550 Madison Avenue

550 Madison Avenue is in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The rectangular land lot is bounded by Madison Avenue to the east, 56th Street to the north, and 55th Street to the south. The lot covers approximately , with a frontage of on Madison Avenue and on both 55th and 56th Streets. The building is on the same city block as the Corning Glass Building to the west. Other nearby buildings include St. Regis New York and 689 Fifth Avenue to the southwest, the Minnie E. Young House to the south, the New York Friars Club and Park Avenue Tower to the east, 432 Park Avenue to the northeast, 590 Madison Avenue to the north, and Trump Tower and the Tiffany & Co. flagship store to the northwest. The site was occupied by a stream before being developed in the 1800s. The AT&T Building directly replaced fifteen smaller structures, including several four- and five-story residences dating from the late 19th century, which were converted into commercial stores in the mid-20th century. This stretch of Madison Avenue in Midtown was a prominent retail corridor during the 20th century, but new office buildings were developed on the avenue in the two decades after World War II ended. The site at 550 Madison Avenue was described by New York magazine as "unusually human" compared to Midtown's other office developments due to the neighborhood's relatively low height. == Architecture ==

550 Madison Avenue was designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee of Johnson/Burgee Architects. Johnson had been an influential figure in modernist architecture during the late 20th century, having helped design the Seagram Building nearby in the 1950s, but he reverted to more classical motifs for 550 Madison Avenue's design. The building was among Johnson and Burgee's most influential works and, according to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), is sometimes described as the world's first postmodern–style skyscraper. Alan Ritchie of Johnson/Burgee was named as design manager, while Simmons Architects was the associate architect. Engineers and contractors involved in the building's construction included structural engineer Leslie E. Robertson of Robertson & Fowler Associates; associate engineer Leroy Callender; foundation engineer Mueser, Rutledge, Johnston & DeSimone; mechanical engineer Cosentini Associates; and interior designer ISD Inc. Frank Briscoe was the construction manager, while William Crow Construction and HRH Construction were the general contractors. Form The primary portion of the building is the 37-story office tower along Madison Avenue, on the eastern section of the land lot. The tower is tall, as measured from sidewalk level to the highest point of the tower's broken pediment. There are no setbacks. Unlike other postmodernist structures with irregular ground-level plans, 550 Madison Avenue was designed as a rectangle at ground level, similar to older International Style buildings. There was also a three- and four-story annex at the western end of the site. At the time of 550 Madison Avenue's construction, there was a lease on the adjacent Corning Glass Building that limited the height of any structures near that building to in height. so the roof of the annex was exactly 60 feet tall. More than of granite is used, representing over of the material. and required an additional of steel to support it. Varying reasons are given for the use of granite. Johnson considered pink granite as "simply the best" type of stone, The granite facade helped to reduce energy consumption compared to the glass curtain walls used on many of the city's contemporary skyscrapers. , during the building's renovation, it received an "A" grade on a citywide energy-efficiency ranking system. About one-third of the facade is clad in glass. When the plans were announced in 1978, Johnson claimed that the glass on the facade would make 550 Madison Avenue the city's "most energy-efficient structure". The building also includes more than 1,000 pieces of brass manufactured by the Chicago Extruded Metals Company. The arch is wide and recessed from the rest of the facade. topped by a circular oculus with a radius. Both windows have glazed glass panels and vertical and horizontal bronze mullions. These windows are surrounded by stonework with rhombus tiles. The side walls of the arch have smaller round arches and rectangular stonework, while the top of the arch contains recessed rectangular lights. AT&T said the arch was supposed to make the building appear dominant and give it "a sense of dignity". Originally, 550 Madison Avenue had an open-air arcade north and south of the central archway, extending west to the public atrium behind the building. There was no retail space on the Madison Avenue front because, according to critic Nory Miller, "AT&T didn't want a front door sandwiched between a drug store and a lingerie shop." After the AT&T Building's opening, the arcade gained a reputation for being inhospitable, dark, and windy. Following a renovation in the 1990s, the arcade was enclosed with recessed display windows with grids of bronze mullions. At the extreme ends on Madison Avenue are single-story flat arches surmounted by flagpoles. These lead to recessed passages along 55th and 56th Streets, which act as an extension of the sidewalks on these