The New York Times Building

The New York Times Building is at 620 Eighth Avenue, occupying the eastern side of the avenue between 40th Street and 41st Street, one block west of Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The land lot is rectangular and covers . It has a frontage of on Eighth Avenue to the west and on both 40th Street to the south and 41st Street to the north. The New York Times Building is near Eleven Times Square and the Empire Theatre to the north, the City University of New York's Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism to the east, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal to the west. Prior to the building's construction, the site was occupied by a mixture of buildings. The site had been proposed for redevelopment since 1981 as the southern half of an unbuilt merchandise mart (see ). At Eighth Avenue and 40th Street was a six-story building erected in 1963, which housed the Taylor Business Institute and the SAE Institute. The address 260 West 41st Street contained Sussex House, an eight-story, 140-room dormitory, Behind it was a 16-story office building at 265 West 40th Street. Sex shops, prostitution, and loitering were prevalent on the 41st Street side of the site. out of 55 businesses total. ==Architecture==

The New York Times Building was designed by Renzo Piano and Fox & Fowle It was Piano's first design in New York City. Gensler designed the interior under the supervision of Margo Grant Walsh. AMEC was the main contractor for the core and shell, while Turner Construction was the contractor for the Times space in the lower section of the building. Officially, the New York City Economic Development Corporation owns the site. The Times Building was designed as a green building. During the building's construction, the architects created a mockup of a portion of the building to test out its environmental features. A yearlong study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Center for the Built Environment found the Times Building had significant reductions in annual electricity use, utilized less than half the heating energy, and decreased the peak electric demand compared to similarly sized office buildings. The developers did not wish to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification, Form and facade The Times Building consists of two sections: the 52-story tower on the western portion of the site and a four-story podium occupying the eastern portion. The tower section covers about , with dimensions of . The outer columns on the west and east elevations are recessed several feet into the building. The center bays of the north and south elevations are cantilevered slightly past the outermost columns to the north and south. The facade was made by Benson Global, while the rods were subcontracted to a German sewer-pipe manufacturer. In designing the building, Piano said he was influenced by the massing of the Seagram Building, also in Midtown. Ceramic rods There are about 186,000 ceramic rods on the building's facade. The rods, measuring in diameter, are mounted about in front of the curtain wall and are carried on aluminum "combs". and they can change color with the sun and weather. The rod spacing increases from the base to the top, On the north and south elevations, the screens extend slightly past the notched corners. The ceramic rods also rise to , above the main roof. The logo itself is made of 959 custom aluminum sleeves measuring about in diameter; these are wrapped around the ceramic rods. Shortly after completion, in mid-2008, three men illegally and independently climbed the ceramic rods on the facade. On June 5, 2008, professional climber Alain Robert climbed the north elevation to protest global warming; a second climber (Rey Clarke) scaled the west elevation later that day. The third climber, a Connecticut man, scaled the building on July 9 to protest the terrorist group Al-Qaeda. As a result of these incidents, some of the ceramic rods were removed, particularly on the north and south elevations, and glass panels were installed to deter climbing. and in 2020. Glass wall The glass curtain wall is composed of double-glazed low emissivity panels that extend from the floor to the ceiling of each story. The use of floor-to-ceiling glass was meant to signify the transparency of the media. The notched corners contain exposed steel and lack screens, a design feature that represents the ideal of journalistic transparency. Instead, the corners contain one- and two-story-high rods, which serve as bracing and are designed in a pattern resembling the letter "X" (see ). Structural features Substructure Underneath the site is durable Hartland bedrock. There are forty-two caissons with a diameter of , which extend between deep. They are reinforced with steel bars and could hold of vertical pressure. More than 95 percent of the beams are made of recycled steel. Steel was chosen over concrete because it allows flexible office spaces. The floor slabs are a composite consisting of of concrete on a metal deck. They are designed to carry live loads of , as well as partitions weighing up to . Conversely, on the upper stories, the finished office floors are the slabs themselves. The braces are built in pairs, rather than as single rods, which would have required larger diameters. The central girder on each floor is supported by a Vierendeel truss. The outer girders are connected to the perimeter