Citigroup Center

The Citigroup Center is at 601 Lexington Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. It takes up the majority of a city block bounded by Lexington Avenue to the west, 54th Street to the north, Third Avenue to the east, and 53rd Street to the south. The land lot covers with a frontage of on Lexington Avenue and a west–east length of . The New York City Subway's Lexington Avenue/51st Street station is directly underneath the building. Thirty-one parcels were acquired and cleared to make way for the development. Some of the other lots contained commercial spaces, ranging from small shops to the upscale Cafe Chauveron. The site also included the Medical Chambers on 54th Street, which was owned by a cooperative of doctors. St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church occupied the corner of Lexington Avenue and 54th Street; its sanctuary was rebuilt when the Citigroup Center was developed. New Jersey–based company Designetics designed pylons with a cruciform cross-section and street lamps at the top. Seven lighting pylons are placed along the streets that surround the block. Three custom pylons—at the northwest, northeast, and southwest corners of the block—include pedestrian and vehicular traffic lights. by 2016, they had been painted gray. == History ==

First National City Bank (later Citibank) was founded in 1812 and, for over a century, had its headquarters in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan. The company was headquartered at 52 Wall Street until 1908, when it moved to 55 Wall Street. After National City Bank and the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company merged in 1929, the new company, City Bank Farmers Trust, moved into a new structure at 20 Exchange Place, which was completed in 1931, and opened a Midtown office at 399 Park Avenue, one block west of the present Citigroup Center, in 1961. On the northwestern corner of the future Citigroup Center site was St. Peter's Lutheran Church, which had been founded in 1862 as a German-speaking congregation. which was completed in 1905. The congregation, which at its peak had a membership of over one thousand, had decreased to below 300 by the 1960s, prompting the congregation to consider relocating to near the United Nations headquarters. The acquisition was headed by brokers Donald Schnabel and Charles McArthur of Julien J. Studley Inc. St. Peter's Church's membership was increasing again by then, and members of the congregation were loath to part with their property. Lexman gradually acquired the other lots on the block. In February 1970, the congregation signed a letter of intent to sell its building, as well as the air rights above the church, In exchange, the congregation received $9 million and was named as a condominium partner in the tower's development. The congregation saw a $4 million net profit, as its new building cost $5 million. Members of the congregation formally approved the sale of their building in May 1971. Hugh Stubbins & Associates was hired to develop plans for a large building on the city block, and St. Peter's Church hired Edward Larrabee Barnes as a design consultant by the beginning of 1971. By July 1973, land acquisition was almost entirely complete, although the last parcel was not acquired until November 1975, when the lot at 884 Third Avenue was purchased. but the New York City Department of City Planning would not approve a zoning change to permit that use. In part because of Peterson's insistence, the plans included a publicly accessible plaza with shopping available. Citicorp Center was one of the few large structures in Manhattan that were being erected in the mid-1970s. At the peak of construction, three thousand people were employed, and 565 workers were on site simultaneously. The cornerstone for the new St. Peter's Church was laid on November 1, 1976. Citibank acquired two buildings at 148 and 152 East 53rd Street, immediately south of the new tower, the next month. The company did not intend to develop the sites of these buildings, but they contained topless bars, which Citibank officials perceived would decrease the value of the tower. The bank's vice president for real estate management, Arthur E. Driscoll, had studied vacancy rates at fourteen nearby "prime office buildings" while Citicorp Center was being developed. The first tenants moved to the office building in April 1977. but some of the other retailers included restaurants serving cuisine of various countries. St. Peter's Church was dedicated on December 4, 1977, and the Nevelson Chapel was separately dedicated the same month. Initially, the tower's slanted roof created an ice problem during winter, as snow and ice would slide down the roof onto the sidewalk. Furthermore, the shopping concourse was initially only lightly used and largely unknown to the public. The plaza on Lexington Avenue opened by July 1978. By 1980, Citicorp counted 25,000 daily visitors to the shopping concourse, but some of the stores had already closed down because of a lack of patronage. 