Citigroup Center
The Citigroup Center is an office skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Built in 1977 for Citibank, it is tall and has of office space across 59 floors. The building was designed by architect Hugh Stubbins, associate architect Emery Roth & Sons, and structural engineer William LeMessurier.
The Citigroup Center takes up much of a city block bounded clockwise from the west by Lexington Avenue, 54th Street, Third Avenue, and 53rd Street. Land acquisition took place from 1968 to 1973. One existing occupant, St. Peter's Lutheran Church, sold its plot on the condition that a new church building be constructed at the base of the tower. The design was announced in July 1973, and the structure was completed in October 1977. Less than a year after completion, the structure had to be strengthened when it was discovered that, due to a design flaw, the building was vulnerable to collapse in high winds. The building was acquired by Boston Properties in 2001, and Citicorp Center was renamed 601 Lexington Avenue in the 2000s. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Citigroup Center as a city landmark in 2016. The building's public spaces underwent renovations in 1995 and 2017.
The tower's base includes four giant stilts, which are placed mid-wall rather than at the building's corners. Its roof is sloped at a 45-degree angle. East of the tower is a six-story office annex. The northwest corner of the tower overhangs St. Peter's Church at Lexington Avenue and 54th Street, a granite structure designed by Stubbins. Also at the base is a sunken plaza, a shopping concourse, and entrances to the church and the New York City Subway's Lexington Avenue/51st Street station. The upper stories are supported by stacked load-bearing braces in the form of inverted chevrons. Upon the Citigroup Center's completion, it received mixed reviews, as well as architectural awards.
Site
The Citigroup Center is at 601 Lexington Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. It takes up the majority of a city block bounded by Lexington Avenue to the west, 54th Street to the north, Third Avenue to the east, and 53rd Street to the south. The land lot covers with a frontage of on Lexington Avenue and a west–east length of. The building shares the block with 880 Third Avenue, an 18-story structure at 53rd Street and Third Avenue. Other nearby buildings include 599 Lexington Avenue to the south, 100 East 53rd Street and the Seagram Building to the southwest, 399 Park Avenue to the west, the Central Synagogue to the northwest, and the Lipstick Building to the east. The New York City Subway's Lexington Avenue/51st Street station is directly underneath the building.Thirty-one parcels were acquired and cleared to make way for the development. The 54th Street frontage was largely occupied by brownstone houses. Some of the other lots contained commercial spaces, ranging from small shops to the upscale Cafe Chauveron. The site also included the Medical Chambers on 54th Street, which was owned by a cooperative of doctors. St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church occupied the corner of Lexington Avenue and 54th Street; its sanctuary was rebuilt when the Citigroup Center was developed.
Street furniture
Custom street furniture—including newsstands, flagpoles, and streetlight pylons—was designed for the sidewalks around the Citigroup Center. New Jersey–based company Designetics designed pylons with a cruciform cross-section and street lamps at the top. Seven lighting pylons are placed along the streets that surround the block. Three custom pylons—at the northwest, northeast, and southwest corners of the block—include pedestrian and vehicular traffic lights. The pylons were initially designed with a "glossy black finish" that contrasted with the tower's aluminum facade; by 2016, they had been painted gray. The New Yorker described the pylons in 2017 as "sculptural towers worthy of Brancusi".History
was founded in 1812 and, for over a century, had its headquarters in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The company was headquartered at 52 Wall Street until 1908, when it moved to 55 Wall Street. After National City Bank and the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company merged in 1929, the new company, City Bank Farmers Trust, moved into a new structure at 20 Exchange Place, which was completed in 1931, and opened a Midtown office at 399 Park Avenue, one block west of the present Citigroup Center, in 1961.On the northwestern corner of the future Citigroup Center site was St. Peter's Lutheran Church, which had been founded in 1862 as a German-speaking congregation. The St. Peter's congregation occupied a building at Lexington Avenue and 46th Street from 1871 to 1902, when it was demolished for the construction of Grand Central Terminal. This prompted the congregation to move to a Gothic building designed by John G. Michel and P. Brandner, which was completed in 1905. The congregation, which at its peak had a membership of over one thousand, had decreased to below 300 by the 1960s, prompting the congregation to consider relocating to near the United Nations headquarters.