columns by diagonal beams and to each other by columns. Mechanical features The New York Times Building has a cogeneration plant, which can provide 40 percent of the building's energy requirements. The air from the chillers is delivered from chillers at . It travels to an underfloor air distribution system under each of the Times stories and to the ceilings of the top 21 stories. The shades can also be manually overridden. Stairways on the tower's western and eastern sides also connect each of the tower stories. From 2007 to 2024, the ground-floor lobby had an art installation called Moveable Type, created by artist Ben Rubin and statistics professor Mark Hansen. The work consists of 280 small electronic screens arranged on either of the lobby's two walls, or 560 total. The screens on each wall are arranged in a grid measuring , with forty columns and seven rows. The lobby is supported by exposed intumescent beams and contains oak floors and full-height glass windows. The Times Center also includes a meeting space. It contains seven paper birch trees measuring tall. The garden originally had a moss glen, but this was replaced in 2010 with ferns and grasses. New York Times office unit The Times owned the 2nd to 27th stories Within the Times section of the building, the structural floor slabs are below the finished office floors. and perforated floor tiles are used in the Times conference rooms. The ceiling is divided into a grid of tiles measuring , aligned with the vertical mullions of the facade. The 2nd through 4th stories contain the Times newsroom, which extends into the podium and overlooks the garden. The podium also accommodated the Times web-based staff. Stairs with red banisters connect the newsroom's stories, while a skylight illuminates the workspaces. The spaces were, for the most part, also designed by Gensler. Since law firms generally did not require the open-plan layouts that the Times used, Gensler modified the upper stories' floor-plate dimensions to accommodate more attorneys in the same space. According to the firm's managing principal Robin Klehr Avia, this was done "so you don't have a lot of support areas without enough windows". Some tenants did not use the 5-foot-wide modules that the Times used. Gensler designed several tenants' offices with furniture and color schemes similar to those in the Times offices. ==History==

Context Previous New York Times buildings as seen in 1904 The New York Times, founded in 1851, was first housed in 113 Nassau Street in Lower Manhattan. It moved to 138 Nassau Street, the site of what is now the Potter Building, in 1854. The Times moved to a neighboring five-story edifice at 41 Park Row in 1858. Partially prompted by the development of the neighboring New York Tribune Building, the Times replaced its building in 1889 with a new 13-story building at the same site, one that remains in use by Pace University with some modifications. In 1905, the paper moved to One Times Square at 42nd Street and Broadway. The area surrounding the new headquarters was renamed from Longacre Square to Times Square. Among the UDC's plans was a garment merchandise mart on Eighth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets, opposite Port Authority Bus Terminal. The project was to be completed by the Times Square Redevelopment Corporation, comprising members of the New York state and city governments. David Morse and Richard Reinis were selected in April 1982 to develop the mart, Subsequently, the state and city disputed over the replacement development team, leading the city to withdraw from the partnership in August 1983. The state and city reached a compromise on the development team that October, wherein the mart would be developed by Tishman Speyer, operated by Trammell Crow, and funded by Equitable Life Assurance. Kohn Pedersen Fox designed a 20-story structure with for apparel and computer showrooms. The building would have a limestone and granite facade, a wide arch with a clock spanning 41st Street, arched entrances on Eighth Avenue, and a set of pavilions with ten pyramids on the roof. Kennedy Enterprises was selected to operate a smaller mart in 1987. Chemical Bank had considered occupying office space at the mart before withdrawing in 1989. The mart plan was never completed because of a weakened market. Development By mid-1999, state and city officials were planning a request for proposals for the southern half of the merchandise mart site. The Times parent company, the New York Times Company, proposed a headquarters tower, citing its need to enlarge its operations. In October 1999, the Times reported that its parent company was negotiating for the site. Though the site was highly visible due to the low stature of the Port Authority Bus Terminal to the west, it was also at the extreme corner of both the traditional Times Square area to the north and the Garment District to the south. Nevertheless, as architect Robert A. M. Stern wrote, the New York Times Company likely perceived the site's fringe location as a beneficial attribute. The new site was not commonly considered to be part of Times Square, leading Paul Goldberger of The New Yorker to say that the plan "has implications that go beyond the sentimental". Selection of developer and architect The Times selected Forest City Ratner Companies as the developer for its Eighth Avenue tower in February 2000. The following month, the Times began negotiating with