streets. There are multicolored granite pavement tiles within these passages. The 55th and 56th Street elevations of the facade contain flat arches measuring tall, supported by granite-clad piers at regular intervals. Just above each flat arch is a circular opening with canted profiles, atop which are four vertically aligned rectangular openings. The granite wall of the original annex on 55th Street was windowless and had three garage doors. The granite wall on 56th Street had a tall window bay, a garage door, and a cornice. There are joints, or gaps, where the panels meet. The panels are further divided by shallower false joints, which resemble the real joints. The granite panels are typically thick, while the mullions are square. Instead, Johnson claimed to have been inspired by Al-Khazneh in the Jordanian city of Petra. Observers likened the pediment to Baroque or Ancient Roman architecture, and they compared the steam puffs and night lighting to the work of Étienne-Louis Boullée. Features 550 Madison Avenue has a gross floor area of . Lobbies The building's main lobby is just inside the large arch on Madison Avenue. The lobby measures The floor pattern was inspired by the designs of British architect Edwin Lutyens. The lobby's ceiling was a groin vault, and one wall of the main lobby contained an arcade with Byzantine-inspired column capitals. and an elevator lobby with bronze elevator doors behind the Byzantine columns. The terrazzo floors incorporate some of the original marble flooring. The lowest portions of the lobby wall are decorated with the mesh, while the rest of the walls are covered in white marble. Solid Sky, a spherical blue sculpture by Alicja Kwade, hangs in the lobby. Spirit of Communication (also Golden Boy), a bronze statue, was moved to 550 Madison Avenue's main lobby in 1983. Created by Evelyn Beatrice Longman in 1916, From the main lobby, elevators led to a sky lobby on the seventh floor, above ground level. The sky lobby was clad with veined Breccia Strazzema marble, The frescoes, titled "Northern Sky" and "Southern Sky", measure and consist of red and yellow patterns with spheres. When the building was renovated in the 2020s, the Rockwell Group converted the sky lobby into an amenity space. The amenity spaces include a central lounge flanked by Rockburne's paintings, Atrium and annex Between the annex to the west and the main tower to the east was an atrium measuring wide by tall. In the early 2020s, a new garden called 550 Madison Garden was constructed within the atrium. The garden contains shrubs, trees, bulbs, and perennial plants and is split into several sections. The space is open every day between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. It is covered by a metal-and-glass canopy, which collects of rainwater every year. The design details include poetry inscribed on the pavers, as well as a "steam pit" that is heated during the winter. and operated until about 1993. Office spaces The fifth through thirty-third stories have offices. although escalating costs during construction led to the substitution of cheaper material in some places. The AT&T executive offices on the thirty-fifth floor were retained, and an executives' dining club called the Sony Club was opened within the space. ==History==

|alt=AT&T's previous headquarters at 195 Broadway, a classical-style structure with a white granite facade, as seen from the street level AT&T was established in 1885 and had been headquartered at 195 Broadway in Lower Manhattan since 1916. In the subsequent decades, AT&T became the world's largest telephone company, and maintenance costs on its headquarters increased. With its continued growth, AT&T acquired land for a new facility in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, in 1970, although the company denied that it was fleeing to the suburbs. John D. deButts, who became AT&T's CEO in 1972, also wished to construct a new Midtown headquarters as a monument to the company and to boost his own name recognition. The 195 Broadway headquarters had a capacity of only 2,000 workers, but AT&T had 5,800 headquarters workers by the mid-1970s, most of them in New Jersey. Development Site acquisition AT&T began looking for a Midtown site in the early 1970s, hiring James D. Landauer Associates to assist with site selection. It wished to build a site near Grand Central Terminal but eschewed Park Avenue as being too prominent. The western blockfront of Madison Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets was being acquired by IBM, which refused to give up its lot to AT&T. On Stahl's block, AT&T acquired seven buildings in late 1974, followed by two adjacent buildings to the west in 1975, the latter of which were acquired in anticipation of AT&T being allowed to construct extra space. The land value appreciated significantly in the following years; by 1982, Stahl's plot alone was worth $70 million. or 1977, a committee of three AT&T officials and three officials from Smith's offices mailed questionnaires to twenty-five architects or design firms which the executives deemed "highly qualified". Thirteen of the recipients responded. Johnson and Burgee did not prepare an elaborate presentation, instead presenting photographs of their past work. Smith subsequently stated that Johnson/Burgee had been open to different design ideas. Johnson