The New York Times Building
The New York Times Building is a 52-story skyscraper at 620 Eighth Avenue, between 40th and 41st Streets near Times Square, on the west side of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Its chief tenant is the New York Times Company, publisher of The New York Times. The building is tall to its pinnacle, with a roof height of. Designed by Renzo Piano and Fox & Fowle, the building was developed by the New York Times Company, Forest City Ratner, and ING Real Estate. The interiors are divided into separate ownership units, with the New York Times Company operating the lower office floors and Brookfield Properties operating the upper floors., the New York Times Building is tied with the Chrysler Building as the thirteenth-tallest building in the city.
The building is cruciform in plan and has a steel-framed superstructure with a braced mechanical core. It consists of the office tower on the west side of the land lot as well as four-story podium on the east side. Its facade is largely composed of a glass curtain wall, in front of which are ceramic rods that deflect heat and glare. The steel framing and bracing is exposed at the four corner "notches" of the building. The New York Times Building is designed as a green building. The lower stories have a lobby, retail space, and the Times newsroom surrounding an enclosed garden. The other stories are used as office space.
During the 1980s and 1990s, the city and state governments of New York proposed a merchandise mart for the site as part of a wide-ranging redevelopment of Times Square. In 1999, the New York Times Company offered to develop its new headquarters on the mart's site. Piano and Fox & Fowle were selected following an architectural design competition, and the land was acquired in 2003 following disputes with existing landowners. The building was completed in 2007 for over $1 billion. The Times Company's space was operated by W. P. Carey from 2009 to 2019; meanwhile, Forest City bought out ING's interest and was then acquired by Brookfield Properties in 2018.
Site
The New York Times Building is at 620 Eighth Avenue, occupying the eastern side of the avenue between 40th Street and 41st Street, one block west of Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The land lot is rectangular and covers. It has a frontage of on Eighth Avenue to the west and on both 40th Street to the south and 41st Street to the north. The site takes up the western portion of its city block, which is bounded by Seventh Avenue to the east. The topography of the site generally slopes down from east to west.The New York Times Building is near Eleven Times Square and the Empire Theatre to the north, the City University of New York's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism to the east, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal to the west. The site is directly bounded on two sides by New York City Subway tunnels. An entrance to the New York City Subway's station, served by the, is next to the building's base.
Prior to the building's construction, the site was occupied by a mixture of buildings. The site had been proposed for redevelopment since 1981 as the southern half of an unbuilt merchandise mart. At Eighth Avenue and 40th Street was a six-story building erected in 1963, which housed the Taylor Business Institute and the SAE Institute. The address 260 West 41st Street contained Sussex House, an eight-story, 140-room dormitory, as well as a mural advertising garment store Seely Shoulder Shapes. Behind it was a 16-story office building at 265 West 40th Street. Sex shops, prostitution, and loitering were prevalent on the 41st Street side of the site. Five sex shops had been relocated from the site before the building's development, out of 55 businesses total.
Architecture
The New York Times Building was designed by Renzo Piano and Fox & Fowle and was developed by the New York Times Company, Forest City Ratner, and ING Real Estate. It was Piano's first design in New York City. Gensler designed the interior under the supervision of Margo Grant Walsh. AMEC was the main contractor for the core and shell, while Turner Construction was the contractor for the Times space in the lower section of the building. Other companies involved with the project included structural engineer Thornton Tomasetti, wind consultant RWDI, sealant supplier Dow Corning Corporation, and steel supplier ArcelorMittal. The mechanical, electrical, and plumbing system was designed by Flack + Kurtz. Officially, the New York City Economic Development Corporation owns the site.The Times Building is 52 stories tall with one basement, covering a gross floor area of. It has two major condominiums of office space: a lower section operated by the New York Times Company and an upper section operated by Brookfield Properties, which took over Forest City Ratner's stake in 2019. The Times space on the 2nd to 27th stories covers, about 58 percent of the office space, while the 29th to 52nd stories spans, covering the remaining 42 percent. The lobby and the mechanical spaces on the 28th and 51st stories are shared by the building's major operators. The top floor is high. The Times Building rises from the street to its roof, while the exterior curtain wall rises to and its mast rises to., including its mast, the New York Times Building is the twelfth-tallest building in the city, tied with the Chrysler Building.