the city and state. The Times wanted to pay $75 million and a two-thirds deduction in real estate taxes, but the state wanted $125 million for the site and the city wanted the Times to pay full taxes. The parties signed a nonbinding agreement in June 2000, wherein the Times agreed to pay $100 million. The Times was to occupy half of the planned tower, a single unit covering the second through 28th floors. The remainder of the space would be operated by Forest City and leased to office tenants. At the time, other media headquarters were being developed nearby, such as the Hearst Tower on 57th Street and the Condé Nast Building at 4 Times Square. Robert A. M. Stern, his colleague Paul Whalen, and Naresh Kapadia of the 42nd Street Development Project created a set of design guidelines in advance of an architectural design competition for the building. They also created a model conforming to ideals set by the chairman of the New York City Planning Commission. The design guidelines were printed in a 48-page program with a statement by Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp. In September 2000, four architects submitted bids for the new tower's design: Renzo Piano, Norman Foster, César Pelli, and the partnership of Frank Gehry and David Childs. Piano called for a rectangular tower rising from a large podium; Foster proposed a right triangle tapering toward the top; Pelli outlined a glass tower with several chamfers; and the Gehry/Childs partnership planned a structure with billowing sheets of glass on the facade. Ultimately, the Times selected Piano's proposal in October 2000, and it selected Gensler as the interior architect in February 2001. The Times and Forest City Ratner negotiated terms of the project, in which the Times would receive $26.1 million in tax breaks. The company would lease the site from the state for $85.6 million over 99 years, considerably below market value. Its payment in lieu of taxes was equivalent to the site's full property tax assessments. In September 2001, the ESDC scheduled a public hearing for the project. Following the September 11 attacks, which occurred in the meantime, the Times reaffirmed its commitment to a new headquarters. That December, the ESDC was authorized to condemn the properties on the site. If the acquisition cost exceeded $85.6 million, the additional cost would be covered by taxpayer funds. By law, the ESDC first had to offer to buy the land from the owners, using the condemnation process only as a last resort. Paul Goldberger wrote that the building, the largest New York City development proposed since the September 11 attacks, "would have drawn plenty of attention even if it had been just another corporate box". Barnett was joined by five other owners who wanted to build their own structure on the land. During the lawsuit, The Village Voice reported that taxpayer funds would need to cover an additional $79 million of the Times site's cost. A New York state judge ruled against Barnett and his co-plaintiffs in August 2002. Over the following year, the state evicted some 55 businesses on the site. The Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear a challenge brought by the landowners in February 2003. That September, the state had assembled the site and the developers started razing existing buildings. Forest City and ING Real Estate held a 42 percent leasehold stake while the New York Times Company owned the remaining 58 percent. Funding In mid-2003, Forest City announced it would request $400 million in tax-free Liberty bonds, allocated for September 11 recovery efforts, to finance the building's construction. Forest City claimed it could not finance its portion of the tower. This request, along with a similar one for the Bank of America Tower three blocks northeast, received public criticism. By October 2003, the construction of the headquarters had been delayed by a year. Forest City had not been able to secure an anchor tenant for its portion of the building, and the Liberty-bond negotiations between Forest City and the state and city governments had stalled. ESDC head Charles A. Gargano reportedly held an unfavorable view of Forest City's application for bonds. If financing could not be obtained before construction started in 2004, the project would have to be canceled. GMAC provided $320 million in construction funding for the project in July 2004. Times officials predicted that work would start in the middle of that year. That November, the Times sold its old 229 West 43rd Street building to Tishman Speyer for $175 million, though the paper planned to remain at that building for the time being. This prompted criticism from some of the site's former landowners, and The Village Voice said the proceeds from the sale "wiped out the need for much, if not all, of the taxpayer money the Times asked for". Forest City's executive vice president MaryAnne Gilmartin said the development would conclude a revitalization of the western extremities of Midtown Manhattan. The first steel was erected starting in April 2005, The steelwork had reached a height of 400 feet by October 2005. By then, ten of the eleven former landowners were requesting that the city and state governments give them additional compensation, as they alleged their land had been seized at well below market value. The eleventh landowner had been satisfied with a settlement. A groundbreaking ceremony took place in late 2005. Real-estate industry