This article is about the building at 200 Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. For the buildings near Madison Square Park, see Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower and Metropolitan Life North Building. For the building at 200 Park Avenue South, see Everett Building (Manhattan).
Emery Roth & Sons, Pietro Belluschi, and Walter Gropius[1]
Engineer
Jaros, Baum & Bolles (MEP)
Structural engineer
James Ruderman
References
[2][3]
The MetLife Building (also 200 Park Avenue and formerly the Pan Am Building) is a skyscraper at Park Avenue and 45th Street, north of Grand Central Terminal, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed in the International style by Richard Roth, Walter Gropius, and Pietro Belluschi and completed in 1962, the MetLife Building is 808 feet (246 m) tall with 59 stories. It was advertised as the world's largest commercial office space by square footage at its opening, with 2.4 million square feet (220,000 m2) of usable office space. As of November 2022[update], the MetLife Building remains one of the 100 tallest buildings in the United States.
The MetLife Building contains an elongated octagonal massing with the longer axis perpendicular to Park Avenue. The building sits atop two levels of railroad tracks leading into Grand Central Terminal. The facade is one of the first precast concrete exterior walls in a building in New York City. In the lobby is a pedestrian passage to Grand Central's Main Concourse, a lobby with artwork, and a parking garage at the building's base. The roof also contained a heliport that operated briefly during the 1960s and 1970s. The MetLife Building's design has been widely criticized since it was proposed, largely due to its location next to Grand Central Terminal.
Proposals for a skyscraper to replace Grand Central Terminal were announced in 1954 to raise money for the New York Central Railroad and New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, the financially struggling railroads that operated the terminal. Subsequently, plans were announced for what later became the MetLife Building, to be built behind the terminal rather than in place of it. Work on the project, initially known as Grand Central City, started in 1959 and the building was formally opened on March 7, 1963. At its opening, the building was named for Pan American World Airways, for which it served as headquarters. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife) bought the Pan Am Building in 1981 and used it as their headquarters before selling the building in 2005. The MetLife Building has been renovated several times, including in the mid-1980s, early 2000s, and late 2010s.
^White, Norval; Willensky, Elliot; Leadon, Fran (2010). AIA Guide to New York City (5th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. p. 316. ISBN 978-0-19538-386-7.
^"MetLife Building". SkyscraperPage.
^"MetLife Building". Emporis. Archived from the original on March 6, 2016.
The MetLifeBuilding (also 200 Park Avenue and formerly the Pan Am Building) is a skyscraper at Park Avenue and 45th Street, north of Grand Central Terminal...
leased to Metlife and Tishman (which owns the buildings) and operated by Marriott International as a Westin hotel. The predecessor company to MetLife began...
Los Angeles Rams and Los Angeles Chargers. Additionally, MetLife Stadium is the fifth building in the New York metropolitan area to be home to multiple...
the headquarters of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (now publicly known as MetLife). The South Building's tower was designed by the architectural...
the building's core to provide additional office space. The North Building had been considered obsolete for the uses of Metropolitan Life (now MetLife),...
Millbank Tower for £115 million. In 2005, the company acquired the MetLifeBuilding for $1.72 billion. In 2006, the company acquired Stuyvesant Town in...
2020. "Conde Nast Building". SkyscraperPage.com. Archived from the original on June 12, 2020. Retrieved June 12, 2020. "MetLifeBuilding". The Skyscraper...
Headquarters to Former Conde Nast Building". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. April 3, 2019. Retrieved August 31, 2019. "MetLifeBuilding". Emporis.com. Archived from...
Avenue, Citigroup at 399 Park Avenue, Colgate-Palmolive, and MetLife at the MetLifeBuilding. From 47th to 97th Streets, the tracks for Metro-North Railroad's...
Grand Central prior to the completion of what is now the MetLifeBuilding. The Helmsley Building carries vehicular traffic through its base: traffic exits...
of largest office buildings in the world by floor area. List of tallest hotels in the world List of tallest residential buildings in the world "The world's...
added to the vocabulary of the skyscraper". The building inspired the Pan Am Building (now MetLifeBuilding) in New York, the National Mutual West Plaza...
other skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building, MetLifeBuilding, and One Vanderbilt. It has direct in-building access to Grand Central Terminal to the...
Park Avenue around the terminal building and the MetLifeBuilding and through the Helmsley Building—three buildings that lie across the line of the avenue...
(2007). "The MetLifeBuilding". The Midtown Book. Retrieved April 7, 2008. When it was completed, the 2,400,000 sq ft (220,000 m2) building became "the...
cross-section of the building. The Portland House is substantially similar in design to the MetLifeBuilding in New York City. The two buildings were under construction...
Guard radio channel, the transmitter was eventually relocated atop the MetLifeBuilding. The weather radar station was used as Doppler 4000 during WNBC-TV's...
within New Jersey's Gateway Region. Founded in New York City at the MetLifeBuilding in September 1959, it was known as Matsushita Electric Corporation...
occupied by Credit Suisse since MetLife moved their headquarters to the Pan Am Building. The marble clock tower of the building, modeled on St Mark's Campanile...
Building, originally the Burroughs Building) (1963) 845 Third Avenue (1963) 1290 Avenue of the Americas, the Neuberger Berman building (1963) MetLife...
critical transportation hub. The MetLifeBuilding, formerly the Pan Am Building, was the largest commercial office building in the world when it opened on...
the 20th Century Studios Plaza in Century City, Los Angeles, the MetLifeBuilding in New York City, and nearly 550 total properties throughout Coastal...
was reinstalled at the Walter Gropius-designed 200 Park Avenue (Metlife) Building, New York, following an almost two decade absence. “While we appreciate...
Seagram Building, General Motors Building, 345 Park Avenue, 964 Third Avenue) 10165–10169 (respectively One Grand Central Place, MetLifeBuilding, 245 Park...
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