Graybar Building
The Graybar Building, also known as 420 Lexington Avenue, is a 30-story office building in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Designed by Sloan & Robertson in the Art Deco style, the Graybar Building is at 420–430 Lexington Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets, adjacent to Grand Central Terminal.
The building was erected within "Terminal City", a collection of buildings above Grand Central's underground tracks. As such, it occupies the real-estate air rights above these tracks. The building's superstructure is constructed entirely above the tracks of the terminal. The ground floor includes the "Graybar Passage", a publicly accessible passageway that leads from Lexington Avenue to Grand Central Terminal. On upper stories, the Graybar Building contains office space with setbacks and "light courts" to conform with the 1916 Zoning Resolution.
When the building's construction started in 1925, it was known as the Eastern Terminal Office Building. The structure was renamed after Graybar, one of its original lessees, the next year. The Graybar Building opened in April 1927 and was fully leased within less than a year. Ownership of the building passed several times before the current owners, SL Green Realty, bought it in 1998. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Graybar Building as an official landmark in 2016.
Site
The Graybar Building is bounded by Lexington Avenue to the east and the Park Avenue Viaduct to the west, running between 44th Street in the north to 43rd Street in the south. The western side of the building underneath the Park Avenue Viaduct faces Depew Place, which was laid out when the original Grand Central Depot was built in the late 19th century, and destroyed with the construction of the current terminal. The alley still survives as a driveway for the nearby post office. The building is assigned its own ZIP Code, 10170; it was one of 41 buildings in Manhattan that had their own ZIP Codes as of 2019.Previous buildings
In 1871, the New York Central Railroad built the Grand Central Depot, a ground-level depot at the intersection of Park Avenue and 42nd Street, which would be succeeded in 1900 by Grand Central Station, also located at ground level. The Graybar Building's site, located just east of the depot and station, was partly occupied by the original Grand Central Palace, which was built and later used as a hotel. The site also contained a small ground-floor post office. On January 8, 1902, a crash between two steam trains in the Park Avenue Tunnel killed 15 people, leading New York Central president William H. Newman to announce the construction of a new underground terminal station.The land under the original Grand Central Palace was originally owned by the estate of the entrepreneur Robert Goelet, who died in 1899. In 1902, several months after the fatal Park Avenue Tunnel crash, the trustees of the Goelet estate offered the land to New York Central for use as a post office. The site was acquired by New York Central in 1904, and a temporary 14-track terminal was built under the Palace while the old Grand Central Station was being demolished in sections. The original Palace was demolished by 1913 to make way for the construction of Grand Central Terminal. The terminal's post office, Commodore Hotel New York, and the Graybar Building would later take up the Palace's site.
The completion of Grand Central Terminal resulted in the rapid development of the areas around Grand Central, and a corresponding increase in real-estate prices. By 1920, the area had become what The New York Times called "a great civic centre". The site of the building had been cleared before 1919 to make way for the post office, but the future site of the Graybar Building had not yet been developed.
Architecture
The Graybar Building was designed by Sloan & Robertson in the Art Deco style, with Clyde R. Place as consulting engineer. It is officially located at 420 Lexington Avenue, though it also occupies the lots at 420–430 Lexington Avenue. The Graybar Building is tall, with 30 stories. It has a floor area of approximately.The Graybar Building was one of several buildings in Grand Central Terminal's immediate vicinity that were erected after the terminal was completed in 1913. Grand Central Terminal's tracks and platforms were located underground, unlike Grand Central Depot and Grand Central Station, which it replaced. The terminal's construction was partly funded by the sale of above-ground air rights for real-estate development, which were collectively called Terminal City. In the 1990s, as part of the creation of a special zoning area near Grand Central, planners considered the site of the Graybar Building for the possible development of another building, in order to make use of excess air rights over the Grand Central site. These planners cited "outdated systems; not first-class office space; prime location; large lot". Another proposal to make use of the Graybar Building site's air rights was presented in 2012 as part of a rezoning of East Midtown. The 2012 proposal led to the designation of the Graybar Building as a city landmark in 2016, in order to prevent it from being torn down for air rights development.