Planning
Site acquisition
Lots on the St. Peter's block were acquired secretively starting in 1968 and continued for five and a half years. The acquisition was headed by brokers Donald Schnabel and Charles McArthur of Julien J. Studley Inc. The brokers believed that a large, contiguous land lot would be worth more than the sum of each lot's individual worth, though the firm had not yet secured a client for which it was purchasing the lots. St. Peter's Church's membership was increasing again by then, and members of the congregation were loath to part with their property. A Studley broker formed a company called Lexman, which then approached what had become First National City Bank to determine their interest in acquiring the St. Peter's block, one block east of their headquarters at the time. Lexman gradually acquired the other lots on the block.The brokerage firm again negotiated with St. Peter's congregation in late 1969 after some lots had been acquired. John White, president of consulting firm James D. Landauer Associates, proposed that the new structure on the site be a condominium development; i.e. the church would have a partial ownership stake in the new development. In February 1970, the congregation signed a letter of intent to sell its building, as well as the air rights above the church, to First National City Bank. In exchange, the congregation received $9 million and was named as a condominium partner in the tower's development. The congregation saw a $4 million net profit, as its new building cost $5 million. Members of the congregation formally approved the sale of their building in May 1971.
Hugh Stubbins & Associates was hired to develop plans for a large building on the city block, and St. Peter's Church hired Edward Larrabee Barnes as a design consultant by the beginning of 1971. The Stubbins firm, at the time, had relatively little experience designing high-rise buildings. The New York Times characterized the site as an "annex" to First National City Bank's main building at 399 Park Avenue. The congregation of St. Peter's Church voted in May 1971 to approve the sale of its old building and construct a new structure on the same site, and they relocated in early 1973 to a temporary location at the Central Presbyterian Church. By July 1973, land acquisition was almost entirely complete, although the last parcel was not acquired until November 1975, when the lot at 884 Third Avenue was purchased. The parcels cost $40 million, making it the most expensive city block on earth at the time. The only lot on the block that First National City Bank had not acquired was 880 Third Avenue, which had been completed in 1965, and which the brokers considered too new to be demolished.
Design process and city approvals
In addition to what became the final design, Stubbins and his associates studied at least six alternate proposals for the tower, with varying rooftop designs. Early plans also called for installing stilts underneath each corner. These plans were scrapped because the northwestern stilt would extend into St. Peter's Lutheran Church, and the church wanted its sanctuary to be structurally separate from the tower. Before the official plans for the building were announced, the architects had designed a roof sloped at a 45-degree corner, which was to contain west-facing terraces for about 100 apartments, but the New York City Department of City Planning would not approve a zoning change to permit that use. The architects then rotated the roof southward to accommodate flat-plate solar collectors.Plans for the project, then known as Citicorp Center, were publicly disclosed on July 24, 1973. The plans called for a tower with stilts under the center of each side, rising above street level. The project would also include an eight-story office annex, three stories of retail, a landscaped public plaza, and a new church building. St. Peter's old church building had been demolished by mid-1973, and First National City Bank had become known as Citibank, a subsidiary of Citicorp. St. Peter's pastor Ralph E. Peterson described the project as "a very bold venture in an urban environment". In part because of Peterson's insistence, the plans included a publicly accessible plaza with shopping available. Early plans for the church also called for it to have a cube design; the church's final design, with a diagonal skylight, was announced in April 1974. The city government approved plans for Citicorp Center the same year.
Construction
Groundbreaking ceremonies for the tower were hosted in April 1974, but work began only twelve months later. The tower's construction was supervised by Vivian Longo, who, at the building's completion in 1977, was twenty-five years old. Citicorp Center was one of the few large structures in Manhattan that were being erected in the mid-1970s. At the peak of construction, three thousand people were employed, and 565 workers were on site simultaneously. The steel framework had been completed to the eighteenth floor by the end of 1975. When the frame topped out on October 7, 1976, officials predicted Citicorp Center would be the only major structure in New York City to be completed in 1977.The cornerstone for the new St. Peter's Church was laid on November 1, 1976. Citibank acquired two buildings at 148 and 152 East 53rd Street, immediately south of the new tower, the next month. The company did not intend to develop the sites of these buildings, but they contained topless bars, which Citibank officials perceived would decrease the value of the tower. The bank's vice president for real estate management, Arthur E. Driscoll, had studied vacancy rates at fourteen nearby "prime office buildings" while Citicorp Center was being developed. The first tenants moved to the office building in April 1977. By that August, Citicorp Center was 96 percent rented, even though average rents were higher than in other buildings nearby.