executives also expressed uncertainty that architectural renderings of the ceramic curtain wall, and the site's location near the Port Authority Bus Terminal, would be a drawback for tenants. During construction, in March 2006, a rod fell from the tower and dented the roof of a passing car, slightly injuring its occupants. The steel superstructure was topped out during July 2006. while law firm Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt signed for the 36th and 37th stories. Investment firm Legg Mason signed a lease in August 2006 for the 45th to 50th stories, committing to develop the roof garden and a conference center on the 52nd story. Simultaneously, Forest City also announced its intention to buy ING's stake in the ground-story retail and upper-story office space. Goodwin Procter leased the 23rd through 27th, 29th, and 30th stories in March 2007. The 38th floor was taken that April by Korean architecture firm Samoo Architects & Engineers and developer JP Properties, The following month, on June 11, the Times shifted its publishing operations from 43rd Street to its new Eighth Avenue headquarters. Times reporter David W. Dunlap wrote that Piano had described the new building as having "lightness, transparency and immateriality", which intentionally did not fit the traditional image of the "old-fashioned newspaper". The Japanese company Muji opened a store at the base during May 2008. The four other retail spaces were leased by grocery store Dean & DeLuca, Japanese restaurant Inakaya, and a roadside-themed cafe. Piano supported the modifications, By January 2009, the Times was negotiating to sell the nineteen stories that it occupied, the 2nd through 21st stories, to W. P. Carey for $225 million. In exchange, the Times would lease back its floors for $24 million a year for 10 years. The leaseback was finalized in March 2009. 2010s to present Part of the 44th story was sublet in 2010 to Kepos Capital, which occupied the space for eight years. By late 2013, the Times wished to lease out the 21st story, the only part of the building that it still owned. Technology company Bounce Exchange leased the 21st story in early 2015 from the Times, which had previously housed its sales and marketing department there. In December 2016, the Times announced it was subletting at least eight floors, totaling , to save the costs of occupying that space. Gensler was hired to reorganize the space, including removing some corner offices that belonged to high-ranking executives such as the CEO and the publisher. Over half of the sublet space, covering , was sublet a little more than a year later to financial firm Liquidnet. During late 2018, British outsourcing firm Williams Lea Tag signed a 10-year lease for of space on the 10th story. Covington & Burling also expanded to the 44th story that year. The Times announced in February 2018 that it would repurchase the building's leasehold from W. P. Carey. Brookfield Properties, which had acquired Forest City Ratner, refinanced the building's first floor and the 28th- through 50th-story condominiums in late 2018 for $635 million. The loan was provided by Deutsche Bank, Bank of America, Barclays Capital, and Citi; it consisted of a $515 million commercial mortgage-backed security and a $120 million junior note. Some $115 million in mezzanine debt was also provided. In February 2025, the credit rating of Brookfield's office space was downgraded after several major tenants moved out. Brookfield had taken out mortgage loans totaling $900 million, which needed to be repaid by that December, and there was not enough rental income to pay off the loans. == Critical reception ==

When Piano was selected for the Times Building, architectural critic Martin Filler called the selection "very disappointing", saying that "a lot of [Piano's] commercial work is really terrible". After the September 11 attacks, Muschamp wrote, "There may be no more constructive way to fill the architectural void [of the World Trade Center] than to revisit the history of progressive architecture in this town", including the planned Times Building and Hearst Tower. Times design writer Steven Heller lamented the move, saying: "The Piano building will be a showpiece, not a home." Architecture magazine wrote in early 2002 that, with its paucity of bright signage that characterized other Times Square buildings, "The architect has chosen to speak to the Times, not to Times Square." James Gardner of the New York Sun said that he did not believe the Times Building to be "a bad building" but that the ceramic bars "becomes the sort of pure ornamentalism that betrays so much contemporary architecture that overzealously aspires to appear purely functional". When the building was completed, Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote: "Depending on your point of view, the Times Building can thus be read as a poignant expression of nostalgia or a reassertion of the paper's highest values as it faces an uncertain future. Or, more likely, a bit of both." Suzanne Stephens of Architectural Record wrote that the building "seems strangely bland in New York's architecturally variegated context". The American Institute of Architects' 2007 survey ''List of America's Favorite Architecture'' ranked the New York Times Building among the top 150 buildings in the United States. In addition, the building received the American Institute of Architects' 2009 Honor Award. ==See also==