1585 Broadway
1585 Broadway, also called the Morgan Stanley Building, is a 42-story office building on Times Square in the Theater District neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The building was designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects and Emery Roth & Sons and was developed by David and Jean Solomon. 1585 Broadway occupies a site on the west side of Broadway between 47th and 48th Streets. The building has served as the headquarters of financial-services company Morgan Stanley since 1995.
1585 Broadway
Office
Morgan Stanley
1989
1990
685 ft (209 m)
42
1,336,576 sq ft (124,172.0 m2)
Solomon Equities Inc.
1585 Broadway consists of a low base, with setbacks that recede into a tower section measuring 685 ft (209 m) tall. The facade is designed with large signs at the base. The upper stories contain a facade of glass with aluminum spandrels, as well as a glass gable roof. At the ground level, the entire Broadway side contains stores, and the main entrances are placed on 47th and 48th Streets. The office entrances are connected by a wide lobby, which also connects to a basement cafeteria. Morgan Stanley's offices occupy the upper floors, with an executive suite at the 40th and 41st stories. The interior was designed by Gwathmey Siegel and Gensler.
Solomon Equities had developed 1585 Broadway as a speculative development in 1989, on the site of the Strand Theatre and another building. Morgan Stanley had expressed interest in the space during construction but ultimately decided against it. When 1585 Broadway was completed in 1990, law firm Proskauer Rose was the only tenant, occupying eleven floors. The Solomons unsuccessfully attempted to attract more tenants and fell into debt, forcing the building into foreclosure in December 1991. The building was taken over by a consortium of banks who sold it to Morgan Stanley in 1993. Morgan Stanley moved into the building after several renovations. Proskauer Rose renovated its own space in 2000 and continued to occupy part of the building until 2010. Afterward, Morgan Stanley expanded into the former Proskauer Rose space and renovated each floor in the mid-2010s.
Site[edit]
1585 Broadway is on the western side of Broadway, between 47th Street to the south and 48th Street to the north. It is at the northwest corner of Times Square in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City.[3][4] The trapezoidal land lot covers 50,657 sq ft (4,706.2 m2), with a frontage of 206 ft (63 m) on 47th Street and a depth of 277.87 ft (84.69 m). The southeastern end of the building faces Duffy Square.[4]
The surrounding area is part of Manhattan's Theater District and contains many Broadway theatres.[3] The Morgan Stanley Building shares the block with the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on 47th Street and the Longacre Theatre on 48th Street. Across 48th Street are the Eugene O'Neill Theatre and Walter Kerr Theatre to the northwest and the Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan to the north. To the east across Times Square are 20 Times Square, TSX Broadway, the Palace and Embassy Theatres, and the I. Miller Building. In addition, the Hotel Edison and Lunt-Fontanne Theatre are to the south, and the Brooks Atkinson Theatre and Paramount Hotel are to the southwest.[4] The site had contained two six-story buildings before 1986: the Strand Theatre, a movie house, as well as Leighton's Haberdashers and Clothiers, which had operated on Broadway for 67 years.[5][6]
Reception[edit]
According to architectural writer Robert A. M. Stern, 1585 Broadway's facade was "a welcome departure from the stone-clad Postmodern towers of the 1980s", and it earned many accolades.[37] Paul Goldberger wrote for The New York Times: "For this building has a real facade, designed to stand on its own, that looks reasonable even when not a square inch of the sign space is rented."[15][37] At the end of 1991, Goldberger dubbed 1585 Broadway as the "best nearly empty building of the year".[148] In 1992, Herbert Muschamp of the Times described 1585 Broadway as "a square chaperone dressed in starchy gray, peering down sternly at the indecorous doings in the street below".[149] Ada Louise Huxtable characterized the building as "a stunning event", saying the design "carries the sheer, sleek precision of the modernist curtain wall to new intricacy and richness".[37] Eve M. Kahn of The Wall Street Journal described 1585 Broadway as a "water-green, restrained corporate monolith".[150]
After the building was renovated, Stanley Abercrombie wrote for Interior Design magazine in 1996: "Above the signage area, the tower is a cool, symmetrical shaft [...] continuing the downstairs glitter with quiet composure".[38] Of the interior, Abercrombie wrote that Gwathmey Siegel had reconciled "a potentially overwhelming number of difficult and sometimes opposing demands into a work of architecture and interior design that appears seamless, coherent, and inevitable" while "making it all look easy".[36] When 3 Times Square was being built on the opposite end of Times Square in 1998, Muschamp wrote that 1585 Broadway was the only new building in the area that "has broken boldly out of the mold of commercial design" prior to 3 Times Square's construction.[151]