1978 engineering crisis Due to material changes during construction, the building as completed was vulnerable to collapse in high winds. LeMessurier's original design for the chevron load braces had used welded joints. To save money, Bethlehem Steel changed the plans in 1974 to use bolted joints, which was accepted by LeMessurier's office but not known to the engineer himself. LeMessurier recalculated the wind loads on the building with quartering winds. LeMessurier found that quartering winds would significantly increase the load at the bolted joints. The work was not publicized at the time, as it took place during the 1978 New York City newspaper strike and very few people were notified of the issue. A National Institute of Standards and Technology reassessment of the engineering crisis in 2019, using modern technology, indicated that the quartering wind loads were not as severe as LeMessurier and Hartley had thought. 1980s and 1990s As completed, Citicorp Center was divided into three separate condominium-style ownership stakes. One condominium was owned by the church, while the other two were 61.55 and 32.85 percent ownership stakes in the office stories. In October 1987, Citicorp sold the 61.55 percent ownership stake (consisting of the 23rd through 59th floors), along with a one-third stake in its former 399 Park Avenue headquarters, to Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance Company for $670 million. Citicorp used the profits from the sale to reduce its losses, which in the first half of 1987 totaled $2.32 billion; it continued to own the remaining stories at Citicorp Center. At the time, Citicorp was developing One Court Square across the East River in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens. The new building in Queens was one subway stop away from Citicorp Center and 399 Park Avenue, allowing Citicorp to split its offices between the buildings. In May 1995, Citicorp commenced a $15 million, eighteen-month renovation of the shopping concourse, which was designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects. The shopping concourse was renamed the Shops at Citicorp Center and bookstore Barnes & Noble was named as the anchor tenant, taking . Dai-Ichi and Citigroup—the latter of which had been formed in 1998 through a merger of Citicorp and the Travelers Companies—arranged to jointly sell both condominium shares. The sale was delayed after Boston Properties offered to buy Dai-Ichi's stake. Eric Hadar's company, Allied Partners, along with Boston Properties, ultimately finalized their purchase of both condominium shares that April. The price was $755 million, including closing costs and taxes, and Citigroup relocated to 399 Park Avenue. One of the stilts was structurally reinforced following the September 11 attacks, Boston Properties bought Allied Partners' stake in the Citigroup Center in 2006 for $100 million. The same year, Boston Properties began rebranding the building as 601 Lexington Avenue. A new Lexington Avenue lobby was constructed and the tower stories' entrance was relocated from 53rd Street to Lexington Avenue. In addition, a ramp was installed on 53rd Street and a reception area was added to the northern entrance of St. Peter's Church. By 2013, Citigroup only occupied three stories at the Citigroup Center. The next year, Boston Properties sold a 45 percent ownership stake in the Citigroup Center, along with proportional stakes in the Atlantic Wharf Office Building and 100 Federal Street in Boston, to companies associated with Norges Bank Investment Management. These firms paid a combined $1.5 billion. Boston Properties was contemplating renovations to the building by 2016. The company filed alteration plans for the plaza that July, The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) designated the building as a city landmark in December. The same month, Boston Properties announced plans to renovate the office annex, which would be rebranded 159 East 53rd Street. Gensler revealed its design for a refurbished entry plaza and a new atrium space in March 2017, and work on the plaza commenced that June, with the original fountain (which had been part of the landmark designation) being demolished. Following the completion of the renovation, in late 2019, Anna Castellani signed a lease for a food hall at the base of the Citigroup Center. In October 2019, London-based company etc.venues agreed to operate a conference center on the 14th floor. 2020s to present In 2021, St. Peter's Church at the Citigroup Center was seriously damaged after a broken water main flooded its space; the church underwent emergency repairs, which took a year to complete. In addition, Boston Properties converted the shopping concourse into a food hall named the Hugh. Boston Properties and Norges Bank Investment Management refinanced the Citigroup Center in December 2021 with a $1 billion mortgage from four banks. At the time, the building's office space was 96.3 percent occupied, and the tenants largely included financial firms and law offices. Other large tenants by then included Citibank, Kirkland & Ellis, and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. == Architecture ==

