| Top Ten NYC Architecture |
top ten midtown buildings |
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For a more complete list, see
MIDTOWN
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| 1 |
General Electric Building
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architect
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Cross & Cross |
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location
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570 Lexington Avenue at 51st St. |
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date
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1929-1931 |
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style
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Art Deco |
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construction
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194,6m / 640.0ft, 50 floors salmon
brick, terra-cotta
The base is of rose-coloured granite, while the set-back mass above and
the tower shaft are clad in glazed tan brick.
The undoubtedly most striking feature of this 195 m tall building is its,
indeed, flamboyant top, a curious mixture of Gothic spires in limestone and
brickwork with wavy, filigree style decoration and lightning bolt motifs,
depicting the electricity of radio transmission waves sent by the Radio
Corporation of America. At night this "crown" of the building is illuminated
from within, making the top look like a giant torch.
The entrance lobby has a vaulted ceiling of aluminium plating with
sunburst motifs and walls of light pink marble. The lamp fixtures are of
aquamarine-colored glass.
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type
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Office Building |
The General Electric Building is a historic 50-floor skyscraper in
Midtown New York City, United States, at 570 Lexington Avenue (southwest corner
of Lexington and 51st Street). Originally known as the "RCA Victor Building"
when designed by Cross and Cross in 1931, and sometimes known by its address to
avoid confusion with the later GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Center.
It backs up to the low Byzantine dome of St. Bartholomew's Church on
Park Avenue and shares the same salmon brick color. But from Lexington, the
building is an insistently tall 50-floor stylized Gothic tower with its own
identity, a classic Art Deco visual statement of suggested power through
simplification. The base contains elaborate, generous masonry, architectural
figural sculpture, and at on the corner above the main entrance, a conspicuous
corner clock with the curvy GE logo and a pair of silver disembodied forearms.
The crown of the building is a dynamic-looking burst of Gothic tracery, which is
supposed to represent radio waves, and is lit from within at night.
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| 2 |
Chanin Building
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architect
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Sloan & Robertson (René Chambellan and Jacques L. Delamarre for the
lobby and the ornementation) |
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location
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122 East 42nd Street (southwest corner of Lexington Avenue) |
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date
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1927-1929 |
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style
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Art Deco |
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construction
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Steel frame. 56 floors, 207m
(680 feet) high. Cost: $14,000,000
The steel frame is clad in buff brick and terra cotta and it is set back
in conformance with the 1916 Zoning Law. The facade illustrates the
introduction of colored glass, stone and metal on the exterior of tall
buildings. Materials such as bronze, Belgian marble and terra-cotta are used
here in an inventive and exuberant way. |
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type
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Office Building |
The Chanin Building is a skyscraper located at 122 East 42nd Street in
New York City. Built by Irwin S. Chanin in 1929, it is 56 stories high, reaching
197.8 metres excluding the spire (207.3 metres/680 feet including spire). It was
designed by Sloan & Robertson in the Art Deco style, [1] and incorporates
architectural sculpture by Rene Paul Chambellan. When originally completed, the
50th floor had a silver-and-black high-brow movie theater. This floor and the
51st are now offices joined by a stairwell instead. Initially a dominant
landmark in the midtown skyline, the building had an open air observatory on the
54th floor. [2] Having been surpassed in height by a number of buildings, most
notably, the Chrysler Building located across the street, the observatory has
been long closed. |
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| 3 |
Chrysler Building
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architect
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William Van Alen |
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location
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405 Lexington Avenue at 42nd Street |
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date
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1928-1930 |
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style
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Art Deco
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construction
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77 floors, 319.5m (1048 feet) high, 29961
tons of steel, 3,826,000 bricks, near 5000 windows. Cost: $ 20,000,000
The building is clad in white brick and dark gray brickwork is used as
horizontal decoration to enhance the window rows. The eccentric
crescent-shaped steps of the spire (spire scaffolding) were made of
stainless steel (or rather, similar nirosta chrome-nickel steel) as a
stylized sunburst motif, and underneath it steel gargoyles, depicting
American eagles (image), stare over the city. Sculptures modeled after
Chrysler automobile radiator caps (image) decorate the lower setbacks, along
with ornaments of car wheels.
The three storeys high, upwards tapering entrance lobby has a triangular
form, with entrances from three sides, Lexington Avenue, 42nd and 43rd
Streets. The lobby is lavishly decorated with Red Moroccan marble walls,
sienna-coloured floor and onyx, blue marble and steel in Art Deco
compositions. The ceiling murals, painted by Edward Trumbull, praise the
modern-day technical progress -- and of course the building itself and its
builders at work. The lobby was refurbished in 1978 by JCS Design Assocs.
and Joseph Pell Lombardi. |
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type
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Office Building |
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Click here
for Chrysler Building gallery |
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| 4 |
Rockefeller Center |
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Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 22 acres
between 48th and 51st Streets in New York City. Built by the Rockefeller family,
it is located in the center of Midtown Manhattan, spanning between Fifth Avenue
and Seventh Avenue. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987. It is
the largest privately held complex of its kind in the world, and an
international symbol of modernist architectural style blended with capitalism. |
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| 5 |
GE Building, originally RCA Building |
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The GE Building is an Art Deco skyscraper that forms the centerpiece of
the Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan. Known as the RCA Building until
1988, it is famous for housing the headquarters of the television network NBC.
At 850 feet (259 meters) tall, the 70-story building is the 8th tallest building
in New York City and the 32nd tallest in the United States. The building is
sometimes referred to as 30 Rock, a reference to its address at 30 Rockefeller
Plaza. |
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| 6 |
Empire State Building
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architect
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Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, William F. Lamb as chief designer |
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location
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350 Fifth Ave., bet. W33 and W34 |
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date
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1930-1931 |
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style
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Art Deco |
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construction
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Steel frame 102 floors, 1252
feet, 381 meters high. Effective use of setbacks to emphasize tower.
