28 Liberty Street, formerly known as 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 5 basement floors, and is 248 meters (813 ft) tall, making it the 15th tallest building in New York City, the 43rd tallest in the United States, and the 200th tallest building in the world.
The building is built in the International style, with a stainless steel facade with black spandrels below the windows. Designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the building echoes the firm's earlier Inland Steel Building in Chicago.
A direct entrance to the Wall Street station (2 and 3 trains) of the New York City Subway is in the lobby. There are also connections to Wall Street (4 and 5 trains) and to Broad Street (J and Z trains) via passageways underground.
Video 28 Liberty Street
History
The Chase Manhattan Bank president of that time, David Rockefeller, the late 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. It was begun in 1956 and completed in 1961. 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 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, but Milbank remains, although it plans to move in 2018.
One Chase Manhattan Plaza is shaped like "an enormous steel-framed rectangle". The 813 ft (248 m) building has about 1,800,000 square feet (170,000 m2) of aboveground floor area. Another 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2) in the basements contains "a truck entrance, mechanical equipment rooms, vaults, a [Chase] branch bank, and a cafeteria". There are aluminum panels--chosen for their durability and performance--as well as mullions and column cladding on the facade. The columns are about 3 by 5 feet (0.91 by 1.52 m) thick and are about 29 feet (8.8 m) apart from each other. The columns extend from the building on its long sides. The floors cantilever on the columns on the building's short sides.
The building is unusual among buildings in the area:
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 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.
The New York Landmarks Preservation Commission designated One Chase Manhattan Plaza a landmark in 2008. On October 18, 2013, JPMorgan sold the building to Fosun, a Chinese investment company, for $725 million. Fosun rebranded One Chase Manhattan Plaza as 28 Liberty Street in 2015.
The new name refers to the east-west street on which the building sits but also connects to the Statue of Liberty in the distance and to "the good fortune that, according to Chinese tradition, is bound up in the number 8 [and] 28 denotes 'double prosperity'".
Maps 28 Liberty Street
Tenants
- Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty
- Assurant
- JPMorgan Chase
- Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy
- MSCI
Cultural references
- Halloween Jack, a fictional character from David Bowie's 1974 song Diamond Dogs, "lives on top of Manhattan Chase."
- The building appears in Iron Fist representing the headquarters of Rand Enterprises.
See also
- List of tallest buildings in New York City
References
Notes
Further reading
- Wilson, John D. (1986). The Chase: The Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A., 1945-1985. Boston, Mass: Harvard Business School Press. ISBN 978-0-87584-134-2.
External links
- One Chase Manhattan Plaza on SOM website
- New York Times: A Landmark From the Start, Now Getting Its Official Due
Source of the article : Wikipedia