Profile

499 Park Avenue / Park Tower

New York, New York
Completed 1981

Lead Designer: James Ingo Freed

Investment office building with ground floor retail

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This 27-story tower was undertaken to provide deluxe office facilities to tenants seeking a wide range of individualized service and a prime midtown address.

The design grew directly from its narrow corner site on Park Avenue. The response is formal, vigorous, and direct. Maintaining the massing and scale of its masonry neighbors, the tower rises straight up from the sidewalk; it reinforces the street wall while establishing a unique identity as a black crystalline shaft cut, jewel-like, with light-catching facets. One such facet announces the main entrance, which angles through the building to connect with a glazed 55-foot-high atrium on 59th Street. The public passage provides an eventful shortcut in this busy part of town, relieved by natural light, plantings and a 3-part relief by Jean Dubuffet — a major work of art that delights both public and private realms.

The building's service core was located in a corner of the site in order to maximize office space. The role of primary wind-resistance played by the normally symmetrical core was assumed instead by the tower's specially engineered skeletal frame. Innovative solutions were also designed for many of the building's operational and support systems, each requiring a unique response to the specific problems posed by prime accommodations on the sliver site.

Major Components

198,000 s/f office space on 25 floors (9,000 s/f typical); 4,500 s/f lobby; 4,500 s/f ground floor retail; 900 s/f atrium; 29,000 s/f mechanical/2 basement levels

Awards

I. M. Pei & Partners services

Complete architectural services; Interior Design of public spaces

Structural

Irwin Cantor & Associates, P.C., New York, NY 

Mechanical

Cosentini Associates LLP, New York, NY

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