said he wanted the new headquarters to be a "landmark" representing the company. AT&T mandated that Johnson/Burgee select an associate architect as per the provisions of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972. Harry Simmons Jr., head of a small African American firm, was selected out of seven interviewees from a field of 28 candidates. Simmons's firm was tasked with designing twenty percent of the overall architectural detail. Johnson and Burgee looked to various structures, such as early New York skyscrapers and the entries to the Tribune Tower design competition, for inspiration. Judith Grinberg created a sketch of the AT&T Building's facade "to interpret [Johnson's] design intent"; the sketch was sold to London's Victoria and Albert Museum in 2010. In addition, Howard W. Swenson created numerous styrofoam models for the building and helped to refine the design details. The New York City Department of Buildings received blueprints for the new headquarters in January 1978. AT&T announced its official plans on March 30, 1978, at a conference outside New York City Hall. A rendering of the headquarters was shown on the front page of the next day's Times. and the news media characterized it as part of a trend of midtown revitalization. AT&T initially expected to begin construction in late 1978 and complete the building by 1982 at an estimated cost of $60 million. In late 1978, the project received several floors' worth of zoning "bonuses" and exemptions from setback regulations, in exchange for public space, a three-story communications museum, and a covered arcade on Madison Avenue. Johnson decided to use Stony Creek pink granite on the AT&T Building's facade. the same month, AT&T received a $20 million tax abatement on the construction cost. The foundation excavation cost $3.1 million and largely consisted of blasting into the underlying bedrock. Faced with rising construction costs, the architects had to substitute cheaper materials; for example, granite in the elevator cabs was replaced with wood. In December 1980, Paul Goldberger wrote for The New York Times that "the arch is beginning to take shape". At its peak, the project's three foremen had to balance the requests of about "three dozen powerful prime contractors and 150 subcontractors and suppliers", according to Inc magazine. The workings were so complex that even the facade cladding required the involvement of members of four construction unions. Shortly after this agreement, AT&T decided to lease out on the 7th through 25th floors, comprising nearly half of the building's space. AT&T wanted to rent out the space for as much as , but few companies were willing to sign a lease. The first occupants moved to their offices on July 29, 1983, New York magazine reported in February 1984 that the executive offices were not occupied and that full completion was not expected until that May. The building was completed sometime in 1984 but was overlooked by the media, which instead publicized the divestiture. In early 1984, AT&T officials said that rather than constructing a museum in the annex for bonus zoning, they planned to use the annex for a showroom. In exchange, AT&T was granted a $42 million, ten-year tax abatement that August. The museum, which was named Infoquest Center, opened in May 1986. After Koch threatened to rescind the entire tax abatement, AT&T agreed to move only 778 employees. The fine-dining restaurant The Quilted Giraffe moved into the building in June 1987. Sony ownership Having substantially decreased in size, AT&T sought to rent 80 percent of the space at 550 Madison Avenue to other companies in January 1991. At the time, AT&T wanted to move most employees to a cheaper space. AT&T had signed a tentative 20-year lease with Sony by that May, although neither company confirmed the rumor at the time. Sony signed a 20-year lease agreement for the entire building that July, including an option to purchase 550 Madison Avenue. AT&T also forfeited $14.5 million of tax abatements to the city government, equivalent to the taxes forgiven since 1987. The refunded tax abatements were used to fund programs at the financially distressed City University of New York for the 1991–1992 academic year. AT&T moved its headquarters to 32 Avenue of the Americas, its long-distance telephone building in Lower Manhattan, and removed the Spirit of Communication statue. With the sale of the building, Burgee commented, "The period of making image buildings for companies appears to be over." Renovation After Sony leased the building, it became known as the Sony Tower. In early 1992, Gwathmey Siegel designed a renovation of the base, with Philip Johnson as consultant. The arcade space was to be converted into retail space; in exchange, the atrium was to be expanded with new planters and public seating. Edwin Schlossberg was hired to design the new storefronts and redesign the annex. Johnson was not overly concerned about the closure of the arcade, saying, "It isn't that my ideas have changed. The period has changed." Conversely, David W. Dunlap of The New York Times said the changes were "unquestionably an improvement" both aesthetically and functionally. The New York City Planning Commission had to review and approve the proposal. The Sony Tower was renovated between 1992 and 1994. Windows with bronze