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Manhattan

Manhattan Skyscrapers REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

Eric P. Nash

PHOTOGRAPHS BY Norman McGrath

INTRODUCTION BY Carol Willis

PRINCETON ARCHITECTURAL PRESS PUBLISHED BY Princeton Architectural Press 37 East 7th Street New York, NY 10003

For a free catalog of books, call 1.800.722.6657 Visit our website at www.papress.com

© 2005 Princeton Architectural Press All rights reserved Printed and bound in China 08 07 06 05 4 3 2 1

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges all of the individuals and organizations that provided photographs for this publi- cation. Every effort has been made to contact the owners of copyright for the photographs herein. Any omissions will be corrected in subsequent printings.

FIRST EDITION DESIGNER: Sara E. Stemen PROJECT EDITOR: Beth Harrison PHOTO RESEARCHERS: Eugenia Bell and Beth Harrison

REVISED AND UPDATED EDITION PROJECT EDITOR: Clare Jacobson ASSISTANTS: John McGill, Lauren Nelson, and Dorothy Ball

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Nettie Aljian, Nicola Bednarek, Janet Behning, Penny (Yuen Pik) Chu, Russell Fernandez, Jan Haux, Clare Jacobson, John King, Mark Lamster, Nancy Eklund Later, Linda Lee, Katharine Myers, Jane Sheinman, Scott Tennent, Jennifer Thompson, Paul G. Wagner, Joe Weston, and Deb Wood of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin Lippert, Publisher

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Nash, Eric Peter. Manhattan skyscrapers / Eric P. Nash ; photographs by Norman McGrath ; introduction by Carol Willis.—Rev. and expanded ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-56898-545-2 (alk. paper) 1. Skyscrapers—New York (State)—New York. 2. Architec- ture—New York (State)—New York—20th century. 3. Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)—Buildings, structures, etc. I. McGrath, Norman. II. Title. NA6232.N37 2005 720'.483'097471—dc22 2005002264 Para Rebecca, rosa rara, perla preciosa, hija hermosa de la luna ix Acknowledgments 45 Hearst Magazine Building (originally International Magazine Building) xi Introduction by Carol Willis 47

49 One 1 American Tract Society Building 51 3 Bayard-Condict Building (originally New York Central Building) 5 Building 53 7 55 Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower 11 West Street Building (now ) (now Republic National Bank)

13 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower 57 Athletic Club

15 Company Building 59 Daily Building (originally 14 ) 61 17 (originally the Bank of Building) 21 Municipal Building 63 Building 23 Candler Building 67 San Remo Apartments (originally San Remo Hotel) 25 Equitable Building 69 Riverside Church 27 71 29 Shelton Towers Hotel (now Marriott Hotel) 73

31 American Radiator Building 75

33 79 Waldorf-Astoria Hotel

35 Paramount Building 81 McGraw-Hill Building

37 Barclay-Vesey Building 83 General Electric Building (originally RCA Victor Building) 39 Fred F. French Building 85 Bank Farmers Trust Company Building 41 (originally Panhellenic Tower) 87 Service Building (now ) 43 Contents

89 One Wall Street 143 Tower (originally Irving Trust Company Building) 145 IBM Building 91 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 147 AT&T Building (now Sony Building) North Building 149 Marriott Marquis Hotel 93 151 97 100 153 425 99 Secretariat 155 Worldwide Plaza 103 157 1585 105 Building (originally Solomon Equities Building) 109 Time & Life Building 159 Building (originally ) 111 Union Carbide Building 161 (now Chase Manhattan Bank) 163 World Financial Center 113 Chase Manhattan Plaza 167 Four Seasons Hotel 115 Building (now Met Life Building) 169 LVMH Building 117 CBS Building 171 Buildings 119 Silver Towers (originally University Plaza) 177 121 Marine Midland Bank Building (now ) 179 Austrian Cultural Forum 123 Building 181 Westin New York at Times Square 125 185 Time Warner Building 127 XYZ Buildings: Exxon, McGraw-Hill, and Celanese Buildings 189 Bloomberg Tower

131 W. R. Grace Building 191 Freedom Tower

133 1 and

137 (originally U.S. Steel Building) 193 Bibliography

139 1 and 2 UN Plaza 195 Glossary

141 Citicorp Center 197 Credits

Acknowledgments

book, like a , is put together by many unseen hands. Thanks to my editors and drafts- A men, Beth Harrison at Princeton Architectural Press and Julie Iovine at , for their sharp minds and pencils, and general grace under pressure. My publisher, Kevin Lippert, provided the site to build upon. Norman McGrath created the framework of color photographs by which this sheath of text hangs. Eugenia Bell laid the foundation with intrepid archival photo research. Like a master mason, the design director Sara Stemen put the pieces in place. Sylvie Ball did the finish carpen- try with several supplemental photographs, and the architectural historian John Kriskiewicz helped get the customers in the door with his insightful introduction. Carol Willis, the direc- tor of Museum, deliriously trans- formed my view of the city when I learned in her class at the New School for Social Research that the Empire State Building’s crown was designed as a mooring mast for zeppelins. And thanks to my sister, Laura, who has been as true as a surveyor’s level in helping me set my sights.

ix Wow! New York, just like I pictured it...skyscrapers and everything! —Stevie Wonder

