1271 Avenue of the Americas
1271 Avenue of the Americas is a 48-story skyscraper on Sixth Avenue, between 50th and 51st streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, United States. Designed by architect Wallace Harrison of Harrison, Abramovitz, and Harris, the building was developed between 1956 and 1960 as part of Rockefeller Center.
The building's eight-story base partially wraps around its 48-story main tower. Both sections are surrounded by a plaza, which has white-and-gray pavement in a serpentine pattern, as well as water fountains. The facade consists of glass panels between limestone columns. The lobby contains serpentine floors, white-marble and stainless-steel walls, and reddish-burgundy glass ceilings, in addition to artwork by Josef Albers, Fritz Glarner, and Francis Brennan. The ground floor also includes storefronts and originally housed La Fonda del Sol, a Latin American–themed restaurant. Each of the upper floors covers, with the offices arranged around the core. The 48th floor originally contained the Hemisphere Club, which operated as a members-only restaurant during the day and was open to the public during evenings.
After the media firm Time Inc. expressed its intention to move from 1 Rockefeller Plaza in the 1950s, Rockefeller Center's owners proposed a skyscraper at 1271 Avenue of the Americas to accommodate the move. Construction started in May 1957; the building was topped out during November 1958, and occupants began moving into their offices in late 1959. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the lobby as a city landmark in 2002. Time Inc. vacated 1271 Avenue of the Americas in 2015, and the building was subsequently renovated between 2015 and 2019.
Site
1271 Avenue of the Americas is on the western side of Sixth Avenue, between 50th and 51st streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The land lot is rectangular and covers. The site has a frontage of on 50th and 51st streets and a frontage of on Sixth Avenue. Nearby buildings include The Michelangelo to the west, Axa Equitable Center to the northwest, 75 Rockefeller Plaza to the northeast, Radio City Music Hall to the east, 30 Rockefeller Plaza to the southeast, and 1251 Avenue of the Americas to the south.Prior to the development of 1271 Avenue of the Americas, much of the site had previously served as a New York Railways Company trolley barn, which in turn was replaced by a parking lot. There was also a four-story building facing Sixth Avenue and a collection of single-story shops on 50th Street. Rockefeller Center Inc. bought the plots on 50th and 51st streets in the first week of August 1953, followed by those on Sixth Avenue the next week. One building on the site reportedly cost $2 million after its owner had held out. Rockefeller Center's managers originally wanted to build an NBC studio or a Ford vehicle showroom on the site.
Architecture
The building was designed by Harrison & Abramovitz, a firm led by Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz. It was constructed by John Lowry and the George A. Fuller Company. Syska Hennessy was hired as the mechanical engineering firm, and Edwards & Hjorth was the structural engineering firm.1271 Avenue of the Americas was planned as a 48-story tower, rising and measuring around. The tower is flanked by shorter segments with setbacks at the third and eighth stories. The north and west edges of the tower are flanked by a seven-story section of the base. An auditorium designed by Gio Ponti, with colored triangles, was installed on the eighth-floor setback. The neighboring Roxy Theatre was acquired as part of the building's development, allowing the building's floor area to be increased under the limits set by the 1916 Zoning Resolution. A provision under the 1916 Zoning Resolution had allowed structures to rise without setbacks above a given level if all subsequent stories covered no more than 25 percent of the land lot.
Facade
1271 Avenue of the Americas' facade is made mostly of glass, which at the time of the building's construction cost the same as a wall made mostly of limestone. The use of a glass facade permitted a higher degree of flexibility on each story compared to a limestone wall of the same size. Before the current facade design was selected, several alternatives were considered. Time Inc. wanted a flush exterior wall, but this was rejected because exterior columns would protrude into the floor area. Another alternative called for an accordion-shaped wall: The windows would have sloped inward, and the spandrel panels between the windows on each story would have sloped outward. The accordion wall, which would have been framed by flat columns, was infeasible because it reduced floor area, required modifications to the drapes and air-conditioning, and was not aesthetically desirable to the architects.At ground level, there is a canopy over the 51st Street entrance. The rest of the tower has a glass curtain wall. On all stories, the facade includes structural columns with limestone cladding. The limestone columns frame the glass curtain wall and also serve as an architectural allusion to the other buildings at Rockefeller Center. In addition, more than of stainless-steel flashing was placed on the facade. The stainless-steel flashing was meant to last for as long as the building existed; on the setbacks at the base, the flashing was buried inside corners along the roof deck.
The limestone columns are spaced every. There are five vertical bays of windows between each set of limestone columns. Each bay has two narrow aluminum mullions flanking the center pane and two larger air-conditioning risers along the outer panes. Originally, each glass pane measured wide and tall. The spandrels between the windows on different stories consist of a plate, behind which is a screen made of aluminum mesh. The mechanical pipes and ducts, as well as the floor slabs, are hidden behind the spandrels. The windows were planned as square panes, but the window sills were lowered during the design process so they were only above each floor slab. Each spandrel was then covered by a regular glass pane. In the late 2010s, new low-emissivity glazed panels with thermal breaks were installed.