Form
Unlike previous buildings in Terminal City, the Graybar Building was built with setbacks and "light courts" to conform with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The western part of the building is shaped like a capital "H", while the eastern part consists of two arms branching eastward from the eastern part of the "H", giving it the shape of a "C". The "H" and "C" form three light courts: a set of north- and south-facing courts on the western part of the building, within the "H", and a east-facing court on the eastern part of the building, within the "C". The presence of the three light courts resulted in much of the floor area being close to a window, and the building incorporated over 4,300 window openings.The 1916 Zoning Resolution resulted in a structure that incorporated setbacks along the Lexington Avenue elevation. These setbacks were located on the 15th, 17th, 19th, and 23rd floors. The ordinance was intended to allow light to reach the streets and the lower floors of skyscrapers. The side elevations do not contain any setbacks. The northern facade faces a shorter section of the Graybar Building; the southern facade faces Grand Central Market and the Grand Hyatt New York; and the western facade faces Depew Place. the Park Avenue Viaduct, and Grand Central's main building.
Facade
Except at the base, the Graybar Building's facade was mostly undecorated. The facade was made of brick and Indiana Limestone, and the base was made of limestone. Some of the spandrels within each window contain black brick; these give the appearance of "subtle vertical bands" that contrast with the facade's more prominent portions to "accentuate the structure's height". Toward the top of the facade adjoining Lexington Avenue are four projecting gargoyle-shaped water spouts.Portals
The Graybar Building contains three entrance portals from Lexington Avenue on the east. The southernmost portal leads from 43rd Street to the Graybar Passage, which connects west to Grand Central Terminal. This portal contains three sets of doors with separate marquees for each. The center set of doors is located under a marquee supported by three diagonal metal struts, while the marquees over the side doors are supported by two struts. Stylized metal figures of rats are depicted on each of the struts and are shown running upward, in the direction of "inverted, funnel-shaped guards" along the struts. The architect John Sloan stated in a 1933 New Yorker article that these rats were intended to represent the city's role as a "great transportation centre and a great seaport", with its "maritime" theming. Building manager Herbert Metz told the Times in 1955 that the rat sculptures "symbolize a ship", which by extension, evokes imagery of a port. These rats, removed in the 1990s, were replaced during the building's renovation at the end of the 20th century.On the center portal is a relief, which displays the capital letters "" and depicts two "winged guardian creatures". There are also pairs of figures outside each portal, each measuring tall. The south portal's figures depict air and water; the north portal's figures represent earth and fire; and the center portal's figures symbolize electricity and transportation. Rays of light were depicted radiating from each figure's head. Other ornamentation at the building's base included lights made of metal-and-glass, located just outside the doors, as well as vertical grilles made of stone. Sloan stated that these features were meant to evoke an "eastern" ambiance, which fit the name of the building's original owner, Eastern Offices. Above the central portal is a flagpole with multicolored lattices at its base.
The northern portal at 44th Street was likely intended to be a third entrance, but was never used as such. It was planned in conjunction with a north–south hall, which would have led from Grand Central to an unbuilt expansion of the post office adjoining the north side of the Graybar Building.
Interior
Ground level
The southernmost portal leads to the Graybar Passage, one of three west–east passageways connecting Grand Central to Lexington Avenue. It was built on the first floor of the Graybar Building in 1926. The passageway has a ceiling of and is largely wide, widening to on its western end. To prevent congestion, there are no storefronts along the passageway. There are three gates leading off the northern side of the passage, leading to six of the tracks. Its walls and seven large transverse arches are of coursed ashlar travertine, and the floor is terrazzo. The ceiling is composed of seven groin vaults, each of which has an ornamental bronze chandelier. The first two vaults, as viewed from leaving Grand Central, are painted with cumulus clouds, while the third contains a 1927 mural by Edward Trumbull depicting American transportation.The central portal of the building connects to an elevator lobby used by tenants. There is another hallway leading from the elevator lobby to the Graybar Passage. The northern section of the ground story contained a bank. The ground story also housed an extension of the Grand Central post office.