5 Times Square
5 Times Square is a 38-story office skyscraper at the southern end of Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Located on the western sidewalk of Seventh Avenue between 41st and 42nd Street, the building measures tall. The building was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and developed by Boston Properties for Ernst & Young. The site is owned by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, though David Werner and RXR Realty have a long-term leasehold on the building.
KPF planned the facade as a glass curtain wall, with large billboards on lower stories as part of the 42nd Street Development Project. The foundation consists of shallow footings under most of the site, though parts of the plot abut New York City Subway tunnels and are supported by caissons. The steel superstructure includes a wind-resisting lattice steel beams, as well as a mechanical core. The building contains of floor space, much of which is devoted to offices. The lowest three stories contain retail space and an entrance to the Times Square subway station.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Park Tower Realty and the Prudential Insurance Company of America had planned to develop a tower for the site as part of a wide-ranging redevelopment of West 42nd Street. After the successful development of the nearby 3 and 4 Times Square, Boston Properties developed both 5 Times Square and Times Square Tower. Work started in 1999 after EY was signed as the anchor tenant, leasing the entire building for 20 years. The building opened in 2002. Boston Properties sold the long-term leasehold for 5 Times Square in 2006 to AVR Realty, which resold it in 2014 to a group led by David Werner. RXR Realty purchased a 50 percent ownership stake in the leasehold in 2016 and began to renovate it in 2020. The owners considered converting the building to residential use starting in 2024, and work on the conversion began in 2026.
Site
5 Times Square is on the west side of Seventh Avenue, between 41st Street and 42nd Street, at the southern end of Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The land lot is L-shaped and covers, with a frontage of on Seventh Avenue, on 42nd Street, and on 41st Street. 5 Times Square is at the eastern end of a city block that also contains the New Amsterdam Theatre, Candler Building, and Madame Tussauds New York. Other nearby buildings include the Times Square and Lyric theaters to the northwest, the New Victory Theater and 3 Times Square to the north, One Times Square and 4 Times Square to the northeast, and the Times Square Tower to the east.An entrance to the New York City Subway's Times Square–42nd Street station, served by the, is within the base of the building on 42nd Street. Another entrance to the same station is on 41st Street. 3, 4, and 5 Times Square and the Times Square Tower comprise a grouping of office buildings that were developed at Times Square's southern end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The surrounding area is part of Manhattan's Theater District and contains many Broadway theatres. The site of 5 Times Square was occupied by a 12-story hotel that opened in the late 1890s, while the New Amsterdam Theatre was built on the adjacent lot around the same time.
Architecture
5 Times Square was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates. It was developed by Boston Properties as the New York City offices of Ernst & Young. Quartararo & Associates was the construction manager. AMEC was the main contractor, Thornton Tomasetti was the structural engineer, and Jaros, Baum & Bolles was the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineer. Additionally, Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers was the geotechnical engineer and Vollmer Associates was the site civil engineer. Officially, the New York City Economic Development Corporation owns the structure. 5 Times Square has 38 stories above ground and two basements. It measures to its architectural tip. There are also two basement stories measuring up to deep.Form and facade
The building is part of the 42nd Street Development Project and, thus, could bypass many city zoning rules such as those relating to floor area ratio. The tower follows the 42nd Street Development's zoning rules, which do not require setbacks or sky exposure planes at higher stories, which allow a much higher FAR for usable space. Consequently, Times Square Tower occupies its entire site, with a FAR of 36. According to Karrie Jacobs of New York magazine, the building has a varied massing and facades that were appropriate for Times Square's "glitzy character". 5 Times Square rises largely as a slab, with setback sections to the north and east, angling away from the building's northeast corner. Douglas Hocking said that KPF had taken inspiration from Fox & Fowle's designs for 3 and 4 Times Square, as well as Philip Johnson's unbuilt proposals for 3, 4, 5, and 7 Times Square during the 1980s and 1990s. The 42nd Street Development Project also mandated a minimum floor area and a minimum number of stories. Since mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems did not count toward these minimums, they were placed on the roof.5 Times Square contains several electronic billboards on its facade, which obscure much of the second through fourth floors. These billboards are included as part of the 42nd Street Development Project and were intended to evoke Times Square's historical signage. Specifically, the building was required to contain at least of advertising signage. At the northeast corner, the signs rise to the seventh story. Hocking said his team used computer models to compare different types of signage. However, the developers' signs had to be separate from those required by the 42nd Street Development Project. As a result, a 22-story-tall vertical sign with the Ernst & Young name was mounted on the northeast corner of the building.
