MetLife Building


The MetLife Building is a 59-story skyscraper at 200 Park Avenue at East 45th Street above Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1963 as the Pan Am Building, the then-headquarters of Pan American World Airways, it was designed by Emery Roth & Sons, Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius in the International style. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company bought the building in 1981 and used it as their headquarters. MetLife sold the building in 2005. The world's largest commercial office space by square footage at its opening, it remains one of the 100 tallest buildings in the United States.

History

Construction

Plans for what is now the MetLife Building date to 1955, when Grand Central Terminal was proposed for demolition. Developer Erwin S. Wolfson proposed a 65-story tower called Grand Central City to replace the six-story baggage structure north of the terminal. He revised the plan in 1958, downsizing the tower to 50 stories. The tower would contain three movie theaters with a total capacity of 5,000; an open-air restaurant on the seventh floor; and a 2,000-spot parking garage. This plan was ultimately approved. In July 1958, it was announced that architects Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, noted architects in the Modern style, would assist Richard Roth of Emery Roth and Sons in designing Grand Central City. The initial plans called for the tower to rise, with of floor area.
A structural steel contract for Grand Central City was awarded to U.S. Steel's American Bridge division in May 1959. Construction on the $100 million structure officially started on November 26, 1959. In order to make way for Grand Central City, a six-story baggage handling building was demolished in mid-1960. Foundations for the building were sunk in August 1960.
Cushman & Wakefield were named as leasing agents for Grand Central City. In September 1960, Pan Am founder Juan Trippe signed a 25-year, $115.5 million lease, allowing the airline to occupy, or about 15 floors, plus a new main ticket office at 45th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue. Thereafter, the structure was renamed for Pan Am. Space was also leased to the Westinghouse Electric Corporation, which agreed to occupy four floors in July 1960. Other early tenants included the Hammermill Paper Company, National Steel Corporation, Kodak, Reader's Digest magazine, Mitsui, and British Iron & Steel Corporation.
The floors of the Pan Am Building were constructed in a manner similar to how bridge spans were built. The builders used a process called composite action, in which concrete was bonded with structural steel panels to create a stronger structure. The tower's structural steel topped out in May 1962.

Opening and occupancy

The Pan Am Building was formally opened on March 7, 1963, despite not being completed, and tenants started moving into the structure the following month. At the time, the Pan Am Building was the largest commercial office space in the world by square footage. It was initially an unpopular sight due to its lack of proportion and huge scale: it dwarfed the New York Central Building to the north and Grand Central Terminal to the south, and it blocked continuous views of upper and lower Park Avenue. The building was surpassed in size by the World Trade Center in 1970 as well as 55 Water Street in 1972.
The Pan Am Building was the last tall tower erected in New York City before laws were enacted preventing corporate logos and names on the tops of buildings. It bore "Pan Am" displays on its north and south faces and globe logos east and west.
Pan Am originally occupied 15 floors of the building. It remained Pan Am's headquarters even after Metropolitan Life Insurance Company bought the building in 1981. By 1991, Pan Am's presence had dwindled to four floors; during that year Pan Am moved its headquarters to Miami. Shortly afterwards, the airline ceased operations. In September 1992, MetLife announced that it would remove Pan Am signage from the building. Robert G. Schwartz, the president of MetLife, said that the company had decided to remove the Pan Am sign because Pan Am ceased operations. At the time MetLife was headquartered in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower.
In 2005, MetLife sold the building for $1.72 billion, the highest price at the time for an office building in the U.S. The buyers were a joint venture of Tishman Speyer Properties, the New York City Employees' Retirement System, and the New York City Teachers' Retirement System. In 2015, it was revealed that Donald Bren, the billionaire owner of the real estate firm Irvine Company, held a 97.3 percent ownership stake in the building. While Tishman Speyer remains the managing partner of the property, the company's stake in the MetLife Building has been reduced to less than 3 percent.
In 2017, the light source for the "MetLife" sign at the top of the building was changed from neon to LED in order to conserve energy.

Helicopter service

flew Vertol 107 helicopters from the rooftop helipad to Pan Am's terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport from December 21, 1965, to February 18, 1968, when the service ceased due to inadequate passenger loads. For a short part of that time, they also offered service to Teterboro Airport.
Service to JFK resumed in early 1977 using Sikorsky S-61s. On May 16, 1977, about one minute after an S-61L landed and its 20 passengers disembarked, the right front landing gear collapsed, causing the aircraft to topple onto its side with the rotors still turning. One of the five blades broke off and flew into a crowd of passengers waiting to board. Three men were killed instantly and another died later in a hospital. The blade sailed over the side of the building and killed a female pedestrian on the corner of Madison Avenue and 43rd Street. Two other people were seriously injured. Helicopter service was quickly suspended, and never resumed.

Suicide of Eli M. Black

On February 3, 1975, Eli M. Black, then-CEO of United Brands Company, used his briefcase to shatter a 44th-story window and leaped to his death on Park Avenue.

Architecture

The building remains one of the city's most recognizable skyscrapers. Designed in the International style, the MetLife Building is mixed use commercial and office, with large floor plans, simple massing, and an absence of ornamentation inside and out. The octagon shape and window wall were intended by the architects to reduce the building's perceived sense of scale.
It was not well received by locals or by critics, who viewed the monolithic design as unsuccessful and complained that the building blocked vistas down Park Avenue and toward the New York Central Building, and disrupted traffic at street level.
It has been popular with tenants, not least because of its location next to Grand Central Terminal. The architecture of the building may have been inspired by the Pirelli Tower, built in 1956 in Milan, Italy, which was also a model for the Alpha Tower in Birmingham, England, and other similar buildings in Switzerland and Spain.
In 1987, a poll conducted by the lifestyle periodical New York indicated that the tower was the building that New Yorkers would most like to see demolished. The building is highly visible. Situated behind Grand Central Terminal outside of the grid, the building, which would have otherwise been tucked away into the city, is left exposed and is a contrast with the other buildings around it, most notably the New York Central Building. The MetLife Building also partially obstructs the view of the Chrysler Building from the Top Of The Rock.
The Sky Club had been located on the 56th floor of the building. Aircraft pioneer and Pan Am founder Juan Trippe used this club.

Tenants

In addition to being the official headquarters of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the MetLife Building houses a number of other major firms, including the headquarters of Dreyfus Corporation, Knight Vinke, the wealth and investment management division of Barclays, the largest office of Greenberg Traurig, DNB, CB Richard Ellis, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Hunton & Williams, DXC Technology, Merrill Lynch, Korn Ferry, Winston & Strawn, Paul Hastings, and Lendlease Corporation on Level 9. In addition the building serves as the U.S. Headquarters for Mitsui & Co. Inc, the American subsidiary of Japan's largest trading company, BNP Paribas Investment Partners and its American subsidiary Fischer, Francis, Trees and Watts.
NOAA Weather Radio Station KWO35, a National Weather Service radio station, is located atop the building.

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