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. It is a recognizable part of the Manhattan skyline and one of the fifty tallest buildings in the United States.

Pan American World Airways was the building's owner for many years. Its logotype was depicted on a sign that was placed on the north and south faces and its globe logo was depicted on a sign that was placed on the east and west faces. The Pan Am building was the last tall tower erected in New York City before laws were enacted that prevented placing corporate logos and names on the tops of buildings.

Pan Am originally had 15 floors in the Pan Am Building. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company bought the Pan Am Building from Pan Am in 1981; Pan Am's headquarters remained in the building. In 1991 Pan Am had 4 floors left; during that year Pan Am moved its headquarters to Miami. Shortly afterwards the airline ceased operations. On Thursday September 3, 1992, MetLife announced that it would remove Pan Am signage from the building. Robert G. Schwartz, the chairman, chief executive, and president of MetLife, said that the company decided to remove the Pan Am sign since Pan Am ceased operations. At the time MetLife was headquartered in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower.

In 2005, MetLife sold the building for $1.72 billion, the record price at the time for an office building in the U.S. The buyer was a joint venture of Tishman Speyer Properties, the New York City Employees' Retirement System, and the New York City Teachers' Retirement System.

Helicopter service

The building previously provided helicopter service to John F. Kennedy International Airport, a seven-minute flight that left from the rooftop helipad. This service was offered from December 21, 1965 to February 18, 1968 by New York Airways and for a few months in 1977. It ended after a major accident that killed five people.

On May 16, 1977, about one minute after a Sikorsky S-61L landed and its 20 passengers disembarked, the right front landing gear collapsed, causing the aircraft to topple onto its side with the rotors still turning. One of the four 20-foot blades broke off and flew into a crowd of passengers waiting to board. Three men were killed instantly and another man died later in hospital. The blade sailed over the side of the building and killed a pedestrian on the corner of Madison Avenue and 43rd Street. Two other people were seriously injured.

Film director Michael Findlay was named in press reports as being one of the three men on the roof to be killed instantly when "literally cut to pieces."

Suicide

An incident occurred with the suicide of Eli M. Black (the father of Leon Black) on February 3, 1975. The CEO of United Brands Company (now Chiquita Brands International) used his briefcase to shatter an external window and then jumped out of the forty-fourth story window to his death on Park Avenue.

Architecture

Designed by Emery Roth & Sons with the assistance of Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, the Pan Am Building is an example of an International style skyscraper. It is purely commercial in design with large floors, simple massing, and an absence of ornamentation inside or out. It has been popular with tenants, not least because of its location next to Grand Central Terminal. in the foreground.]]

In 1987, the lifestyle periodical New York revealed in a poll that MetLife—then Pan Am—was the building that New Yorkers would most like to see demolished. Perhaps contributing to the hatred of the building is the fact that it is so visible. Situated behind Grand Central Terminal outside of the grid, the building, which would have otherwise been tucked away into the city, is left totally exposed and contrasted with the other buildings around it, most notably the New York Central Building, which is now called the Helmsley Building. Today the building is one of the most recognizable skyscrapers in the City.

Many of the most influential architects of the twentieth century have commended the MetLife Building since its completion. With a shape similar to that of Pirelli Tower in Milan, MetLife is subtle while unique in its lozenge shape, in effect referencing its monumental position. Set apart from many of its contemporaries, MetLife has a heavy pre-cast facade that might have appealed to those looking for a historicist design. The importance of this design and the stress placed on its subtleties may be clearer after a close look at both Gropius's other tall building projects, such as the Chicago Tribune Tower competition.

The Portland House tower in Westminster, London has a near identical shape (identical in cross section) but is finished with a different color. It was built at the same time as the MetLife Building.

Statistics

, 2005]] level]]

  • Height: 808 ft (246.6 m)
  • Floors:59 (above ground)
  • Floor space: 3.14 million ft² (307,000 m²)

Tenants

In addition to being the official headquarters of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the MetLife Building houses a number of other major firms, including the headquarters of Dreyfus Corporation, the largest office of Greenberg Traurig, and the New York offices of Mishcon de Reya, Barclays Capital, CB Richard Ellis, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Hunton & Williams, Computer Sciences Corporation and Winston & Strawn.

The building's most famous "residents" are a pair of peregrine falcons nicknamed Lois and Clark after two of the main characters in the Superman film series, which nest there and feed on pigeons.

MetLife Building in popular culture

As a prominent New York landmark, the Metlife Building has been featured in the plots of several films, including Coogan's Bluff in which Clint Eastwood's character arrives in city by helicopter atop the building. The 1968 Paramount film Only When I Larf has the female lead, Alexandra Stewart entering the Pan Am building and traveling by helicopter from the rooftop pad. The building appears with the old "Pan Am" sign in important establishing scenes of Catch Me if You Can whose protagonist poses as a Pan Am Pilot. It is also featured in the movie Down with Love and as a backdrop in The French Connection.

The building also appears in lyrics and music videos set in New York. Yves Montand sang "Come Back to Me" on top of the Pan Am Building in the 1970 Barbra Streisand musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Joni Mitchell has the line "A helicopter lands on the Pan-Am roof like a dragonfly on a tomb" in her song "Harry's House" on the The Hissing of Summer Lawns album.

In the 1998 film Armageddon, a meteor strikes a lower-level building with the MetLife Building in the background.

This prominence continues into video games Grand Theft Auto IV features a building strikingly similar to the MetLife Building, but the sign says "GetaLife". The MetLife Building also appears in all three video games to the Spider-Man movies, but only the first video game features the building with the MetLife logo on the top.

Recently, the MetLife Building has become a target in disaster movies. In the 1998 remake of Godzilla, the building is shown after Godzilla storms the Grand Central Terminal after arriving into New York City. While the tower still stands, Godzilla evidently plows through the building, leaving behind an enormous hole. In the 2008 film Cloverfield, the building is shown near an evacuation zone. The most dramatic instance appears in 2009's Knowing, where a massive solar flare dramatically blows all of the windows out the south facade before incinerating the entire structure. In ', it is one of the buildings the Decepticons climbed in New York City.

See also

  • Buildings and architecture of New York City
  • Tallest buildings in New York City

References

External links

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IWalked Audio Tours
8 September 2012
Despite iconic status in 1987 New Yorkers voted as bldg they would most like destroyed in NYC. Each letter atop weighs nearly 4000 lbs. Seen in movies like Catch Me If You Can.More site info via
naveen
2 August 2011
one of my favorite buildings in new york; unique in that it is one of the few that straddles an avenue: the views up and down park avenue are breathtaking (sneak into the penthouse!)
Tariq Ahmad
30 April 2017
Connected to Grand Central Terminal. Upon finding the clock, look for the escalator. It will take you directly to the building. No need to go outside.
Filmsquare
19 January 2014
Ominously hidden from the New York skyline, the MetLife Building would have appeared in Avengers Assemble (2012) if it hadn't been replaced by Stark Towers - Tony Stark's revolutionary headquarters.
Zack P
24 February 2012
Blocks the potential beautiful of Park Ave and homely overlooks Grand Central, yet it's iconic, even if PanAm built it.
Scoutmob
28 November 2011
Drum roll please…Thanks to a deflated housing market, the largest property fiasco in American history goes to MetLife for the selling of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village housing complexes.
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