gridded frames were installed to close off the atrium, which became Sony stores, and the annex was converted into the Sony Wonder technology museum. The annex was completely gutted because, under guidelines set by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the existing ramps and passageways were too steep. Inside, Dorothea Rockburne was commissioned to paint two fresco murals for the formerly bare sky lobby, and additional staircases, conference centers, and offices were installed on the office stories. Use The new atrium and retail spaces, known as Sony Plaza, were completed in 1994, and the Sony Wonder museum opened in the annex that May. The atrium was criticized for being inhospitable to the homeless, as private security guards patrolled the space. Sony leased four stories at 555 Madison Avenue immediately to the east in February 1995. By the following year, Sony was renovating its space within 555 Madison Avenue; the company installed fiber-optic cables under Madison Avenue to connect its two buildings, and it installed microwave communications equipment atop 555 Madison Avenue. Sony had consolidated most of the operations for its Sony Music Entertainment division at the Sony Tower on 550 Madison Avenue, for which The New York Times noted that "such high-profile and elaborate space is appropriate and necessary". This was part of a move to consolidate Sony's United States operations away from the Sony Corporation of America, which had overseen Sony Pictures and Sony Music, and give more control over the United States operations to executives in Japan. The Wall Street Journal described the equipment upgrades as indicative of "a long-term commitment to the area". In 2002, Sony exercised its option to purchase the building from the cash-strapped AT&T for $236 million, or —a relatively low rate given the building's location in Midtown Manhattan. Two years later, Sony contemplated selling the building once its merger with Bertelsmann was completed. Part of the Sony Wonder museum was renovated in 2008 and reopened the following year. An accumulation of ice dislodged from an upper floor after a February 2010 blizzard, breaking the atrium's glass ceiling and injuring several inside. Chetrit ownership By 2012, Sony sought to sell off the Sony Tower, as the company perceived that the costs of keeping its American headquarters in Midtown were too high. Sony received over 20 bids, including from Joseph Sitt's Thor Equities, Mitsui Fudosan, and a partnership led by the Brunei Investment Agency. All of the bids proposed to convert at least part of the space to hotel or condominium use. In January 2013, Sony announced it was to sell the building to Joseph Chetrit's Chetrit Group for $1.1 billion, leasing back its offices there. Shortly afterward, Sony filed eviction proceedings against Joseph Allaham, a longtime tenant and Chetrit's friend, who operated a pizzeria and a restaurant in the base. Allaham ultimately decided to move his restaurant and retain his pizzeria. The Chetrit Group planned to convert the Sony Tower into condominiums and the first Oetker Collection hotel in the United States. In February 2015, the developers filed a condominium offering that called for 96 residences, which were to be sold at a combined total of $1.8 billion. The offering included what was then considered Manhattan's most expensive residence, a three-story penthouse in the upper stories costing $150 million. Dorothea Rockburne expressed concern that the developers would not adequately preserve two of her frescoes in the sky lobby, which was set to be converted into the hotel's lobby. Sony permanently closed the Sony Wonder Technology Lab in January 2016. Over the following months, Sony moved its headquarters and stores south to 11 Madison Avenue. Olayan Group ownership Redevelopment Following a declining real estate market in the 2010s, Chetrit abandoned its condominium conversion plan. Chetrit sold the building to The Olayan Group in April 2016 for $1.4 billion, relinquishing the "Sony Tower" name. The Olayan Group and Chelsfield announced plans to rebrand 550 Madison Avenue and reconfigure the existing space, which was then empty besides Allaham's pizzeria. A group of banks including ING Group, Bank of East Asia, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, and Natixis provided $570 million in financing to facilitate the redevelopment. The pizzeria closed in September 2017. In late October 2017, The Olayan Group announced plans to renovate the building with designs by Snøhetta, with AAI Architects, P.C. as architect of record. The firm planned to add a glass curtain wall along the base on Madison Avenue, as well as demolish the arcade and annex on the western end of the site, replacing it with a garden. The renovation, anticipated to cost $300 million, would allow the building's owner to raise rents to between , which would be among the city's highest office rent rates. Several architecture critics, architects, and artists voiced their opposition to the plans, and a November protest and petition drew media coverage. Shortly afterward, the LPC voted to calendar the building for consideration as a landmark. Though there were efforts to preserve the interiors, demolition of the building's original ground floor lobby began in January 2018. The LPC determined that the lobby's design