270 Park Avenue (1960–2021)
270 Park Avenue, also known as the JPMorgan Chase Tower and the Union Carbide Building, was a skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, United States. Built in 1960 for chemical company Union Carbide, it was designed by the architects Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The 52-story, skyscraper later became the global headquarters for JPMorgan Chase. It was demolished in 2021 to make way for a taller skyscraper at the same address. At the time of its destruction, the Union Carbide Building was the tallest voluntarily demolished building in the world.
The building occupied a full city block bounded by Madison Avenue, 48th Street, Park Avenue, and 47th Street. It was composed of two sections: a 52-story tower facing Park Avenue to the east and a 12-story annex facing Madison Avenue to the west, both surrounded by public plazas. About two-thirds of 270 Park Avenue was built over two levels of underground railroad tracks, which feed directly into Grand Central Terminal to the south. This not only prevented a basement from being built under most of the site but also required that the lobby be one story above ground level. Union Carbide's offices were designed around a grid of modules. The offices contained flexible furnishings and partitions, as well as luminous ceilings. The Union Carbide Building received mixed reviews during its existence, and the presence of the building's plazas helped influence the 1961 Zoning Resolution.
The site was occupied by the Hotel Marguery between 1917 and 1957. Union Carbide leased the land from New York Central Railroad and announced plans for the building in 1955. Union Carbide moved into its headquarters in 1960 and acquired the underlying land in 1976 after Penn Central went bankrupt. After three years of negotiations, Union Carbide agreed in 1978 to sell the building to Manufacturers Hanover Corporation. Manufacturers Hanover moved into 270 Park Avenue in 1980 and renovated the building. Through several mergers, Manufacturers Hanover became part of JPMorgan Chase, which announced plans to demolish the building in 2018. Despite preservationists' objections, the Union Carbide Building was demolished from 2019 to 2021.
Site
270 Park Avenue was in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, United States. It occupied an entire city block bounded by Madison Avenue to the west, 48th Street to the north, Park Avenue to the east, and 47th Street to the south. The land lot covered about with a frontage of on either avenue and on either street. Nearby buildings include the old New York Mercantile Library and 400 Madison Avenue to the west; Tower 49 to the northwest; 277 Park Avenue to the east; 245 Park Avenue to the southeast; and 383 Madison Avenue to the south.By the late 19th century, the Park Avenue railroad line ran in an open cut in the middle of Park Avenue. The line was covered with the construction of Grand Central Terminal in the early 20th century, spurring development in the surrounding area, Terminal City. Among the developments were office buildings such as the Chanin Building, Bowery Savings Bank Building, and New York Central Building, as well as hotels like the Biltmore, Commodore, Waldorf Astoria, and Summit. On the site of 270 Park Avenue, the developer Charles V. Paterno constructed the six-building Hotel Marguery complex, which opened in 1917. The stone-clad hotel was 12 stories high and designed in the Renaissance Revival style. By 1920, the area had become what The New York Times called "a great civic centre". At the time, the section of Park Avenue north of Grand Central Terminal contained many apartment houses for the rich. Largely commercial International Style skyscrapers replaced many of the residential structures on Park Avenue during the 1950s and 1960s.
Architecture
The Union Carbide Building was designed by the architects Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for the chemical company Union Carbide. Bunshaft publicly took credit, even though de Blois was the main designer. As early as the 1980s, The New York Times attributed the design mainly to de Blois. This made the Union Carbide Building the world's tallest building designed by a woman for about fifty years after its completion. After de Blois died in 2013, David W. Dunlap of the Times said that, even though SOM projects were collaborations between several designers, "there is little doubt that Ms. de Blois was long denied her due".Several engineers and contractors were also involved in the building's construction. Weiskopf and Pickworth was hired as the structural engineer; George A. Fuller was the general contractor; Syska Hennessy were the lighting, mechanical, and electrical consultants; and Bolt, Beranek, and Newman Inc. were the acoustic consultants. The Union Carbide Building, the Seagram Building, Lever House, and the Pepsi-Cola Building were part of a grouping of International Style structures developed on Park Avenue from 46th to 59th Street during the mid-20th century. The Union Carbide Building shared some features with SOM's nearly-contemporary Pepsi-Cola Building—including a massing recessed from the sidewalk, a detailed steel-and-glass facade, and a modular interior floor plan—although Union Carbide's structure was significantly taller, with a black facade.
