Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower
The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower is a skyscraper occupying a full block in the Flatiron District of Manhattan in New York City. The building is composed of two sections: a tower at the northwest corner of the block, at Madison Avenue and 24th Street, and a shorter east wing occupying the remainder of the block bounded by Madison Avenue, Park Avenue South, 23rd Street, and 24th Street. The South Building, along with the North Building directly across 24th Street, comprises the Metropolitan Home Office Complex, which originally served as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.
The South Building's tower was designed by the architectural firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons and erected between 1905 and 1909. Inspired by St Mark's Campanile, the tower features four clock faces, four bells, and lighted beacons at its top, and was the tallest building in the world until 1913. The tower originally included Metropolitan Life's offices, and since 2015, it has contained a 273-room luxury hotel known as the New York Edition Hotel. The tower was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, made a National Historic Landmark in 1978, and designated as a city landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1989.
The east wing was designed by Lloyd Morgan and Eugene Meroni and constructed in two stages between 1953 and 1960. The east wing is also referred to as One Madison Avenue. It replaced another building on the site, which was built in phases from 1893 to 1905, and which was also designed by LeBrun's firm. When the current east wing was built, the 700-foot tower was extensively renovated as well. In 2020, work started on an addition to the east wing, which was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and completed in 2024.
Architecture
The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, or the South Building, is composed of the east wing and the tower. It occupies an entire block between Madison Avenue and Madison Square Park to the west, 24th Street to the north, Park Avenue South to the east, and 23rd Street to the south. The block measures from north to south and from east to west.The first section of the original 11-story, full-block east wing was completed in 1893 and was designed by Napoleon LeBrun & Sons. The tower was a later addition to the original building, constructed between 1905 and 1909. The original home office building was replaced with the current building, designed by Lloyd Morgan and Eugene Meroni, between 1953 and 1957. The complex is one of the few remaining major insurance companies' "home offices" in New York City.
Tower
The building's tower is located at the northwest corner of the block, at Madison Avenue and 24th Street, with the address 5 Madison Avenue. The tower rises to its pinnacle. It has a footprint measuring north-south along Madison Avenue and west-east on 24th Street. This gives the tower a height-to-width ratio of 8.25:1. The Metropolitan Life Tower is modeled after St Mark's Campanile in Venice, Italy. The tower is older than its model, since St Mark's Campanile had collapsed in 1902 and was replaced in 1912; it is also more than twice as large as St Mark's Campanile.Like the facades of many early skyscrapers, the tower's exterior was divided into three horizontal sections similar to the components of a column—namely a base, shaft, and capital—in both its original and renovated forms. These three sections include usable space inside and are collectively tall. The tower is topped by a pyramidal roof, which is slightly set back and contains a cupola and lantern. The tower was originally sheathed in Tuckahoe marble, provided by the main contractor, the Hedden Construction Company. During the 1964 renovation, plain limestone was used to cover the tower and the east wing, replacing LeBrun's old Renaissance Revival details with a streamlined, modern look. The tower was designed with oversized exterior details to make it seem smaller than it actually was.
Some of steel were used in the tower's structural frame. The footings of the tower are deep, supported by twelve columns on the edges and eight columns inside the plot, and anchored to a layer of bedrock between deep. The main columns at the tower's corners measure. They bear structural loads of up to when wind pressure was taken into account. The structural steel frame of the tower, and of its former east wing, is encased in reinforced concrete. The marble and brickwork used in the building is anchored to the structural steel frame, while the floors are made of inverted concrete arches. As a consequence of all the marble used in the Met Life Tower, it weighed about when first built, or about twice as much as the Singer Tower.
Facade
The base comprises the first and second stories. The lowest portion of the facade along Madison Avenue and 24th Street contains a water table made of granite, which wraps around to the east wing. At the first floor, there are two rectangular show windows and a small doorway on Madison Avenue, and two show windows flanking a larger entrance on 24th Street. On the second floor, the Madison Avenue and 24th Street sides each contain three short tripartite windows.When the tower was built, the base comprised the first through fifth stories. A large cornice was located above the fourth story, and smaller cornices above the second and fifth stories. The original ornamentation on the rest of the tower was relatively restrained, except around the clock faces. The 1960s renovation replaced the marble between the first and fifth stories, and between the 20th and 36th stories, with limestone.
