601 Lexington Avenue
| 601 Lexington Avenue Citigroup Center |
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 Location within Manhattan
Citigroup Center (New York)
Citigroup Center (the US)
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| General information | |
| Type | Office |
| Location | 153 East 53rd Street, New York City |
| Coordinates | 40°45′31″N 73°58′13″W / 40.758533°N 73.970314°WCoordinates: 40°45′31″N 73°58′13″W / 40.758533°N 73.970314°W |
| Construction started | 1974 |
| Completed | October 6, 1976 |
| Opening | October 12, 1977 |
| Cost | $195 million (USD) (equivalent to $787 million) |
| Owner | Boston Properties |
| Height | |
| Architectural | 915 ft (279 m) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 59 |
| Floor area | 1,578,883 sq ft (146,683.0 m2) |
| Lifts/elevators | 38 |
| Design and construction | |
| Architect | Hugh Stubbins / KlingStubbins, Emery Roth & Sons |
| Developer | Boston Properties |
| Structural engineer | Le Messurier Consultants, James Ruderman |
| References | |
The Citigroup Center (formerly Citicorp Center and now known by its address, 601 Lexington Avenue) is an office tower in New York City, located at 53rd Street between Lexington Avenue and Third Avenue in midtown Manhattan. It was built in 1977 to house the headquarters of Citibank. It is 915 feet (279 m) tall, and has 59 floors with 1.3 million square feet (120,000 m²) of office space.
The building is one of the most distinctive and imposing in New York's skyline, thanks to a 45° angled top and a unique stilt-style base. It was designed by architect Hugh Stubbins and structural engineer William LeMessurier. The building is currently owned by Boston Properties, and in 2009, was renamed 601 Lexington Avenue.
The northwest corner of the site was originally occupied by St. Peter's Evangelical Lutheran Church which was founded in 1862 (as the Deutsche Evangelische Lutherische Sanct Petri-Kirche, the original church building was sold and demolished to construct the Grand Central Terminal in 1903). In 1905, the church moved to the location of 54th Street and Lexington Avenue, where it remained until the building was purchased by First National City Bank (later known as Citibank) in 1970.
From the beginning, the Citigroup Center was an engineering challenge. When planning for the skyscraper began in the early 1970s, the northwest corner of the proposed building site was occupied by St. Peter's Lutheran Church. The church allowed Citicorp to demolish the old church and build the skyscraper under one condition: a new church would have to be built on the same corner, with no connection to the Citicorp building and no columns passing through it, because the church wanted to remain on the site of the new development, near one of the intersections. Architects wondered at the time if this demand was too much and would make the proposal unfeasible.
Structural engineer William LeMessurier set the 59-story tower on four massive columns, 114 feet (35 meters) high, positioned at the center of each side, rather than at the corners. This design allowed the corners of the building to cantilever 72 feet (22 meters), providing space at the northwest corner for the new church. To help accomplish this, LeMessurier employed a system of stacked load-bearing braces, in the form of inverted chevrons. Each chevron is designed to distribute tension loads (due to wind) to their center, then downward into the ground through the uniquely positioned columns.
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Wikipedia