had changed significantly when Spirit of Communication was removed and the arcades were enclosed, making the space ineligible for interior landmark status. By February, the original lobby had been demolished. the commission stated that the building was among the "most important postmodernist buildings" worldwide. The LPC approved the updated plans in February 2019. The original plan to demolish the annex and atrium was also scrapped. In Snøhetta's updated plan, the atrium was to be planted with greenery and connected to 717 Fifth Avenue, and the atrium's roof and the annex were to be replaced. Post-redevelopment The new lobby was completed in October 2021, Other major tenants included luxury fashion retailer Hermès, which leased three stories, and private equity company Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, which leased five stories. The atrium opened in November 2022 with three food stalls. The renovated building, known alternatively as 550 Madison, this became the Cote restaurant, which opened in 2026. By May 2025, nearly the entire building had been leased except for the 22nd and 34th floors. The Olayan Group refinanced 550 Madison Avenue in early 2026 with an $800 million loan, at which point it was 96% occupied. ==Impact==

Reception Contemporary commentary The AT&T Building received much publicity from architectural critics from the time plans were announced. Paul Goldberger called it "post-modernism's major monument" but felt that the broken pediment "suggests that a joke is being played with scale that, may not be quite so funny when the building [...] is complete". and dubbed it 1978's "non-building of the year". Michael Sorkin of The Village Voice dismissively characterized the structure as a "Seagram Building with ears". Architects and members of the public wrote sardonic and disapproving letters about the design. Robert Hughes of Time magazine called it "peculiar rather than radical" but said it gave other designers permission "to build their own monuments of the hybrid" postmodernist style. and the architect Edgar Tafel called it "Philip Johnson's foible". The Atlanta Constitution quoted various architects who said the design "couldn't possibly succeed" and was "a tragedy" if taken seriously. Conversely, The Baltimore Sun expressed optimism that the design would inspire similar structures in Downtown Baltimore. The cynical response to the initial plans led Johnson to publicly defend his plan in 1978, both in a New York Times op-ed and a speech for the American Institute of Architects. Der Scutt, architect of the neighboring Trump Tower, said in 1981 in response to criticism of 550 and 590 Madison Avenue: "I can't find anything oppressively hideous in IBM or AT&T. What is wrong with 'a showcase of superscale' in a city that prides itself as being culturally ecstatic about its skyscrapers?" When 550 Madison Avenue was nearly finished, Goldberger re-appraised it as an important structure architecturally, though he said the completion "threatened to be something of an anticlimax". Ellen Posner of The Wall Street Journal said "It is not at all surprising that some of the original negative votes have been recast as positive". After the building was completed, it was received much more positively than during its construction. Conversely, in a 1987 New York magazine poll of "more than 100 prominent New Yorkers", 550 Madison Avenue was one of the ten most disliked structures in New York City. Huxtable disliked the lobby, which she called "an oddly awkward and unsatisfactory space, distorted by its overreaching height and narrow dimensions". Retrospective commentary Sony's redesign of the building's atrium and arcades in the 1990s received mixed criticism. After the 2020s renovation, the architectural critic Justin Davidson wrote that "the link between structure and detail has been snapped. The original lobby and sky lobby are both gone and, with them, Johnson's sense of lugubrious grandeur." Metropolis magazine said of the redesigned plaza: "Snøhetta has succeeded in doing something far greater than giving one historic building a refresh, providing a promising model for putting the public back into" privately owned public spaces. Architectural significance With ornamental additions such as the pediment and ground-level arch, the building challenged architectural modernism's demand for stark functionalism and purely efficient design. Similarly, the critic Reyner Banham thought the building had the potential to reshape architecture in New York City and in the postmodern era. The writer Franz Schulze said that the building had been so controversial because it differed from the "Miesian slabs" (namely, rectangular glass towers) popularized by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in American cities. Johnson described the building as "a symbolic shift from the flat top" of International Style skyscrapers like the nearby Lever House. In a conversation with LPC researchers, Burgee said he received numerous letters from younger architects who expressed their gratitude that "the previous rules no longer apply". and he designed a tombstone for the historian Alfred H. Barr Jr., whose top resembled that of the AT&T Building. For his design of the AT&T Building, Johnson received the Bronze Medallion from the city government in 1978. ==See also==