The Times Building was designed as a green building. During the building's construction, the architects created a mockup of a portion of the building to test out its environmental features. A yearlong study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Center for the Built Environment found the Times Building had significant reductions in annual electricity use, utilized less than half the heating energy, and decreased the peak electric demand compared to similarly sized office buildings. The developers did not wish to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification, since that would have required extra expenditures, such as keeping track of construction debris.
Form and facade
The Times Building consists of two sections: the 52-story tower on the western portion of the site and a four-story podium occupying the eastern portion. The tower section covers about, with dimensions of. The corners of the tower are notched, creating a cruciform layout. The outer columns on the west and east elevations are recessed several feet into the building. The center bays of the north and south elevations are cantilevered slightly past the outermost columns to the north and south. The podium measures. The building contains a single basement level underneath the entire site, extending below grade.There are three office entrances, one each on Eighth Avenue, 40th Street, and 41st Street. The facade consists of a glass curtain wall, with ceramic rods mounted on aluminum frames in front of the curtain wall. The facade was made by Benson Global, while the rods were subcontracted to a German sewer-pipe manufacturer. In designing the building, Piano said he was influenced by the massing of the Seagram Building, also in Midtown.
Ceramic rods
There are about 186,000 ceramic rods on the building's facade. The rods, measuring in diameter, are mounted about in front of the curtain wall and are carried on aluminum "combs". The rods are made of aluminum silicate, a ceramic chosen for its durability and cost-effectiveness. The rods are intended to deflect heat and glare even if the glass panes were not tinted, and they can change color with the sun and weather. The rod spacing increases from the base to the top, adding transparency for the top of the usable space. At each story, the rods contain a slight gap at eye level. The rods extend about above the primary roof. On the north and south elevations, the screens extend slightly past the notched corners. The ceramic rods also rise to, above the main roof.On the Eighth Avenue elevation is a sign with the logo of The New York Times, designed by Michael Bierut of Pentagram. Measuring long, the logo consists of the Times name in the Fraktur font at a 10,116-point size. The logo itself is made of 959 custom aluminum sleeves measuring about in diameter; these are wrapped around the ceramic rods. Metal halide lamps are also mounted on the facade in front of the rods. They are painted yellow to resemble the taxis of New York City.
The ceramic rods have attracted climbers, in part because the rods were originally spaced closely together. Shortly after completion, in mid-2008, three men illegally and independently climbed the ceramic rods on the facade. On June 5, 2008, professional climber Alain Robert climbed the north elevation to protest global warming; a second climber scaled the west elevation later that day. The third climber, a Connecticut man, scaled the building on July 9 to protest the terrorist group Al-Qaeda. As a result of these incidents, some of the ceramic rods were removed, particularly on the north and south elevations, and glass panels were installed to deter climbing. People still climbed the building in later years, including in 2012 and in 2020.
Glass wall
The glass curtain wall is composed of double-glazed low emissivity panels that extend from the floor to the ceiling of each story. The panels generally measure wide and tall. The use of floor-to-ceiling glass was meant to signify the transparency of the media. It also maximizes natural light and the physical transparency of the facade. The window panes are generally protected by the ceramic rods. Since the rods contain a small gap at each story, the glass panels contain a small ceramic frit near these gaps. At ground level, there are glass storefronts, which allows pedestrians outside to see into the lobby.The notched corners contain exposed steel and lack screens, a design feature that represents the ideal of journalistic transparency. Instead, the corners contain one- and two-story-high rods, which serve as bracing and are designed in a pattern resembling the letter "X".