Plaza
The eastern part of the site was planned with a plaza. The plaza measures long and wide and is flanked by the eight-story base. The southern part of the site also has a promenade that is about wide. The plaza has pavers in a serpentine pattern, similar to those found on the sidewalks of Rio de Janeiro's Copacabana Beach. According to the architectural writer Robert A. M. Stern, the pavement was "an illustration of the 'good neighbor' ideals of the Avenue of the Americas Association". Harrison believed the pavers would bring variety to the building's design. The original pavers, designed by Port Morris Tile & Marble Corporation, were removed in 2001 because they were too slippery; the same company reproduced the pattern in rougher terrazzo. In the late 2010s, the sidewalk pattern was extended from the lot line to the curb line.A seating parapet in the plaza surrounded a reflecting pool with four jets, measuring about. Another six pools, measuring each, were placed within the plaza. Each pool had a mat made of lead for waterproofing, which in turn was covered by cement and terrazzo. Trees and shrubs were originally also planted on the 50th Street side, while three flagpoles were placed on the section of the plaza facing Sixth Avenue. After the late 2010s renovation, the original decorations were replaced. The new decorations included five pools with fountain jets on Sixth Avenue, in addition to planting beds and seating areas. Also within the plaza is an entrance to the New York City Subway's 47th–50th Streets–Rockefeller Center station, serving the.
In 1972, the Association for a Better New York hired William Crovello to create a sculpture at the building called Cubed Curve, measuring wide and wide. The sculpture was inspired by a fluid brush stroke. According to The New York Times, the sculpture marked Time Inc.'s "presence at the center of the media universe". It was moved in 2018 to Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania, while the building was being renovated.
Interior
1271 Avenue of the Americas was built with about of rentable space. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the building has a gross floor area of. The interior design was contracted to a variety of architects, including Alexander Girard, Gio Ponti, Charles Eames, William Tabler, and George Nelson & Company. Thirty elevators, within the core, serve the building.The building's interior is divided into eight air-conditioning zones. Floors 8, 9, and 16 through 34 were originally occupied by Time Inc. and had their own thermostats, accommodating the nonstandard working hours of Time Inc. employees. In conjunction with the building's construction, Rockefeller Center's central air-conditioning system was upgraded in 1957 to provide 6,000 tons of cooling capacity to the building every hour. The cooling systems had to operate all year because Time Inc.'s equipment generated large amounts of heat. The original cooling system was powered by steam, but electric and natural gas cooling systems had been added by 2000. The mechanical spaces are concealed by narrow windows on the facade.
There are three basement stories. The first basement has a passageway leading to Rockefeller Center's underground concourse and the 47th–50th Streets–Rockefeller Center station. The two other basements are not accessible to the public and are used for storage, maintenance, and service functions.
Ground floor
Lobby
1271 Avenue of the Americas' lobby is surrounded by commercial spaces on all sides; with the superstructure incorporated in the core and exterior, Harrison could design the lobby with more flexibility. Originally, the lobby was planned to include a covered shopping and exhibit hall on 50th Street and a north–south passage between 50th and 51st streets. These details were changed significantly in the final plan. The lobby has two entrances to the south on 50th Street, one on either side of the core, as well as an entrance to the north on 51st Street, along the east side of the core. The core itself has two west–east passages connected by elevator banks. The more northerly of the east–west passages has stairs and escalators to the second story and the basement. Until the 1990s, the southern passage had been a narrow hallway because there were two storefronts next to it. A breezeway led east to Sixth Avenue, but this had been closed by 2002. Time Inc.'s reception area was within the lobby behind the fountain.The lobby has the same style of pavement as the plaza outside the building. The original tiles were installed by the American Mosaic & Tile Company. They were made of white cementitious terrazzo with stainless steel borders, aligned west–east. The southern section of the lobby was expanded in the 1990s, over the site of the storefronts there, but the extended floor did not match the original pavement. The entire lobby was resurfaced in the late 2010s with marble-based terrazzo tiles that matched the original floor design. Because the marble tiles had contained natural veins of black rock, contractors manually removed the veins before installing the tiles.
The walls are largely made of plate-glass windows and white marble panels. Around the core, the walls are made of stainless steel rectangular panels. The steel panels are designed to complement the floor colors and are arranged in a checkerboard pattern. The ceiling throughout the lobby is high and was originally made of dark maroon glass tiles, finished in a matte covering. There were white lighting coves in some tiles. Manufactured by American-Saint Gobain Corporation, the glass tiles were suspended from washers at each corner and were designed to be removed for maintenance. In the late 2010s, the original glass ceiling was replaced with reddish-burgundy tiles of similar design, which matched the original color.
The lobby walls contain large murals by Josef Albers and Fritz Glarner, both of whom Harrison had known for many years. Glarner's mural, entitled Relational Painting No. 88, measures and is mounted east of the elevators. It includes overlapping red, yellow, blue, gray, and black geometric shapes on a white background. Albers's mural, entitled Portals, measures and is mounted west of the elevators. Portals includes alternating bands of white and brown glass, which surround a set of bronze and nickel plates in a way that gives the impression of depth. Relational Painting No. 88 was installed in April 1960, while Portals was installed twelve months later. Another artwork by Fortune art director Francis Brennan was installed north of the elevators in January 1965. Brennan's work consists of a relief measuring, which contains all the letters of the alphabet in the Caslon 471 typeface.