Form and facade
Measuring tall, the Union Carbide Building was the tallest structure on Park Avenue upon its completion in 1960, as well as the tallest building erected in the city since 1933. It was one of the last skyscrapers in New York City to be designed under the principles of the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The main tower was 52 stories tall and faced Park Avenue; there was also a 12- or 13-story western annex that faced Madison Avenue. The annex measured high. The building was set back from the lot line along Park Avenue and from the lot line on each side street. The Madison Avenue annex was set back from Madison Avenue. The ground-level entrances were recessed another behind the facade, giving the appearance of a colonnade in front of the entrances. The ground floor of the annex had a platform for truck deliveries, as well as some storefronts.The facade included a curtain wall of gray-tinted glass, which covered of the facade. Each glass panel measured thick, and the facade was composed of 6,824 panels. The horizontal spandrels between each story were made of black metal, covering of the facade. The spandrels were made of stainless steel on their outward faces; asbestos honeycomb in their cores; and aluminum sheeting on their inward faces. Silver stainless steel vertical mullions, spaced apart, divided the facade into bays. Each set of spandrels was manufactured simultaneously with half of the mullions next to them. The mullions doubled as rails for the Union Carbide Building's window washing scaffold.
The stainless steel was used at the request of the building's original tenant—Union Carbide, which wanted to use as much of the material as possible—and was manufactured by General Bronze. The spandrels and mullions were covered with products made by Electro Metallurgical Co., a subsidiary of Union Carbide. Electro Metallurgical used a proprietary process called "Permyron" to blacken the spandrels. This allowed the black-matte finish to remain on the spandrels permanently; at the time, black-matte finishes could wear off if they were applied using any other method. Spandrels and windows of a different design were used for the mechanical stories on the intermediate and upper levels.
Plazas
On all sides of the block, there was a plaza between the building and the lot line, which comprised about 44 percent of the entire lot. The plaza was made of pink terrazzo tiles, which were patterned similarly to the sidewalk at the nearly contemporary 1271 Avenue of the Americas. The plaza had a flagpole, a feature present in other buildings erected in New York City around the same time. The terrazzo sidewalks tended to become slippery when it rained or snowed. The sidewalk in 270 Park Avenue's plaza was so slippery that, less than a year after the building was completed in 1960, acid etching was applied to the tiles to roughen their surfaces. This was finally replaced in the 1980s with black granite, which provided a rough-textured surface. Two fountains, one each on 47th and 48th Streets, were also built during this renovation.At the center of the site, separating the main 52-story tower and the Madison Avenue annex, a wide public plaza connected 47th and 48th Streets. The central plaza served as a one-block extension of Vanderbilt Avenue, which ran from 42nd to 47th Street. The site of the plaza had been intended as a northward extension of Vanderbilt Avenue to 49th Street; the New York Central Railroad had built this section of Vanderbilt Avenue in 1913, but it was never deeded to the government of New York City. Inside the central plaza, SOM provided space for a future pedestrian connection to Grand Central Terminal several blocks south. An entrance to the terminal, with an elevator, was ultimately instead built on the north side of 47th Street east of Madison Avenue. Work on this entrance began in 1997 as part of the Grand Central North project and was completed in 1999.
Structural features
About two-thirds of 270 Park Avenue was built atop two levels of underground railroad tracks, which feed directly into Grand Central Terminal to the south. This prevented the building from using a conventional foundation that was sunk into the ground. The building was erected above 24 tracks on the upper level and 17 tracks on the lower level. Because of the differing track layouts, each level is supported by different sets of columns. To accommodate the Union Carbide Building, new beams had to be installed on the lower track level; the beams weighed up to and measured as little as thick. In total, contractors installed 115 columns through the two levels of tracks, descending to the underlying layer of bedrock. Asbestos pads and lead panels were also installed to reduce vibrations from trains. The footings were as much as deep. Ninety-five steel stilts, which had supported 70 percent of the former Hotel Marguery, were replaced by heavier columns that could carry the newer building's weight.The basement columns were spaced every from north to south. The columns were spaced more irregularly from west to east, being placed to avoid tracks on the upper track level. The tracks below the easternmost section of the site are curved, so girders were used to transfer weight above the tracks. The basement only extended underneath the 12-story-tall Madison Avenue annex. As a result, the main tower's cooling equipment had to be installed on the roof. The air-conditioning system on the roof was composed of two air conditioning chillers, which served the cooling system above the 30th story. Three chillers in the basement served the 30th story and below.