The building is clad in Indiana limestone and granite, with the mullions
lined in shiny aluminium. There are in all 6,500 windows, with spandrels
sandblasted to blend their tone to that of the windows, visually creating
the vertical striping on the facade. The windows and spandrels are also
flush with the limestone facing, an aesthetic and economic decision. |
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type
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Office Building |
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Click here for an
Empire State Building gallery |
The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in New York
City, New York at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. Its
name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York. It stood as the
world's tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931
until construction of the World Trade Center's North Tower was completed in
1972. Following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Empire
State Building became for the second time, the tallest building in New York
City.
The Empire State Building has been named by the American Society of Civil
Engineers as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. The building and its
street floor interior are designated landmarks of the New York City Landmarks
Preservation Commission, and confirmed by the New York City Board of Estimate.
It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. In 2007, it was
ranked number one on the List of America's Favorite Architecture according to
the AIA. The building is owned by Harold Helmsley's company and managed by its
management/leasing division Helmsley-Spear. |
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| 7 |
Westin Hotel
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architect
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Arquitectonica |
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location
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43rd Street and Eighth
Avenue |
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date
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2002 |
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style
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Post-Modernism |
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construction
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glass curtain wall |
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type
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Hotel |
The redevelopment of Times Square has
finally produced a building worth talking about: the new Westin Hotel on Eighth
Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets. And people are talking about it for a
welcome reason. The Westin has raised a flag over the issue of taste.
Translation: many people find it ugly. Hideous. The very embodiment of beauty's
evil twin.
Look up, people. This is New York. We live in one great ugly town. Not
being too hung up on beauty is what makes life here possible, even thrilling. In
exchange for surrendering refinement, we get a kind of urban poetry that is the
envy of the world. Sometimes it takes outsiders to see it. Often, outsiders
introduce new rhymes. The beauty resides, in some sense, in staying an outsider.
The Westin is the consummate outsider's hotel. |
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| 8 |
THE BUSH TOWER |
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architect
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Helmle
& Corbett |
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location
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130 W 42nd St |
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date
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1916-1918 |
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style
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Art Deco
Gothic |
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construction
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The building site is only 15 m wide and 27.5 m deep, and the architects
remarked that they wanted to make the building "a model for the tall, narrow
building in the center of a city block." And it was regarded as such for the
next decade of feverish urban construction.
The style of the building follows the "traditional" early skyscraper style
with its Gothic appearance -- English this time. On the side facaces, trompe
l'oeil brickwork creates vertical "ribs" with a fake "shade" pattern to
enhance the verticality. The windows are concentrated to the north and south
facades, as well as to a recessed mid-facade light-well on the east facade.
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type
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Office Building |
THE NARROW 32-story Bush Tower was the first skyscraper built after the
Zoning Code of 1916, but it had been designed before the code went into effect.
Nonetheless, Harvey Wiley Corbett accurately foresaw how architects would
respond to the new setback envelope presented by the code. |
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| 9 |
Time Warner Center |
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The Time Warner Center is a mixed-use skyscraper developed by The Related
Companies in New York City. Its design, by David Childs and Mustafa Kemal Abadan
of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, consists of two 229 m (750 ft) towers bridged by
a multi-story atrium containing upscale retail shops. Construction began in
November 2000, following the demolition of the New York Coliseum, and a
topping-out ceremony was held on February 27, 2003. It is the property with the
highest-listed market value in New York City, $1.1 billion in 2006.
Originally constructed as the "AOL Time Warner Center," the building
surrounds half of Columbus Circle in Midtown Manhattan. The total floor area of
260,000 m² (2.8 million ft²) is divided between offices (notably the offices of
Time Warner Inc.), residential condominiums, and the Mandarin Oriental hotel.
The Shops at Columbus Circle is an upscale shopping mall located in a curving
arcade at the base of the building, with a large Whole Foods Market grocery
store in the basement. The complex is also home to a 1,200 seat theater for Jazz
at Lincoln Center as well as CNN studios, from where Anderson Cooper 360° and
Lou Dobbs Tonight, among other shows, are broadcast live. CNN's Jeanne Moos,
known for her offbeat "man on the street" reporting, frequently accosts her
interview subjects just outside the building. In 2005, Jazz at Lincoln Center
announced a partnership with XM Satellite Radio which gave XM studio space at
Frederick P. Rose Hall to broadcast both daily jazz programming and special
events such as an Aartist Confidential show featuring Carlos Santana. |
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| 10 |
885 Third Ave
Lipstick Building
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architect
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Philip Johnson
& John Burgee |
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location
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885 Third Ave.,
between East 53rd and East 54th Streets |
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date
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1986 |
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style
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Post-Modernism |
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construction
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The 143 m tall building consists
of four oval-shaped cylinders placed above each other, each smaller in
diameter than the one below, creating the building a set-back appearance. On
the 36-storey facade, red granite spandrels alternate with the shiny steel
of horizontal window bands.
The elliptical lobby has a colonnade of steel-banded and round pillars
along the glassed outer wall line, and the columns double on the outside,
forming a narrow arcade there. |
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type
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Office Building |
The Lipstick Building is Johnson's second postmodern contribution to the
Manhattan skyline, following his nearby AT&T Building two years earlier. This
time the unusual shape, which has given the building its nickname, was a
requirement of the developer, to make the building stand out and compensate for
the less fashionable location of Third Avenue. The elliptical shape also claims
to make all the exterior offices "corner" offices. |
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