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MetLife Building

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Also known as Niobav, Pan Am Building, 200 Park Avenue

Office skyscraper in Manhattan, New York

Key facts

Former names
Pan Am Building (1963–1993)
Type
Office
Architectural style
International
Location
200 Park Avenue , Manhattan , New York 10166, U.S.
Construction started
November 26, 1959
Topped out
May 9, 1962
Opening
March 7, 1963
Owner
The Irvine Company
Roof
808 ft (246.3 m)
Floor area
2,841,511 square feet (263,985.0 m )
Architects
Emery Roth & Sons , Pietro Belluschi , and Walter Gropius
Engineer
Jaros, Baum & Bolles (MEP)
Structural engineer
James Ruderman

via Wikipedia infobox

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

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, New York, U.S. 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 m) of usable office space. As of November 2022, the MetLife Building remains one of the 100 tallest buildings in the United States.

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. A rooftop heliport operated in the 1960s and briefly in 1977. The MetLife Building's design has been widely criticized since it was proposed, largely due to its location next to Grand Central Terminal.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “MetLife Building” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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