Baxter Building

Baxter Building
The original Baxter Building Art by Jack Kirby
First appearance	Original version: Fantastic Four #3 (Mar. 1962) Current version: Fantastic Four vol. 3 #38 (Feb. 2001)
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Creators	Stan Lee Jack Kirby

The Baxter Building is a fictitious 35-story office building appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The building is depicted in Manhattan, and its five upper floors house the Fantastic Four's headquarters.

The Baxter Building first appeared in Fantastic Four #3 (March 1962) and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The Baxter Building was the first comic-book superhero lair to be well known to the general public in the fictional world.

The Baxter Building is destroyed in Fantastic Four #278 (May 1985), written and drawn by John Byrne. Explaining why he chose to destroy the iconic structure, Byrne said, "The FF’s HQ building had long been established as 35 stories in height. Quite impressive in 1962, but not so much in 1980, when I came to the book. It didn’t seem like I could just start referring to the building as taller than all those previous stories had made it, so I decided on something a wee bit more dramatic."

Located at 42nd Street and Madison Avenue in New York City, it had been built in 1949 by the Leland Baxter Paper Company. Originally designed as a high-rise industrial site to accommodate pulp recycling machinery to serve the mid-Manhattan area, each floor height is 24 feet (7.3 m). The top 5 floors of the 35-story building were purchased outright by the Fantastic Four.

The building's steel frame construction utilized the first application of "K bracing" in the world and is one of the strongest structures of its kind. The Baxter Building is located a few city blocks from the United Nations Building. Reed Richards has applied for many land-use zone variations to allow massive reconstruction of the top five floors for the installation of a heavily-silenced silo, with a muffled rocket.

The design of the headquarters of the Fantastic Four is along strictly utilitarian lines, except for apartments and public areas. All aspects of the design are constantly being improved, including security. For example, windows are 2 ft (0.61 m) thick composites of various glasses and plastics which are mirrored on the outside. Solid, armored, exterior walls are also mirror-clad and are indistinguishable from transparent sections.