...when I try to imagine a faultless love Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape. —W. H. Auden Introduction CAROL WILLIS

kyscraper history changed civic and commercial structures of two to ten In the first half of the history of the New on September 11, 2001. This book, stories. The Destruction of York skyscraper, steel frames were clad in stone, first published in 1999, needs a new (1969), an album by photographer Danny brick, or terra cotta and offered the illusion of edition, if only to place the entry on Lyons, captured the last remnants of down- monumental mass. In the second half, from the S 1940 the World Trade Center in the past tense and to town’s working waterfront at the moment of s through today, the aesthetic has been acknowledge that the title is tinged with tragedy. massive urban renewal, including the construc- principally transparent planes and volumes, a Academics debate perspectives through which tion of the new World Trade Center. In this curtain wall that reveals the structural system we view the past, and in the late twentieth cen- storyline, skyscrapers were the ultimate villains and the space within. Advances in technology, tury the postmodern mindset argued the impos- in a march of modernity that squashed human including high-strength steel, bolted and welded sibility of a single truth or unshifting narrative. scale and erased history. skeletons, curtain-wall systems, air-conditioning, But the first year of the twenty-first century It is a cliché that the essential characteristic and fluorescent lights, made these innovations proved that there are some historical markers of New York is continuous change. But a walk possible, and the triumph of International Style that are definitive and indelible. through the today—the dense urban fab- made the glass box ubiquitous. Exactly what has changed, though, is hard ric of lower Manhattan, the spine of Broadway McGrath has a special empathy for the mod- to pinpoint. “Our first skyscraper martyrs” is how as it travels up the island, the corporate corridor ernist towers, shooting them for the most part critic described the loss of the of Park Avenue, still mixed with patrician co-ops either face-on or slightly angled to define their twin towers and the emotional public response. and hotels—shows how rich and rang- precise prismatic volumes. From the paragons of New York’s shared sorrow over the structures ing an archive of American architecture remains the style—Lever House, , and stands in striking contrast to sentiments in the in the city. In Manhattan Skyscrapers, we have a Black Rock (CBS Building), to the interchange- last years of the twentieth century, when there happy survey of survivors. able tower-in-the-plaza slabs of was a animus in the city against tall build- Eric Nash and Norman McGrath have and other like-minded monoliths—Nash and ings. Preservationists and good-government selected a set of gems that span the 1890s to the McGrath give Manhattan modernism due groups marshaled protests and lawsuits that present. From the early, eclectic American Tract respect. Likewise, the buildings of the last stymied towers such as the early Society Building and Louis H. Sullivan’s refined decades of the century, which range from the project (now completed as the Time Warner Bayard-Condict Building, to the Park Row slick surface of the Lipstick Building, the pun- Building), and the Department of City Planning Building, the turn-of-the-century title holder for ning postmodern AT&T (Sony) Building, and sought to curtail height by revising the world’s tallest building, through the classical the collaged façades of , to the code in an ultimately failed effort inelegantly, but monumentality of the Flatiron Building, folded-glass envelopes of 1 and 2 UN Plaza and aptly, named the Unified Bulk Proposal. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, the faceted LVMH Building, are presented with Post 9/11, there seems to have been a shift and Bankers Trust Company Building and the flair, flash, and cool. in both popular and critical perception: soaring Gothic spire of the Woolworth Building, we see Still, Manhattan Skyscrapers has an every- height now seems to transcend the association of the highlights of the first, laissez-faire era of sky- day quality, in the best sense of the word. private interests and investment and represent a scraper development, when no constraints tai- McGrath’s photographs generally portray his collective identity. There is a new emotional lored the foursquare form of these straight-up subjects in full daylight (not the dramatic raking connection to the skyline. The fervent desire to structures. light of dawn or sunset or other types of atmos- fill the void at with a monumental The second era was distinctively shaped by pherics), and the towers are embedded in the tower has had overwhelming support, even if the the formula of the 1916 zoning law, city, as they are in life. These are the buildings, design of the Freedom Tower has been contro- which produced the stepped-pyramid bases and from masterpieces to mundane, that New versial. Other bold tower proposals throughout slender tower shafts of the Art Deco stars of the Yorkers see around them every day. Nash’s the city by international celebrity architects have 1920s and early 1930s, including the Chanin, entries are minihistories that are sensitive, infor- been eagerly embraced. Chrysler, General Electric, and Empire State mative, and fun to read: they make the buildings Lamenting lost landmarks is a tradition in buildings. These Jazz Age greats have an impres- approachable. writing about New York, especially since the sive backup band in midtown that each get a riff One thing we have learned from 9/11 is 1960s, when the demolition of masterworks here. Downtown, a second scene hits the high that the everyday architecture we take for such as Station spurred grassroots notes with the Wall Street cluster of 40 Wall, granted is really something to treasure. The Twin political efforts to create the Landmarks One Wall, and City Bank Farmers Trust and Towers were giants the likes of which we will not Preservation Commission. Books like Nathan Cities Service buildings. Clearly Nash’s favorites, see again. But contrary to the questions posed by Silver’s classic Lost New York (1967) mourned the 1920s towers dominate the book in number so many journalists and writers in the months the disappearance of the nineteenth-century and personality, just as they seem to define New after the tragedy, it is clear that New York is architecture of the city—from individual man- York in the mind’s eye of millions or in the top- going to keep building towers. Manhattan sions, to blocks of early row houses, to grand ten lists of tourists. Skyscrapers will surely have another new edition.

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Manhattan Skyscrapers