Chapter 15 The 2010s
The decade of the 20-teens saw a limited number of noticeable changes to Forty-second Street. Much of the available space had been built upon, although small pockets of low-rise building persisted. Activity in this decade did include some new buildings erected on both east and west portions of the street, some noteworthy innovations about halfway between, and some significant alterations to existing buildings. An almost invisible but important change occurred at the New York Public Library, following the collapse of a costly and unpopular plan to remodel its principal spaces.
Other significant changes were less three-dimensional. At the start of the decade, in early 2010, a new rate determined the interest on loans paid by most commercial real estate firms. News reports claimed that the major banks that had manipulated the rates were the banks that lent to Forty-second Street’s investors. Further changes occurred at the end of the decade, due to the Covid-19 pandemic that promoted remote work and caused the decline of retailers and restaurants patronized by office staff. The pandemic caused a sharp reduction in hotel occupancy. The virulent years saw the closing of theaters, and hard times for businesses that depended upon tourism or on the presence of workers at their offices. Office condominiums, which had been flourishing, saw few sales at the end of the decade.
(https://www.bisnow.com/national/news/investment/deadline-to-phase-out-libor-in-new-deals-is-approaching-debt-experts-expect-a-multi-rate-market-for-some-time-after-110534? utm_source=outbound_pub_60&utm_campaign=outbound_issue_52208&utm_content=outbound_newsletter1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=outbound_pub_60&utm_)campaign=outbound_issue_52208&utm_content=outbound_newsletter1&utm_medium=email accessed 10 13 2021; https://therealdeal.com/2020/07/28/the-outlook-industry-experts-break-down-manhattans-office-condo-market/ accessed 1 13 2022)
As for the general value of property in midtown, Class A buildings such as Grace and One Bryant Park could command rents 28% higher than Class B buildings which were usually older; the spread widened even more in 2021 and later. As the City raised more revenue from Class A buildings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg propelled a rezoning of East Midtown that would replace older Class B examples in that area with Class A newcomers. Evidently, former worries about excessive density there no longer held sway. Arguments against it were dismissed by city officials who had to please businessmen who paid a substantial part of the city’s tax base, and who wielded considerable political influence. The rezoning of 2013 affected seventy-three blocks of east midtown while the west side was by then actively being rebuilt, fulfilling earlier municipal hopes. Potential tenants wanted new buildings with new technological capacity. The goal of the east side rezoning was to make it possible for large-scale office building with appealing plans and amenities to rise even in the already-congested area. Construction leads to jobs. New buildings lead to investment. Those things are popular with a mayor’s supporters. They also lead to displacement from old buildings and higher rents in the new ones.
Near the end of the street, at 605 West, an apartment house with glass curtain walls rose from 2013 to 2015. Called the Sky, but sometimes also Atelier 2, it offered 1175 apartments in a sixty-one story building, some of them available as hotel suites for short and longer-term rental
(Fig. 1. The Sky (at right, with Atelier at left). Hill West Architects and Rockwell Group, 2016. Photo: Author August, 2025)
(Fig. 2. The Sky. Main entrance at the rear of a planted plaza facing Forty-second Street. Photo: Author, August 2025)
The developers were the Moinian family, using Hill West Architects and the interior apartment expertise of the Rockwell Group. Like most of the other new apartment houses in the area, it offers studios and one-and two-bedroom units, as well as penthouse units. Some apartments are wheelchair accessible. One hundred sixty-six units are more affordable under the city’s 421-a provisions for selecting the lucky tenants via a lottery.
This building tempted tenants with amenities geared to the interests of prosperous young adults from their twenties to early forties, although there are extra charges for some facilities. A roof deck has two pools and lounge chairs. A large basketball court lures young men who need exercise after their desk work in well-paid businesses, and there is the expected fitness center, this one with an indoor lap pool. Tenants may spend time in a media room, a children’s playroom and a billiard room for grownups, and can use the parking garage. The lobby, a broad rectangular room, has heavy vertical grillwork panels and crossing lines on the ceiling that extend downward on two supports to give some complexity to the space. A concierge in the lobby occupies a marble tub on a marble floor under a large chandelier of complex curvilinear design. Just outside, a large pumpkin sculpture by Yayoi Kusama adds interest to the approach. That the units have plans of various levels of design and convenience is common to most of the new apartment houses in the area, and equally common are the high rents. The building offers a spa for humans and a special spa for their pets. Several other nearby buildings also designated areas for pet care, as domestic animals proved to be especially companionable during the pandemic when other social contacts might be restricted.
Between Eleventh and Tenth Avenues is a three-story building with the upper two levels behind a glass façade. This is the former Out Hotel that opened in 2012 catering to gay travelers but welcoming everyone. Designer Paul Dominguez created it afresh from a former motel and it has remained a low-rise building. Comfortable rooms and three interior courtyards with various amenities including a restaurant and a swimming pool might have lasted a long time, but in 2016, the owners celebrated politician Ted Cruz, who was regarded by the Out’s clientele as an antagonist. The hotel closed soon afterward, and the building has had a succession of tenants since then. The latest one is a Westin hotel chain outpost that may be expected to avoid political and social controversy.
(https://www.today.com/money/gay-friendly-105-room-out-nyc-open-business-new-york-273469ntroversy. Also https://nymag.com/listings/hotel/the-out-nyc/ Both accessed 12 12 2024; http://advocate.com/business/2016/7/27/out-hotel-is-no-more-thanks-ted-cruz; http://theguardian.com/travel/2012/mar/15/new-york-first-gay-hotel, review by David Vincent. Accessed 4 23 2023)
(Fig. 3. Out Hotel, 510 West 42nd Street, Paul Dominguez, 2012. Photo: Author, August 2025)
At 480 West is the Signature Theatre, in fact three theaters with a common lobby, two studios, and offices.
