narrow limestone-clad piers as vertical structural members, with a similar structural system used on the other buildings within the new complex.
-	Facing Sixth Avenue, there is a sunken plaza with a large pool and fountains as well as trees and the lifelike bronze statue Out to Lunch, of the same series as the one outside the former Union Carbide Building.
-	The 54-storey Exxon building occupies the plot opposite the RCA Building (today GE Building), and its vertically accentuated form rises to the height of 228.5 meters, being the second-tallest building in the whole Rockefeller Center.

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