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MetLife Building

The MetLife Building (also 200 Park Avenue and formerly the Pan Am Building) is a skyscraper at Park Avenue and 45th Street, north of Grand Central Terminal, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed in the International style by Richard Roth, Walter Gropius, and Pietro Belluschi and completed in 1962, the MetLife Building is 808 feet (246 m) tall with 59 stories. It was advertised as the world's largest commercial office space by square footage at its opening, with 2.4 million square feet (220,000 m2) of usable office space. As of November 2022, the MetLife Building remains one of the 100 tallest buildings in the United States.

This article is about the building at 200 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. For the buildings near Madison Square Park, see Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower and Metropolitan Life North Building. For the building at 200 Park Avenue South, see Everett Building (Manhattan).

MetLife Building

Pan Am Building (1963–1993)

Office

November 26, 1959

May 9, 1962

1963

March 7, 1963

808 ft (246.3 m)

59

2,841,511 square feet (263,985.0 m2)

85

James Ruderman

The MetLife Building contains an elongated octagonal massing with the longer axis perpendicular to Park Avenue. The building sits atop two levels of railroad tracks leading into Grand Central Terminal. The facade is one of the first precast concrete exterior walls in a building in New York City. In the lobby is a pedestrian passage to Grand Central's Main Concourse, a lobby with artwork, and a parking garage at the building's base. The roof also contained a heliport that operated briefly during the 1960s and 1970s. The MetLife Building's design has been widely criticized since it was proposed, largely due to its location next to Grand Central Terminal.


Proposals for a skyscraper to replace Grand Central Terminal were announced in 1954 to raise money for the New York Central Railroad and New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, the financially struggling railroads that operated the terminal. Subsequently, plans were announced for what later became the MetLife Building, to be built behind the terminal rather than in place of it. Work on the project, initially known as Grand Central City, started in 1959 and the building was formally opened on March 7, 1963. At its opening, the building was named for Pan American World Airways, for which it served as headquarters. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife) bought the Pan Am Building in 1981 and used it as their headquarters before selling the building in 2005. The MetLife Building has been renovated several times, including in the mid-1980s, early 2000s, and late 2010s.

Site[edit]

The MetLife Building is at 200 Park Avenue, between the two roadways of the Park Avenue Viaduct to the west and east, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building faces the Helmsley Building across 45th Street to the north and Grand Central Terminal to the south. Other nearby buildings include One Vanderbilt and 335 Madison Avenue to the southwest; the Yale Club of New York City clubhouse to the west; The Roosevelt Hotel to the northwest; 450 Lexington Avenue to the east; and the Graybar Building to the southeast.[4] The building is assigned its own ZIP Code—10166—and is one of 41 such buildings in Manhattan, as of 2019.[5]


In 1871, the New York Central Railroad built the Grand Central Depot, a ground-level depot at the intersection of Park Avenue and 42nd Street; it was succeeded in 1900 by Grand Central Station, also at ground level.[6] The completion of Grand Central Terminal in 1913 resulted in the rapid development of the areas around Grand Central, which became known as Terminal City.[7] The Grand Central Terminal complex included a six-story building for baggage handling just north of the main station building, on what is now the site of the MetLife Building.[8] The baggage handling building was converted to an office building late in its history.[9] The surrounding stretch of Park Avenue was developed with International Style skyscrapers during the 1950s and 1960s.[10][11]

History[edit]

Planning[edit]

By the 1950s, passenger volumes at Grand Central Terminal had declined dramatically from the early 20th century, and there were proposals to demolish and replace the station.[124][125] The New York Central Railroad was losing money, partially on paying taxes on the building's air rights. New York Central wanted to sell the property or its air rights to allow the construction of a skyscraper above or on the terminal's site.[126] At the same time, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad retained a partial interest in the terminal's operation.[127][128]

Architecture of New York City

List of tallest buildings in New York City

Clausen, Meredith (2005). . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 9780262033244. OCLC 803843211.

The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream

(2001). Grand Central Terminal: Railroads, Architecture and Engineering in New York. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-6510-7.

Schlichting, Kurt C.

(PDF). Architectural Forum. Vol. 120. pp. 102–109.

"Six Offices From New York's Pan Am Building"

Stern, Robert A. M.; Fishman, David; Tilove, Jacob (2006). . New York: Monacelli Press. ISBN 978-1-58093-177-9. OCLC 70267065. OL 22741487M.

New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium

Stern, Robert A. M.; Mellins, Thomas; Fishman, David (1995). . New York: Monacelli Press. ISBN 1-885254-02-4. OCLC 32159240. OL 1130718M.

New York 1960: Architecture and Urbanism Between the Second World War and the Bicentennial

Official website