to the left and the Seagram Building to the right|left The Citigroup Center consists of three structures: the office tower, the annex, and a sanctuary for St. Peter's Church at the base of the office tower. The tower was designed by architect Hugh Stubbins, along with associate architects Emery Roth & Sons, for the First National City Bank (later Citibank). Of the other principals at Hugh A. Stubbins & Associates, architect Peter Woytuk was most involved in the design, while project manager W. Easley Hammer oversaw the construction. In addition, Edward Larrabee Barnes was the consulting architect, The general contractor was the HRH Construction Corporation), and the steel contractor was Bethlehem Steel. Numerous contractors supplied other material for the building. Form and facade The Citigroup Center tower rises 59 stories high, with its roof about above ground level. Since it is raised 13 stories above ground, the tower has 46 usable stories. At the time of completion, Citicorp Center was the seventh-tallest or eighth-tallest building in the world, as well as the city's fifth-tallest building. It extends east to Third Avenue and includes part of the building's shopping concourse. On 54th Street is a loading dock that serves the tower, annex, and church. Each facade segment measures and consists of both glass panes and aluminum plates. To conserve energy, each window is double-glazed; the inner pane is coated with chrome plating. The spandrels were manufactured by Flour City Architectural Metals, a firm based in Glen Cove, New York. The aluminum is silver-colored, like that on the Pepsi-Cola Building and One Chase Manhattan Plaza, because Stubbins thought a dark color would not allow observers to "see the shade and shadow". The roof was originally intended to face west and contain several terraces, but the architects rotated the roof southward to accommodate flat-plate solar collectors, which they believed would produce hot water that could dehumidify air and reduce the need for other energy for cooling. Starting in February 1975, engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted a twelve-month feasibility study for the installation of such a system. Afterward, the system was scrapped, either because of the smaller-than-expected savings, the cost of the required refined mechanical systems, Even after the solar-collector plans were scrapped, the design was kept; Stubbins wrote that the roof "relieves the uniformity of flat-topped towers proliferating in the center of the city". This made Citicorp Center the first postmodern skyscraper in New York City with an entirely decorative roof. The roof was also fitted with solar panels in 1983, when Consolidated Edison and Citibank sponsored a four-year solar panel test. Plaza A large plaza, beneath street level, which gave additional floor area to New York City developers as a zoning "bonus" for including open space outside their buildings. While many developers took advantage of the "bonus", the New York City Planning Commission found in 1975 that many of these plazas ranged from "bleak, forlorn places" to those that were "forbidding and downright hostile". In response, the City Planning Commission's Urban Design Group was formed in 1967 to determine how to improve plaza designs, influencing a design handbook that the City Planning Commission published in 1975. The plaza has an area of . Under the zoning laws, its presence allowed the tower to be designed with a maximum floor area ratio of 18:1, higher than the 15:1 ratio specified for the area. On the south side of the plaza is an entrance to the Lexington Avenue/51st Street subway station. The Citigroup Center's entrance replaces two previous subway entrances on the sidewalk. During the plaza's construction, the developers collaborated with the numerous public agencies that had a stake in the project, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operated the subway station. The exterior was designed by Stubbins and Hammer, while the interior was furnished by Vignelli Associates. The church's congregation permitted Citicorp to erect the office tower only if an edifice, structurally unconnected to the tower, were built at the same location as the congregation's old building. Andrew Alpern and Seymour Durst characterized the agreement as "ecumenically joining God and mammon to the benefit of both". In addition, at least 63 percent of the church was to have "nothing built above it". The church was described by the architectural writer David W. Dunlap in 2004 as the city's "most architecturally successful postwar sanctuary". The church originally connected directly to Citigroup Center's annex, but the connection was removed in the mid-2000s due to security concerns caused by the September 11 attacks. The structure rises about above ground and above the plaza. Another window at the corner of Lexington Avenue and 54th Street overlooks the pipe organ inside. Stubbins had intended the structure's shape to resemble a pair of hands held up in prayer, The interior is divided into two primary levels. The upper level has a narthex with a reception desk, which is accessed from 54th Street and contains a stairway that descends to a "living room" on the lower level. the chapel is named for its designer, Louise Nevelson. The lower-level living room is a carpeted space with a dropped ceiling, circular columns, and doors leading west to the sanctuary. The sanctuary itself is adjacent to and slightly below the lower plaza, with simple decorations including plaster walls and ceiling, granite floors, and red-oak furniture. The sanctuary has movable pews, which can seat up to 850 people positioned in the sanctuary's northwestern corner. St. Peter's Church also hosts a jazz ministry created by the Rev. John Garcia Gensel, who in 1965 became the Minister to the Jazz Community. The jazz ministry has