The main office entrance is in the middle of the Seventh Avenue elevation. The corner of Seventh Avenue and 41st Street has an entrance to a three-story Red Lobster restaurant, with a curved revolving neon lobster measuring long. Above the entrance is a curved sign measuring long. The curtain wall is made of reflective-glass window panes. The spandrels between stories are a mixture of reflective-glass and silver horizontal panels, which are arranged so they appear to form a diagonal "slice". The slice, as well as the massing variations, are intended to depict the diagonal route that Broadway, one block east, follows in relation to the Manhattan street grid. The north and south elevations, as well as the cornice atop the building, contain lighting. The design of the exterior was scrutinized by several governmental agencies, advocacy groups, and potential tenants.
Structural features
Substructure
Underneath the site is durable Hartland bedrock, which is covered in some places by soil or weathered rock. Before the tower was constructed, the contractors made four borings. They found that the Hartland bedrock had been covered by of manmade fill and that there was groundwater about below street level. The southern lot line is adjacent to the IRT Flushing Line subway tunnel under 41st Street, which runs about beneath the lowest basement level and below the street level. The eastern lot line abuts the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line, which is about under Seventh Avenue. The basement of the New Amsterdam Theatre protrudes under the southern half of the lot and is deep.The groundwater was drained using sump pumps and most of the building was constructed on shallow foundations. Because the Flushing Line subway tunnel was within of 5 Times Square's lot line, engineering consultant recommended that rock-socketed caissons be built to a point below the tunnel invert, using sensors to detect ground movement. Various methods of reinforcement were used for the lot perimeter. Near the Flushing Line tunnel, the south wall is supported by mini-caissons that are about in diameter. The caissons each contain three metal cores and descend to about below the tunnel invert. The New York City Department of Buildings granted the builders a waiver to use higher-strength material for the caissons. The southern lot line also has thirty rock anchors to resist wind uplift; each anchor has a working load of. The rest of the foundation is composed of concrete spread footings. The footing subgrade has a bearing capacity of.
Superstructure
The building's steel weighs on average. The building contains a moment-resisting frame structural system on its perimeter, with closely-spaced columns and horizontal spandrel beams. The frame needed to be able to withstand a wind of up to for three seconds from any direction. The engineers projected the greatest wind loads would come from the north and south elevations, so the columns on these sides are spaced apart. On the west and east elevations, the columns at the extreme north and south ends are spaced 10 feet apart, while those at the center are spaced apart. This creates two C-shaped clusters of columns on the north and south ends of the building, which thus act as two channels and not as a single tube. The columns at the north and south ends were manufactured as two-story segments. Each column has beams extending to the left and right, which, when installed, formed horizontal spandrel beams.Because of the small floor area, the structural engineers minimized the size of the mechanical core to increase the usable space. The core measures. The structural engineers could not stabilize the superstructure with outrigger walls, connecting the core and the exterior, because of the lack of mechanical spaces on intermediate stories. The engineers determined that it would not be efficient to build outrigger walls at the base and top. Since the core is not braced, it carries only gravity loads. The floor slabs consist of composite metal decks measuring deep. The slabs consist of composite steel beams between the core and exterior, measuring long. The steel beams can support a live load of, though some framing connections can support greater loads.