(Fig.4. Signature theatre, model of the interior. Photo: Courtesy Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners, LLP.)
(Fig. 5. Signature Theatre, model of one of three theatres inside. Photo: Courtesy Frank O Gehry & Gehry Partners, LLP))
The Signature had been housed nearby after its founding in 1991, but generous donors and the City, as well as assiduous money-raising by the theatrical entrepreneur, James Houghton, enabled it to move to custom-made premises designed by Frank O. Gehry, with consultation from H3, Hugh Hardy’s late-in-life firm. It opened in 2012, offering resident playwrights the opportunity to see their work performed in an end-stage theater for almost three hundred people, a second theater with just under two hundred seats, and a slightly smaller flexible space around a rectangular performance floor. In the first of these theaters, seats are in the center at the rear of the room, but seats are spread more widely right and left near the stage, with a few seats along each of the side walls; there is a balcony level, too. Plywood panels on the walls, and sound-absorbing rectangles there help to regulate the acoustics. In the second theater, Gehry created balconies and wall surfaces that look like plywood shards, almost inviting experimental presentations. The third room, partly wood-paneled, has flexible arrangements of carpeted steps, or moveable seats of various kinds. The exterior welcomes theatergoers under an expansive white glass marquee that calls attention to the theater. Even those without tickets can visit the lobby café and bookstore to see the base of an innovative twisting staircase that leads to upper levels. The building also contains two rehearsal studios and a bar.
(For the theater, see NYT 1 27 2012, p. C2 and 1 31 2012, p. C1, also Newsday, Long Island/ New York City edition 1 29 2012, p. C4; Crain’s New York Business 1 23 2012, p. 2.)
The owners of the former McGraw-Hill Building hoped for high rents, too, in their distinctive and much-admired landmark (Chap.7, Figs. 53, 54) but it had a disadvantageous neighbor, the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Another blighted building nearby, the Elk Hotel at the Ninth Avenue end of the block, closed in February 2012. The owners had bought out some of the tenants and tormented holdouts by shutting off heat and hot water. Gone at last were the short-stay rooms but gone, too, were the cheap rents paid by its long-time tenants. (NYT 6 13 2004, p. CY19). We can imagine the McGraw-Hill Building’s owners celebrating when the Elk was no more. The building itself survived.
Just to the east of the McGraw-Hill Building, the Port Authority approved a huge capital plan in 2017. It envisioned rebuilding the bus terminal but the project stalled when the representatives of New York State and New Jersey feuded. Governor Christopher Christie of New Jersey refused to authorize funds for a new tunnel under the Hudson River. When the governor’s erstwhile ally, Donald Trump, became President, he put a stop to funds that would have paid for part of the project, although hopes of funding revived in 2021 under President Joseph Biden and one part of the landward tunnel approach was funded in early 2023.
(https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/construction-development/nj-pols 2 14 2017, accessed 3 12 2020; idem, https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/commercial-real-estate/port-authority-approves-largest-capital-plan-ever-71194Port Authority Approves Massive Capital Plan Feb 17, 2017 accessed 12 13 2021; https://www.gatewayprogram.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/March-2024-Hudson-Tunnel-Project-Fact-Sheet.pdf accessed 3 25 2025)
Across Eighth Avenue, SJP Properties, owners of 11 Times Square, changed the building’s name to 11|X in 2017. (Chap. 14, Figs. 8, 9) The idea was to separate the office building and its prestigious tenants---a major law firm, a prominent technology firm---from association with the popular pleasures of Times Square. Office leasing was the business of the building, not displaying advertisements for entertainment. Perhaps the new name was also meant to seem more businesslike to the young professionals who occupied expensive new apartment towers along West Forty-second Street. In 2017, the Elghanayan brothers bought the Candler Building close to 11|X (Chap. 6, Fig.14), but any conspicuous changes had to wait until well after the Covid-l9 pandemic abated.
At Broadway, the Knickerbocker reopened as a hotel with 330 guest rooms including forty suites. (Chap. 5, Fig. 23) Near the center of Forty-second Street, at Sixth Avenue, a subway improvement connected the entrance outside One Bryant Park to a link between the Sixth Avenue station and Times Square. Across the street, the Verizon Building-- 1095 Avenue of the Americas-- was renovated in 2013 when Verizon moved its corporate headquarters back to midtown. In 2015, Ivanhoé Cambridge and Callahan Capital Partners acquired it, paying a high price reported as $2.2 billion. In 2016, the Real Summit Investment fund, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s Exchange Fund, bought a 49% stake in the building.
(The Fund is Hong Kong’s de facto central bank “Hong Kong pays $1.2B for stake in 1095 Sixth Avenue." Callahan and Ivanhoé Cambridge purchasing price: The Real Deal website, 8 3 2016 accessed 3 25 2019)
(Fig. 6. Plaza to the west of 1095 Sixth Avenue (alias Avenue of the Americas), MdeAS and Abel Bainnson Butz, 2016. Photo: Author. August 2025. See also Chap. 14, Fig. 14)
A narrow plaza opened between it and a nondescript six-story building to the west; the small building’s owner had held out for whatever he could get from Equity Office, the developer. When that low building was finally bought, architects could redesign the plaza. No high-rise could have risen on the plaza itself because open space was part of the Verizon Building’s zoning permit, and anything built on the site of the holdout building could not exceed its height. To a real estate owner, the particular attraction of the now broader open area was that despite various zoning restrictions, there were two underground stories with 55,000 square feet of space that could be made profitable with the right tenant: the Equinox sports facility. As Verizon and the present chief tenant, SalesForce, did not anticipate drop-in traffic from Forty-second Street, the building’s entrances could be off the street. That left the frontage free for enticing displays about retail or restaurants, and available for the bright signs that are elements of the Times Square redevelopment district that includes the former holdout building site.