sponsored several programs over the years, The church has hosted memorials and funerals for jazz musicians such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and Thelonious Monk. Each of the tower stories measures , or in total. Within the office stories, the elevator shafts and emergency stairs are embedded in a service core at the center of each story. The core is about , while the floor space around the core is just less than wide. Stilts The tower is supported by four stilts This design prevents the stilt from buckling. In 2002, following the September 11 attacks the previous year, one of the stilts was reinforced with blast-resistant shields of steel and copper as well as steel bracing. There is also an octagonal elevator core in the middle of the building, Each elevation of the facade has six chevrons, which are eight stories tall. This story is used as mechanical space. this contrasted with structures such as Chicago's John Hancock Center in which the diagonal beams could be seen from the outside. Following the Citicorp Center engineering crisis of 1978, workers installed steel plates over each joint. Interior The tower contains approximately of rentable space. At plaza level is another entrance designed by Hugh Stubbins Associates' successor KlingStubbins, which is made of glass and aluminum. The lowest level, corresponding to the lower lobby, includes a plant-filled atrium measuring high, with a skylight measuring . The corner of Third Avenue and 54th Street contained an entrance to the lowest level of the shopping concourse, while on 54th Street was an entrance to the second level. Overall, the stores were intended as a commitment to the city, a corporate symbol, and a tourist attraction, according to one of Citicorp's vice presidents, Arthur E. Driscoll. The shopping concourse was renamed The Shops at Citicorp Center in 1995, and it was known as the Atrium by 2016. Mechanical features In the office stories, the elevators and stairs are clustered in a central core. Although each of the upper or lower decks serves only odd or even floors, visitors can travel between odd and even floors using escalators. Each of the elevators consists of two standard elevator cabs that operate simultaneously in one shaft. The elevators cost 25 percent more than standard elevators but allowed for a 24 percent reduction in the floor area taken up by elevators, as twenty-six single-deck elevator shafts would have been required otherwise. The building also contained 2,500 sensors to monitor the mechanical systems, such as HVAC, lighting, electrical, sprinkler, life-safety, security, and elevator systems. During the summer, the building used a conventional air-conditioning system, offsetting any energy saved by the heat-deflecting facade. The equipment weighs and includes a concrete block measuring . == Impact ==

Reception As one of three office buildings approved in Manhattan during 1974, Citicorp Center received much media attention during its construction. After the design was announced, the architectural writer Ada Louise Huxtable criticized the design in The New York Times, saying that the tower "has neither romanticism nor structural rationalism but, instead, appears to have been painstakingly invented with a tortured logic through a series of pragmatic and esthetic compromises". As the building was being completed, Huxtable took a less harsh tone, saying that it contained a "clear desire for design quality" despite the drawbacks of the form and roof. A writer for the New York Daily News described the building as being a typical New York City office structure that would only attract notice if it were built elsewhere. A New York magazine writer, Suzanne Stephens, stated that the building was simply a modified version of a 1950s skyscraper, Nevertheless, Heckscher believed the atrium's silver cladding and light fixtures to be unwelcoming and suggestive of the indoors, Other critics described Citicorp Center in a largely positive light. The historian and writer John Tauranac described the tower as the "most dramatic new skyscraper" in New York City since the completion of 30 Rockefeller Plaza several decades prior. The architect and writer Robert A. M. Stern said Citicorp Center was the summation of the "unique architectural and urbanistic character that made Fifty-third Street at once an enclave within midtown and a microcosm of midtown itself". The same year, the American Institute of Steel Construction gave its Architectural Award of Excellence to Citicorp for the building's design. and Hugh Stubbins and Associates received the AIA's R.S. Reynolds Memorial Award in 1981 for using aluminum in Citicorp Center's design. The AIA's 2007 List of America's Favorite Architecture ranked the Citigroup Center among the top 150 buildings in the United States. In mid-2016, the Landmarks Preservation Commission proposed protecting twelve buildings in East Midtown, including the Citigroup Center, in advance of proposed changes to the area's zoning. On December 6, 2016, the LPC designated the Citigroup Center as a city landmark. The sloped roof of the building has been used for branding purposes. For instance, it is included on the label of Chock full o'Nuts coffee. In addition, the top left corner of the first "M" in Manhattan Mini Storage's logo was sloped to resemble the Citigroup Center's roof. == See also ==