The "shaft" of the tower spans the third through 28th floors. The southern facade of the tower contains windows only above the 11th story, and the eastern facade contains windows above the 12th story, because the former east wing was located below these floors. On each floor, the "shaft" contains three sets of three windows per side. The exception is at the 25th through 27th floors, where the building's clock faces are located. On these floors, there are two paired windows on the outer edges of the tower. The 29th and 30th floors serve stylistically as "transitional stories", with ten windows per side on each floor; the 29th floor contains a single arrangement of 10 windows, while the 30th-floor windows have been divided into five pairs. This is largely the same arrangement as the original, except that in LeBrun's design, the "shaft" comprised the sixth through 30th floors.
The 31st through 38th floors comprise the tower's "capital". The 31st through 33rd floors are arranged as a loggia with arcades containing five arches on each side. The facade of the tower is recessed behind the arcade, and a balustrade wraps around the edges of the arcade, creating a patio. When built, the arcade was composed of stone columns, but these were replaced with masonry columns in the 1960s renovation. On the 34th floor, there are five windows per side, corresponding to the arches below. The setback tower rises from the 35th through 38th stories as a freestanding plinth. On these floors, the window arrangement indicates that the northern and southern facades are wider than the western and eastern facades, with six windows to the north and south, and four to the west and east.
Clock
A clock face is centered on all four sides of the tower from the 25th through 27th floors. Each clock face is in diameter, while the numerals on the clock faces are four feet tall. The numerals and minute markers on the clock faces are edged with copper, while the minute and hour hands are made of iron with a copper sheathing. The minute hands weigh and are long, while the hour hands weigh and are long. The mechanism was controlled by electricity, a novelty upon the tower's completion. The master clock, which controlled the large clock faces as well as a hundred other clocks in the same complex, was located on the first floor of the former home office, and ran with a maximum error of five seconds per month.The clock faces were the largest in the world upon their completion. The clock faces are made of reinforced concrete. Blue glazed tiles run along the circumference of each face; in addition, there is a tiled corona at the center of each face. The clock faces contain ornamentation by Pierre LeBrun, of Napoleon LeBrun and Sons. These include dolphins and shells on the spandrels at each face's corner, as well as marble wreaths with fruit-and-flower motifs on the faces themselves.
Roof
The pyramidal roof comprises the 39th and higher floors, and is set off by a cornice at the 39th-story level. Dormer windows protrude from the roof on the 39th through 43rd floors; these dormers contain semi-circular hoods, except for the 39th-floor dormers, which do not contain any hoods. The higher floors of the roof have fewer windows on each side. The 44th floor is illuminated by two small windows on each side, located between ribs that rise to support a square viewing platform on the 45th floor. The 46th and 47th floors comprise a two-story-tall peristyle, supported by eight columns. The 48th floor contains a gold-colored aluminum cupola with eight windows. The topmost level is the 49th floor, which consists only of a platform with a gold-colored aluminium railing. The 41st through 45th floors are accessible only by a staircase. The viewing platform was originally publicly usable, receiving 120,000 visitors from around the world between 1909 and 1914.The tower contains four bells within the peristyle. These include a B♭ bell on the west, a E♭ bell on the east, a F♮ bell on the north, and a G♮ bell on the south. The bells were the highest in the world at the time of their construction. These are respectively struck by hammers weighing 94, 71, 61, and 54 pounds. A fifth hammer, weighing, strikes the 7,000-pound bell each hour. The smaller hammers strike the bells every 15 minutes. On weekdays between 9a.m. and 10p.m., and on weekends between 10a.m. and 10p.m., the bells played "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" every 15 minutes. The bells were not given nicknames: rather, Metropolitan Life referred to each bell by its cardinal direction.
An eight-sided, beacon is located at the top of the cupola. As designed, the white lantern is lit after 10:00 p.m., and momentarily turns off every 15 minutes when red and white lights flash the time. The beacon was one of a few broadly visible features of the New York City nighttime skyline until the mid-20th century.