For the open space, Moed de Armas & Shannon, now MdeAS architects, produced glass-clad structures known as the Cubes, although neither one is cubic. The two low-rise buildings contain about 100,000 square feet of space intended for retail tenants or expensive restaurants. These apparently separate buildings, are joined underground by Equinox’s two floors. The Cube to the east has two floors; the one to the west has four---three in one unit that stretches back toward Forty-first Street, and a fourth at the top for mechanical equipment. Architects often have to accommodate rules that seem unrelated to the circumstances at hand, such as one that mandated the preservation of the building line. That explains a glass plane on the uppermost rental floor facing Forty-second Street that serves no other practical purpose.
The Cubes’ elegant smooth glass walls show MdeAS’ founding principals’ experience at Skidmore Owings & Merrill which had captured admiration for walls of this kind. Shawmut, the construction firm, became known for building with glass, creating spaces for luxurious shops of the type that the investors hoped to attract. Both the Cubes and the new landscaping by Abel Bainnson Butz won awards from professional organizations when the work was finished in 2013. The architects hoped to justify their idea that the open space “becomes an extension of Bryant Park by incorporating a variety of landscaping and seating.” Even if few people make that connection, the pleasant and restful open space is welcome on a densely packed block, and it has been enlivened by Shake Shack, a popular food chain. When a privately developed open space is remodeled, it must conform to current rules, and Amanda Burden, as Chair of the City Planning Commission (2002-2013) required the removal of the plaza’s earlier steps to lower the pavement to the level of the sidewalk. Steps dissuade use; easy access promotes it. That and rules governing access for people with disabilities had motivated the lowering of some entrances to Bryant Park, too.
The developer, Equity Office, is affiliated with the Blackstone Group of investment managers. They approved the demolition and relocation of the former unsightly subway entrance. MdeAS greatly improved the entry point aesthetically and made it accessible to people with limited mobility. A building entrance on Forty-second Street was closed, the SalesForce entrance was relocated to Sixth Avenue, and the ground floor of the tower became a Whole Foods emporium. Other tenants now enter from the plaza side.
(https://therealdeal.com/issues_articles/all-clear-on-42nd-street/ accessed 10 19 2021 "Cubes" at 1095 Sixth: Architecture review: Moed de Armas & Shannon scores another victory with the "Cubes," The Real Deal 4 1 2013. Interview with Dan Shannon, 1 6, 2022.
The Blackstone Group has as its chairman and chief executive Stephen A. Schwarzman, who is also a trustee of the New York Public Library. The research collection at the Library is not municipal but the property of a public charity--the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden foundation--with its own trustees. Mr. Schwarzman donated $100 million to the library, and had his name engraved at each of the entrances to the building that the trustees renamed for him. The donation was given with the expectation that the venerable structure’s interior would be remodeled to focus on lending and public activity rather than the original focus on research. As requested, Lord Norman Foster presented a design with open floors, somewhat reminiscent of the current design at the British Library that has broad open levels.
Fig. 7. New York Public Library proposed stacks renovation. Norman Foster & Partners 2012 Photo: dbox for Foster & Partners, from the Library’s website.)
Part of the work would be paid for by the sale of the physically neglected but well-used Mid-Manhattan circulating library diagonally across Fifth Avenue at Fortieth Street. Other revenue would come from the sale of the handsome and thriving Science, Industry, and Business branch (SIBL) designed by Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman that had been opened in 1996 at Madison Avenue and Thirty-Fourth Street adjacent to the City University Graduate Center, at a cost of almost $100 million. Both Mid-Manhattan and SIBL were owned by the library so the planned sale would not be a sale of City property. The proceeds could go to the Forty-second Street building’s new plans. The City pledged $150 million to assist the work. Mayor Michael Bloomberg appointed his sister as his representative on the Library’s board of trustees, signaling his personal approval of the plan.
Realizing Foster’s plan would require removal of the stacks that held between two and three million research books available quickly. They also support the main reading room. The functions of the branches to be sold would somehow be integrated with those of the research library, at least in part by digitization, reducing the need for shelf space. To make room for this more popular material, the Library sent foreign language and other advanced research materials for storage in New Jersey. These materials, historically available as an international resource on-site for quick same-day delivery, were deemed exportable. Besides, they were not all used every day and would be stored in newly built air-conditioned premises, then trucked to the main building upon request--within a few days. That scholarly activity can require immediate and sequential checking in multiple sources used simultaneously was not a concern for the trustees.
The proposed remodeling of the stacks and main reading room was structurally risky and wildly expensive. The proposed expenses contrasted with the reported staff cutbacks and the reduced budget for book-buying. The Guardian in 2012 reported a workforce reduced by 435 positions since 2008, and a reduced book-buying budget. While no one would be fired under a plan revealed in 2012, retiring staff would not be replaced. The librarians were instructed not to speak to the press.
(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/06/new-york-public-library-jersey accessed 9 6 2021; conversation with retired senior librarian)
The planned destruction of the stacks below the reading room on the initial pretext that they were not air-conditioned—the mechanisms had just been poorly maintained--- outraged the scholarly community and ordinary readers. They had been watching the Mid-Manhattan and SIBL buildings deteriorate without initially understanding the plan to sell them. They assembled protest petitions signed by thousands, distributed flyers, and held rallies on the library steps. In 2012, scholars, authors, architects, and other researchers formed a Committee to Save the New York Public Library and attended meetings of the Board of Trustees, few of whom did in-person research and therefore did not realize the potential harm of this plan. General readers, high school pupils and university students who found what they needed at Mid-Manhattan protested the potential loss of that building, where materials were available on open shelves, and from which some could be borrowed. Budget-watchers and users of the handsome SIBL who had seen the steady reduction in materials held there lamented the waste of money and loss of a convenient and handsome library. Despite the prowess of the consulting engineers, the proposal was not fully explained to the public and---it was later concluded--- could not be built for less than a half billion dollars.
A municipal election was imminent, and the protestors elicited at least oral statements of support from several candidates to preserve Mid-Manhattan for its many users. The politicians included the unsuccessful Micah Kellner and the victorious Bill de Blasio as mayor and Letitia James as Public Advocate. If Mid-Manhattan survived, the potential income from its sale would be unavailable for the main branch’s plan. Of course, there is more to the story, recounted in Scott Sherman’s lively book, called Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library.
(New York, Melville House, 2015; the present author is a member of the Committee. “Patience and Fortitude”, a slogan broadcast weekly by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia during the Second World War, are the names given to the Library’s sculpted lions)
In the end, the great building was preserved. When a carved rosette fell one night in 2014 from the ceiling of the main reading room, everyone understood the wisdom of not having had construction vibrations there. The room closed for over a year while the architectural and engineering firm of Wiss Janney Elstner examined and secured the rest of the ceiling elements, removed asbestos, and effected other improvements by 2015. Although millions of books were spirited away to New Jersey, Library officials tried to provide quicker delivery from the offsite location and made books available from other libraries that used the repository in New Jersey. A gift of $8 million from Abby and Howard Milstein spurred the completion of a second layer of air-conditioned book stacks under Bryant Park with periodic (rather than formerly almost immediate) delivery, by a mechanized train system. Handsome rooms named for the Lenox and Astor foundations were renovated. Even people who did not use the library were delighted when Patience and Fortitude were restored in 2019. A plan begun in 2015 for both library buildings was announced in 2017. Then the Stavros Niarchos Foundation sponsored a renovation of the multi-functional Mid-Manhattan Library, albeit with fewer physical books than it had at its inception.
(For a more complete account, see in addition to Sherman’s book the website of the aforementioned Committee: csnypl.org. Veronika Conant M.L.S. investigated the number of books originally at Mid-Manhattan. The renovation of Mid-Manhattan was accomplished by the architectural firms of Mecanoo led by Francine Houben and Beyer Blinder Belle with Elizabeth Leber in charge. See also: Audrey Wachs, “New York Public Library gets new master plan by Mecanoo and Beyer Blinder Belle,” Architects Newspaper, 11 16 2017)
During the renovation of Mid-Manhattan, some of its books moved into the research library’s refurbished basement level. Lectures and presentations continued in the South Court’s auditorium and classrooms, (Chap. 14 Figs. 15, 16) as well as in the Bartos Forum. (Chap. 12 Fig.8) The main reading room was designated an official interior landmark. Out of the public’s sight, the trustees developed new plans for the main entrance level of the Library---an enlarged gift shop, an enlarged exhibition hall, a café. Work continued on classroom space and a room for scholars who request that accommodation. At the south end, the entrance was widened, the exterior was slightly altered, and Mr. Schwarzman’s name was engraved in that location, too. Elevators inside would make catering provision easier, as the Library has discovered festivities as a source of revenue, but the elevator was explained as relieving congestion, which rarely occurs at that location. High school students were to be invited into that entrance near special classrooms in under-utilized areas in order to learn about the resources available, although few teenagers would need to use them before attending college and would more likely use the branches close to home.
At the Library’s west side, the much-used Bryant Park accommodated hundreds of well-behaved people who enjoyed the oasis, the cuisine in the restaurant, light fare from the kiosks, the wintertime Christmas market, and the other attractions of midtown’s major open space, even if there were objections to occasional commercialization of public land.
(Andrew M. Manshel, Learning from Bryant Park, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 2020).
Across Forty-second Street, the Grace Building (Chap.11 Fig 8) had a face-lift and some less conspicuous changes at the hands of MdeAS architects. The travertine had become worn, so the entire façade was re-clad. The architects also remodeled the lobby to something closer to its original design; it had been altered in the interim. The architects replaced the plastered walls with travertine, renewed the floor, and redesigned the walls of the core.
Grace’s plaza on the northwest corner of the block, is actually behind (north of) the adjacent building, now called 1100 Avenue of the Americas (the little-used euphemism for Sixth Avenue). The open space is not, properly speaking, on Forty-second Street, but it was part of the zoning arrangement for the tall sloping tower. Moreover, now that 1100 has new owners and new tenants, and now that there are new rules for plaza design, it warrants a few words here.
The plaza was originally empty, as the rules allowed when it was built, but any later alterations required changes to the open space that let the Grace Building be as tall and broad as it is. A glass kiosk for the International Center of Photography was permitted, leading to premises below the plaza. Some planters, chairs, and tables later expanded a restaurant on the east side of the plaza. But MdeAS planned to add landscaping by Mathews Nielsen with many more planter beds, trees, and seats. 1100 itself is to have a remodeled and broader entrance from Forty-second Street that will lead directly to the plaza, because the redesigns of the Grace and 1100 buildings have been coordinated by the same architects and by the owners, the Swig family interests and Brookfield Properties.
The architects re-clad the entire 1100 building altering the modernist- and, on the ground floor-- postmodernist forms given to it by Kohn Pedersen Fox in 1984. (Chap 12 Fig. 1)
(Fig. 8. 1100 Avenue of the Americas, alias 2 Bryant Park. MdeAS, 2025. Photo: Author, August 16, 2025)
Environmental considerations include new glass that admits more light but reduces solar gain. The factory-built façade has fewer gaps than one built by people, so that water penetration will be reduced. The designers considered the wind loads on a site facing a park, and in the vicinity of tall buildings. Energy performance was a preoccupation. An air system that introduces direct outside air, more often employed in Europe, uses less ductwork than other systems do. None of this was the architects’ achievement alone; consulting engineers included Cosentini Associates, Gilsanz Murray Steficek, and the general contractor for the project, AECOM Tishman. Tenants were already arranged: there were to be additional offices for One Bryant Park, the Bank of America building across Sixth Avenue. 1100 is now being called Two Bryant Park. The new building’s surface is calmer and lighter-toned. It may be the bird-friendly glass required by Local Law 15-2020 unless plans were filed before the law went into effect. Energy savings will also come from having reused the structure, which also benefits the owner because the existing structure provides a larger building than current zoning would have allowed.
(Architects Newspaper, May 2020 p. 61 (sponsored article, no title except CE Strong)
MdeAS used their talents again at 330 Madison Avenue, where the Vornado Realty Trust hired them to redo the existing building erected in 1962-64 to the design of Kahn & Jacobs. (Chap. 10, Fig.8) It needed extensive renovation of the infrastructure and the exterior, as well as the lobby and interior offices. The setback framework provided 49,000 square feet of interior space on the lowest twelve floors, between 25,000 and 30,000 square feet on intermediate floors, and 9,000 on tower floors 22-39, so it could hold large corporations and plenty of commercial premises if the building were improved. The most obvious changes were those on the exterior, clad anew with energy-efficient glass in a more pleasing color, and the shifting of the entrance to Madison Avenue from Forty-second Street. By the time the architects and their colleagues, including Gilsanz Murray Steficek engineers and Tishman Construction had finished their work, the building looked more appealing and received both LEED Gold certification and an Energy Star label.
(Fig. 9. 330 Madison Avenue. MdeAS, 2012. Photo: Courtesy MdeAS)
The most remarkable immediate aspect of the renovation from the tenants’ viewpoint was not the replacement of seven-foot-tall windows by windows almost twenty inches larger, or the redesign of the façade with pale glass that gave the design greater elegance. It was not even the happy realization that the original mullions could support the new skin, so that the surface could be re-clad without exceeding the permissible projection of four inches from the original surface. It was the fact that the installation and other alterations were made at night while the building was fully occupied during the daytime. (Compare the previous version, Chap.10, Fig. 9)
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the owner in December 2019, sold the building to the German reinsurance company, known as Munich Re. A spokesman for the MEAG company that managed Munich Re’s assets was pleased about the investment for several reasons. One was the better performance at that time of the American real estate industry as compared with that of Germany. Another was the volume of the firm’s American business, and a third was the “status and prospects” of midtown Manhattan. No one could have guessed how tenuous those prospects proved to be when the Covid-19 virus erupted around the world in early 2020. The ink was barely dry on the deeds.
(file:///C:/Users/RKrinsky/Pictures/USA%20NYC%20book%2042%20St%20Street%20atlas%20fotos%20Tomasko%20and%20other%20fotos%20of%2042nd%20St/330%20Madison%20but%20where%20are%20bldgs%20Mad%20to%20Vanderbilt accessed 1 2 22.; Real Estate Weekly Dec. 26, 2019: https://rew-online.com/german-giant-buys-330-madison-avenue/ accessed 1 2 22. In June 2019, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority had bought Vornado’s existing 25%. https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/office/sl-green-q4-earnings-one-vanderbilt-111652?utm_source=outbound_pub_60&utm_campaign=outbound_issue_54979&utm_content=outbound_newsletter1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=outbound_pub_60&utm_campaign=outbound_issue_54979&utm_content=outbound_newsletter1&utm_medium=email accessed 1 20 22; https://www.globest.com/2019/04/12/rfr-receives -67m-in-financing-for-chrysler-building-deal/?slreturn=20190827140712 accessed 9 27 2019. Metals in Construction Spring, 2016, pp 25-27.)
Investors and tenants in other properties came and went, as usual. The office rental situation on Forty-second Street was probably better than it was in many other locations because many of the buildings were either new or refurbished. But there was a disturbing situation peculiar to the pandemic period: the availability of sublet space, partly due to people working remotely. This space came on the market just when some new buildings opened in midtown at Hudson Yards or later at Manhattan West. At the end of the decade, no one could predict when, or if, people would return to their former offices, or how remote work would affect companies’ desire to rent space. It was not clear, either, that green features could entice companies to rent anything but the newest and best-supplied buildings. Office building owners with enough resources planned to become the best equipped, but called attention to their environmental provisions, too.
(https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-offices-face-double-trouble-11629463203 accessed 8 23 2021; https://www.globest.com/2021/08/23/office-occupancy-may-never-return-to-pre-pandemic-heights-green-street/?kw=Office%20Occupancy%20May%20%27Never%20Return%27%20To%20Pre-Pandemic%20Heights:%20Green%20Street&utm_source=email&utm_medium=enl&utm_campaign=nationalamalert&utm_content=20210823&utm_term=rem&enlcmp=nltrplt4 8 23 2021 accessed 8 23 2021.
The skyscrapers around Broadway that had been erected under the Empire State Development Corporation required approval from the Corporation before they could be sold, given the various incentives connected with the buildings’ construction. Loan servicers also had to approve. They did, as expected. The owners then made changes to lure new tenants. The Bank of Montreal and FTI Consulting left 3 Times Square in 2019, the former for 151 West. That probably spurred Rudin Management to have FX Fowle create a new triple-height lobby, façade screen, destination dispatch elevator, gym, event center, and dining area. Touro College rented about a third of the available space.
(https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/office/manhattans-office-buildings-with-the-biggest-blocks-of-space-to-rent-110615 XXWAAWS; accessed 12 1 2021; https://rebusinessonline.com/rudin-family-launches-renovation-at-3-times-square-office-building-in-manhattan/ from https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/construction-development/3-times-square-to-undergo-25m-repositioning-108388 both accessed 8 7 2021).
Tenants Condé Nast and Skadden Arps moved out of 4 Times Square. Here, too, modernizing change came to entrances, lobbies, and unfortunately, also to Frank Gehry’s cafeteria design. 5 Times Square was sold by the second owner, AVR Realty Company to a group of investors led by David Werner, who had bought the Socony- Mobil building in 2014 from Hiro Real Estate, Japanese investors. The Werner group paid 17% more than AVR had paid in 2007.By 2021, number 5 was in the hands of Werner and RXR Realty., which sought to refinance the tower. It planned to do what had become expected by 2020: redesign the lobby, update the elevators and connect them to the subway, and build an amenity center with a lounge featuring food service, fitness center, and lecture room. For Roku, a media manufacturer, RXR paid $30 million to renovate 240,000 square feet of space. Demanding tenants expected that the most visible interiors would be designed by such prominent figures as Gehry or, at 5 Times Square, David Rockwell. These provisions are increasing in number in Class A office buildings as competitive measures, as they are in the new apartment houses at the far west end of Forty-second Street.
(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-06-19/new-york-s-5-times-square-sale-is-biggest-deal-since-2010 accessed 2 12 2017: article by Jonathan LaMantia, June 19, 2014, Rose telephone interview. https://therealdeal.com/2022/01/13/rxr-seeking-1-5b-refi-for-times-square-office-tower/ accessed 1 17 2022 ; https://commercialobserver.com/2022/01/roku-lease-5-times-square-rxr-realty/ 1 10 2022, accessed 1 27 2022.)
Farther east, a striking event took place in Grand Central Terminal during the course of several weeks in 2013. For trained dancers, the artist Nick Cave designed costumes that resembled horses, more or less, and performances took place twice daily. The costumes were brilliantly designed and colored, using mixed materials, often discarded ones that he found and recycled. The creatures were both smooth and shaggy, made with painted raffia and embroidery, and were products of extraordinary artistic imagination. They drew inspiration from South Asian needlework, African ceremonial costume, and patterns from many countries. The sponsors were Creative Time, Inc. a non-profit cultural organization, and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit program. The horses were on display primarily in the former waiting room, Vanderbilt Hall, but at times also in the main concourse and elsewhere in the building. (https://www.yatzer.com/HEARD-NY-by-Nick-Cave accessed 1 6 2022)
If that was the cultural zenith of artistic events at the Terminal, the nadir was a small room underground. Officials of Metro North discovered under Grand Central a room supposedly for locksmiths, but in fact equipped with a cot and bedding, a refrigerator, and a flat screen television. Three employees were prosecuted for the misuse of the property and whatever other charges might seem plausible. The episode was publicized under headlines about a ‘man cave’ when the existence of this private retreat became widely reported in 2019. It provided some amusement to newspaper readers shortly before the onset of the Covid-19 virus and its variants.
(https://gothamist.com/news/secret-man-cave-discovered-under-grand-central-terminal?j=61467&sfmc_sub=2493546&l=29_HTML&u=2091509&mid=526001388&jb=15005&utm_source=sfmc&utm_medium=nypr-email&utm_campaign=We%20The%20Commuters%20Jan%2022&utm_term=man%20cave&utm_id=61467&sfmc_id=2493546&utm_content=20226 accessed 12 12 2022
The good news under the Terminal had to do with the shuttle, part of the 42nd Street Connection Project, the name for improving the train service. By fall, 2021 there were straighter platforms, eliminating gaps between platform and train. Wheelchair users could more easily and safely enter the cars, and there could now be more cars in each train.
(https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-ada-mta-times-square-connector-20210908- kkk5pb4rcuvljiqaibcmquvy-story.html accessed 12 24 2022)
In 2015, the administration of Mayor di Blasio rezoned five blocks of Vanderbilt Avenue to permit SL Green to build a giant skyscraper without buying air rights over Grand Central Terminal from investor Andrew Penson, who sued. (https://www1.nyc.gov/site/planning/plans/vanderbilt-corridor/vanderbilt-corridor.page accessed 1 16 2022; NYT 5 28 2015, p. A22) Mr. Penson claimed deprivation of his property rights but then settled for an unknown sum. (NYT 8 11 2016, p. A20). The rezoning allowed SL Green to proceed with the skyscraper known as One Vanderbilt, immediately west of Grand Central. A group of banks in 2021 provided refinancing to pay the construction debt with ten-year fixed-rate commercial mortgage-backed securities. Holders of minority interests in the building included the National Pension Service of Korea, and Hines Interests. (https://therealdeal.com/2021/06/29/sl-green-closes-on-3b-one-vanderbilt-refi/ accessed 8 29 2021)
SL Green publicized plans for the skyscraper in the spring of 2014. Kohn Pedersen Fox designed a boxlike building with diagonal projections above the base and with a thinner top made of diminishing prisms.
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(Fig. 10. One Vanderbilt, Kohn Pedersen Fox, 2020, seen from Third Avenue. Photo: Author, August 2025
The architectural design is credited to James von Klemperer. AECOM Tishman, the general construction contractors, performed feats of construction despite complications caused by the adjacent subway and train tracks.
The City initially required the developer to create a waiting room for Grand Central’s trains, although few people wait for trains and there is another waiting room inside the Terminal. The city more usefully exacted contributions for the remodeling of Grand Central’s circulation below grade. The transportation improvements were supposed to be finished before the building could open, and were meant to benefit subway riders on the Lexington Avenue line. (https://www.6sqft.com/tag/one-vanderbilt/page/5/ 10 15 2014, accessed 8 2 2021) SL Green also closed the south block of Vanderbilt Avenue to create a small plaza without seats
In 2016, TF Cornerstone, developers, and MSD Partners bought a ninety percent stake in 1.35 million square feet of air rights from Grand Central and sold part of the acquisition to J.P. Morgan at the end of the year. The rezoning of Midtown East made new plans possible. RXR Realty, founded in 2007 by Scott Rechler, is TF Cornerstone’s partner in the development. This had to do with plans for a skyscraper in the One Vanderbilt height class, to be called 175 Park but actually located east of the Terminal on the Commodore Hotel site at Lexington Avenue. As early as 1996, when Donald Trump sold his interest in the former Commodore to the Hyatt Corporation, TF Cornerstone had proposed to take over the Hyatt hotel lease. (Letter to editor by Der Scutt, Oculus 42 # 5, Feb. 1981 p. 3) A public presentation of the design, and hearings related to it, were to occur in 2021.
The Chrysler Building’s ownership, problems, and money matters continued to make news, as usual. It was also in need of renovation, as usual. Ownership changed, too, with Tishman Speyer having sold its interest to the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in 2008 giving the latter a 90% stake in the building. When the property was put on the market early in 2019, business sources reported that the ground lease rent had risen from $7.75 million in 2017 to $32.5 million. The new owners were RFR, headed by Aby Rosen, in partnership with Signa, an Austrian firm. The price was $150 million, $650 million less than the sellers had paid for it a decade earlier. Signa experienced financial difficulties in late 2023 and on October 31, 2024, a judge prohibited RFR and its partners from collecting rents from its tenants, who would pay Cooper Union directly. By then, the building needed rodent control, repair of water leaks and ceiling cracks, and other costly upgrades.
(https://www.globest.com/2019/04/12/rfr-receives -67m-in-financing-for-chrysler-building-deal/?slreturn=20190827140712 accessed 9 27 2019 ; https://www.wsj.com/articles/meet-the-other-man-wh o-bought-the-chrysler-building-11563879601 accessed 2 11 2022; https://nypost.com/2019/03/18/more-than-meets-the-eye-to-shocking-chrysler-building-deal/ accessed 2 11 2022; https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/08/business/chrysler-building-sale/index.html accessed 2 15 2022 https://www.bisnow.com/new-york/news/office/chrysler-building-co-owner-files-for-insolvency-121876?utm_source=outbound_pub_5&utm_campaign=outbound_issue_72712&utm_content=outbound_link_6&utm_medium=email accessed 12 2 2023; NYT 11 10 2024, p. RE10)
The Ford Foundation had experienced minor alterations over the decades since its construction in the 1960s, but in 2016, major changes required almost two years of work, under the direction of Madeline Burke-Vigeland, a principal of the Gensler firm. Higgins & Quasebarth & Partners were consultants and Kevin Roche with people from his office became informal consultants. The exterior had been landmarked in 1997 along with the garden, and since those are the defining features of the building for most people, the general public may not have noticed the significant differences. The Foundation presented the changes as focused primarily on bringing the building up to code, removing asbestos, adding sprinklers, and making the building compliant with post-1958 rules governing access for the disabled. The areas that were not landmarked could be altered to suit the Foundation’s new mission.
The Foundation had engaged a director, Darren Walker, a lawyer by training and an experienced administrator, who wanted to introduce changes. With the approval of the foundation’s board and supporters, he heads what is now called the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice. In connection with this new focus, the institution made internal changes that affected the building. The director is no longer nearly isolated on the top floor in a large suite. He occupies smaller premises several stories below, adjacent to those of his colleagues. This more efficient use of space allows the uppermost stories and certain lower ones to be rented by complementary organizations.
The individual offices formerly located on either side of a double-loaded corridor are no more. Larger and more open spaces now bring staff members together both visually and physically, enhancing the visibility of all staff members through the glass around the planted atrium. Mr. Walker refers to ‘transparency and openness.” The renovators anticipated doubling the conference space. Despite the changes to the mission and the interiors, the planners and architects maintained and restored as many of the initial design features as they could. Some had become outworn, but about half the original chairs and desks by Warren Platner could be re-used. Even some ashtrays attached to auditorium seats were kept, because they formed part of the original interior design by Charles and Ray Eames. Some new furniture appeared, using similar wood in order to respect the original materials and textures. The individuality of each staff member is symbolized by the fact that desks can be adjusted; the original ones were rigidly uniform, implying equality while making no accommodation for physical inequalities. The double-height second floor accommodates presentations and an art gallery, displaying work by people of many national and ethnic origins that refer to aspects of social justice. There is now a common area and café at which staff at all levels can mingle; in the past, the upper crust of Foundation personnel did not break breadcrusts with the underlings.
The changes to the atrium were significant. Existing plants had to be given away both to allow for asbestos removal in the ceilings where sprinklers were placed, and also to provide room for species that had better chances of survival. The plants that were removed were not the original ones in any case, because the garden supervisor, Everett Conklin, had changed them as various species died. Dan Kiley, the original landscape designer, had frankly stated that the plants he chose had an uncertain future because they were in an unfamiliar and experimental habitat. In the latest remodeling, the Raymond Jungles firm, with Guy Chapman as project manager, introduced species with better prospects, and preserved the essence of the design---a garden with varied plants of varied shades, varied heights and textures.
(Fig. 11. Ford Foundation Garden as reconfigured. Photo: Author 2025)
Among the newcomers are dark-leaf ficus, and small-leaf olives. There is a touch-and-feel area with gentle accompanying sound for those without sight. The paving tiles, covered with varnish over the years, were restored along with small but significant details in brass and leather. The original steps and 90 degree turns in the path could not accommodate people with physical limitations, and certainly not wheelchair users, but now ramps have replaced the steps so that everyone can circle around the edge of the water feature and enjoy the garden at close range. New and improved elevators make every part of the building accessible, from the garden to the upper and basement floors.
During the day, the public can enter through a discreet door at Forty-second Street, rather than only on Forty-third Street, and can enjoy the skylit garden with its abundant plants of varied textures and tones. At night, guests at upper floor receptions who look down at the planted atrium will see forms softened by light from inside the Foundation or accented from outside. The overall effect now remains what it was before the renovation---monumental, visually accessible, varied, and handsome.
Symposia, conferences, meetings, and lectures did not take place as planned, at least not immediately and in person because of the Covid-19 virus. Until vaccines became available, educational, civic, cultural, and charitable institutions closed or were severely limited in the number of in-person events that were safe to present. Some events were held remotely, using computer technology. One savior of many institutions was the Zoom conferencing system invented in 2011 by Eric S. Yuan, but not widely known until the pandemic struck. This and other conferencing systems allowed the mission of the Ford Foundation to continue even during the plague years. But there and elsewhere on Forty-second Street, there was no business as usual.
(Jane Margolies, “A subtropical second take. Raymond Jungles renews Dan Kiley’s landmark Ford Foundation Atrium Garden,” Landscape Garden Magazine, 110 #8, Aug. 2020, pp. 82-99;“Oasis in Manhattan, Ford Foundation’s new offices in a garden,” Interior Design 39 #2, pp. 116-25; Danielle Narae Choi, “Risk and Fun. Dan Kiley’s interior landscape for the Ford Foundation,” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 40 #2, April 2020, pp. 95-109; Sidney Franklin, “Roche and Dinkeloo’s Ford Foundation Building Reopens for the 21st Century,” https://archpaper.com/2018/12/ford-foundation-for-social-justice/?trk_msg=J59IM8JVCGFKP87PQR0V976A98&trk_contact=TEPFHR44CIVCNPL8VQT1VM1DKS&trk_sid=D1PC9V2SNPC5BTBMBBDO53DCQ4&utm_source=listrak&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Roche+Dinkeloo%E2%80%99s+Ford+Foundation+Building+reopens+for+the+21st+century&utm_campaign=AN+Late+Edition%3a+Roche+Dinkeloo%E2%80%99s+Ford+Foundation+Building+reopens+for+the+21st+century#gallery-0-slide-0 accessed 12 14 2018; Alexandra Lange, “Critical Eye: Building Your Values," 11 20 2018, 8:56am EST https://www.curbed.com/2018/12/20/18144810/alexandra-lange-design-criticism-2018?_ga=2.39201827.1078729975.1547241875-683141570.1526065343 accessed 11 21 2018; Justin Davidson, “CITYSCAPE, Dec. 3, 2018 :”Growing Out of the ’60s: The Ford Foundation Building Gets Renewed “ http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/growing-out-of-the-60s-the-ford-foundation-building-redo.html accessed 12 15 2018; David Masello, “Ford Foundation Landscaping” Architects’ Newspaper March-May 2019; Bevin Savage-Yamasaki, and Jonas Gabbai, “Renewed. A Workplace. The Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice,” published by Gensler online, accessed 7 16 2019; Olivia Martin, “A-Ford-Able” in Architects’ Newspaper June 8, 2016; Landmarks Preservation Commission October 21, 1997, Designation List 285, LP-1969; Aleksandr Bierig, “Modernity and the Monument,” https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/11478-modernity-and-the-monument-renovating-the-ford-foundation when the renovation was impending.; Suzanne Stephens https://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/13870-renovated-ford-foundation-center-for-social-justice-by-gensler includes link to video and tour called Gensler’s Renovation of the Ford Foundation for Social Justice with Darren Walker; Jonathan Marvel, “The Ford Foundation: Rediscovered Masterpiece,” Metropolis 28 #4, Dec. 2008, pp. 90-104. Associated firms for the restoration include Henegan Construction, MEP JB&B, Structural: Thornton Tomassetti; Lighting: Fisher Marantz Stone; Irrigation: Northern Designs; Soils: James Urban; Landscape: Siteworks Alpine Construction & Landscaping Corp.; Plant supplier: Signature Tree & Palms)