MetLife getting $50M facelift.The MetLife Building The MetLife Building, originally called the Pan Am Building, is a skyscraper located at 200 Park Avenue in New York City. History The Pan Am Building was the largest commercial office building in the world when it opened on March 7, 1963. is in the midst Adv. 1. in the midst - the middle or central part or point; "in the midst of the forest"; "could he walk out in the midst of his piece?" midmost of a $50 million renovation project aimed at "restoring the glamour of the modem masterpiece" that towers over Grand Central Terminal. The project includes plans to restore the two lobbies in the building, modernize its elevators and clean the building's facade for the first time in its almost 40-year history. Despite being at least a year into the restoration project, and the establishment of a website, www.200parkavenue.com, to inform tenants of its progress, a spokesperson from MetLife said the company did not wish to comment. "We're not ready to talk about the project yet," a company spokeswoman said. The history of the MetLife Building dates back to 1954, when it was included in a plan to reconstruct Grand Central Terminal. It was developed by Erwin Wolfson in the early 1960s with architects Emery Roth Emery Roth (1871 – August 20, 1948) was a Hungarian-American architect who built many of the definitive New York City hotels and apartment buildings of the 1920s and 30s, incorporating Beaux-Arts and Art Deco details. and Sons, Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi Pietro Belluschi (August 18, 1899 - February 14, 1994) was a Portland, Oregon architect, a leader of the Modern Movement in architecture, and responsible for the design of over one thousand buildings.[1] The native of Italy won the 1972 AIA Gold Medal for his work. . When it opened in 1963, it was known as the Pan Am Building. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company bought it in 1981 and switched its name to "the MetLife Building 200 Park Avenue" in 1993. The 58-story building contains 2.7 million SF of office space, 100,000 SF of retail space, and a 315-stall parking garage. The base floor has 100,000 SF and the tower floors have 40,000 SF. There are 59 high-speed elevators in 10 elevator banks and 4 escalators between the building's concourse and Grand Central Terminal. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. a Costar Group CoStar Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSGP) is a leading provider of information services to commercial real estate professionals in the United States and the United Kingdom. CoStar's suite of services offers customers access via the Internet to the most comprehensive database of database, the building is almost completely leased, with only two office spaces available -- a 5,000-SF space on the 20th floor and a 9,400-SF space on the 16th floor. A 900-SF retail space is available on the ground floor. Some of the building's largest tenants include the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. with 325,000 SF, Dreyfus Corp with 279,000 SF, Insignia/ESG with 119,000 SF, and UBS UBS Union Bank of Switzerland UBS United Bible Societies UBS United Blood Services UBS United Buying Service UBS Used Bookstore UBS University Business Services UBS Universal Building Society (UK) UBS Ulaanbaatar Broadcasting System Paine Webber Paine Webber and Company was an American stock brokerage firm that was acquired by the Swiss bank UBS AG in 2000. The company was founded in 1880 in Boston, Massachusetts, by William Alfred Paine and Wallace G. Webber. with 118,000 SF. Shorenstein Realty Services, the leasing agent for the building, could not be reached for comment. According to the 200 Park Avenue website, aspects of the renovation program are refurbishing the Grand Central Lobby, restoring the 45th Street lobby to its original Gropius design. Elevator lobbies and elevator cabs are being renovated as part of a more extensive elevator modernization program. Work on elevator mechanicals began in July 1999 and was completed in May 2001. The next phase of work, the elevator cabs, began in July 2001 and will be completed by November 2001. For the first since the building opened, the facade is being cleaned to "recapture its original beauty." "The cleaning of the quartz crystal facade will return the building's exterior to its original white," according to the website. The facade-cleaning project started in the fourth quarter of 2000 and is expected to take three years. |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion