One Chase Manhattan Plaza

[Jeannette Latoria]

One Chase Manhattan Plaza
 


 
Information
Location One Chase Manhattan Plaza, New York City, USA (Between Pine, Liberty, Nassau, and William Streets)
Status Complete
Height
Antenna/Spire 813 feet (248 meters)
Technical details
Floor count 60
Companies
Architect Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP

[Jeannette Latoria]

One Chase Manhattan Plaza is a banking skyscraper located in the downtown Manhattan Financial District of New York City (Between Pine, Liberty, Nassau, and William Streets). Construction on the building was completed in 1961. It has 60 floors, with 4 basement floors, and is 248 meters (813 ft) tall, making it the 11th tallest building in New York City, the 40th tallest in the United States, and the 137th tallest building in the world.

The building is built in the International style, with a white steel facade with black patterns just below the windows. Designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the building echoes the Inland Steel Building in Chicago.

The Chase Manhattan Bank president of that time, David Rockefeller, the current patriarch of the Rockefeller family, was the prime mover of the construction and the building's location, notably because many corporations had moved uptown, and the Financial District had languished as a result. One Chase Manhattan Plaza is currently occupied by the successor to the "Rockefeller Bank", JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Originally, its major tenants included the white shoe law firms Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy (then the bank's main outside counsel), Davis Polk & Wardwell and Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Davis Polk and Cravath moved to midtown in the eighties, but Milbank remains.

"The building is an enormous steel-framed rectangle, 813 feet (248 m) high, containing about 1,800,000 square feet (167,000 m2) above ground level, with another 600,000 square feet (55,742 m²) below grade for a truck entrance, mechanical equipment rooms, vaults, a branch bank, and a cafeteria. On the facade are anodized aluminum panels, mullions, and column cladding. Aluminum was chosen because it was cheaper than stainless steel, and the manufacturer offered a long performance guarantee. The columns, nearly 3 x 5 feet (0.9 x 1.5 m) in size, stand 29 feet (8.8 m) apart on the long axis and project from the long façades of the building; on the short sides, floors are cantilevered beyond the columns."

"...When seen from a distance, the bank looks bulky among the slender towers of pre- Depression skyscrapers. Its surface can also appear obtrusive because the earlier building surfaces of brick and stone absorb light while Chase's aluminum and glass reflect it. Seen from ground level, especially from its principal plaza, the building is a commanding presence."Chase's tall rectangle is asymmetrical in plan, with the elevator and service core shifted off center to allow a 45-foot (14 m)-wide (14 m) clerical pool on the south and individual offices and a corridor 29 feet (8.8 m) wide on the north. These broad spaces are uninterrupted by columns, adding to the cost but producing about 6 percent more continuous space for desks."

Carol Herselle Krinsky, Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, as quoted at www.greatbuildings.com.

[Jeannette Latoria]

A Landmark From the Start, Now Getting Its Official Due

_{By DAVID W. DUNLAP
Published: March 19, 2008}

The news may be that 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza — the towering silvery monolith that forever changed the Lower Manhattan skyline nearly a half century ago — has not been made a landmark already.


 
Arthur Lavine/JPMorgan Chase Archives
In 1965, four years after it opened, the tower stood in stark contrast to its neighbors. More Photos »


A New York Grand Canyon Rides on Landmark Lane (March 18, 2008) The Landmarks Preservation Commission now intends to make an official landmark out of the aluminum-and-glass-skinned tower, which was completed in 1961 as the bank’s headquarters and is still 70 percent occupied by JPMorgan Chase & Company.

“One Chase Manhattan Plaza is among New York City’s most important mid-20th-century skyscrapers,” the commission said in a statement released on Tuesday, when it voted unanimously to consider the designation, making it all but a foregone conclusion.

And the building’s plaza, where the work of the sculptors Jean Dubuffet and Isamu Noguchi are set in a canyon among the financial district cliff sides, was renamed Tuesday in honor of David Rockefeller, the former chairman of Chase and the man most closely identified with the bank tower.

This is all by way of marking the 50th anniversary of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association. Mr. Rockefeller was chairman and the prime moving force of that group, which he has called an early effort “to breathe life into a moribund downtown.”

New Yorkers of a certain age and sharp memory will detect a paradox in celebrating the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association with a landmark designation, since the group was a forceful opponent of the original landmarks law in 1965. And its first redevelopment proposal, 50 years ago, called for the demolition of hundreds of old buildings in what would later become four officially protected historic districts: South Street Seaport, TriBeCa North, TriBeCa South and TriBeCa West.

The proposal was developed by the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which also designed 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, which was the sixth tallest building in the world at the time of its completion.

Robert R. Douglass, the current chairman of the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association (and a longtime associate of the Rockefeller family), certainly believes that landmark status is warranted for 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, where he has worked since 1971, both for Chase and at the law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy.

“It lives very well,” Mr. Douglass said. “It has a universal, almost timeless, appeal.”

In 1996, JPMorgan Chase moved its headquarters to 270 Park Avenue, the former Union Carbide Building, which was also designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

Frank J. Bisignano, the chief administrative officer for JPMorgan Chase, said the bank was “pleased” by the prospective designation.

[Jeannette Latoria]

On its completion in May 1961, 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza was described by The New York Times as "New York's newest landmark." It is now being considered for official landmark status.
Photo: Mario Marino/Courtesy of JPMorgan Chase Archives (1962)

[Jeannette Latoria]

The aluminum and glass facade rose without setback in sheer walls 813 feet high, making 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza the sixth tallest building in the world at the time. (All five taller buildings were also in Manhattan.)
Photo: Elwood P. Johns/Photo courtesy of JPMorgan Chase Archives (1960)

[Jeannette Latoria]

The blazing monolith stood in stark contrast with the slender pinnacles that composed the downtown skyline. Not every critic was pleased. But the building's drama, especially at twilight, was undeniable.
Photo: Arthur Lavine/Courtesy of JPMorgan Chase Archives (1965)

[Jeannette Latoria]

Even today, the silvery curtain wall of 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza can catch the eye as it emerges from dark masonry canyons.
Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

[Jeannette Latoria]

A delightful counterpoint to the rigid geometries of the building, by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, is the monumental sculpture, "A Group of Four Trees" by Jean Dubuffet, which was installed on the plaza in 1972.
Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

[Jeannette Latoria]

The Landmarks Preservation Commission says the "gnarly, twisting sculpture provides a striking foil to the spacious plaza and its austere tower." (Building seen at right, through the sculpture's trunks, is 70 Pine Street.)
Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

[Jeannette Latoria]

But you don't have to know anything about art history to appreciate the Dubuffet.
Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

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Some faces you see on the plaza are more fanciful than others. What looks like a monstrous grotesque is in fact just the edge of a stone in the sunken rock garden by the sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

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Noguchi's garden, filled with water, as seen from above; a circular incision in the plaza.
Photo: Sam Falk/The New York Times (1964)

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Windows in the main banking hall surround the Noguchi garden. On a summer twilight, the plaza seems to glow from below.
Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times (2000)

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The rocks in Noguchi's garden were imported from Japan. They create a centerpiece behind glass in the main banking floor and fill the area around them with daylight.
Photo: Irving Fitzig/Courtesy of JPMorgan Chase Archives (1964)

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The large expanses of glass around the lobby help blur the distinction between outside and inside.
Photo: David W. Dunlap/The New York Times