History
In 1959 the City of New York attempted to acquire through eminent domain the land under this development as part of the Battery Park Urban Renewal Area. The plan involved consolidating several blocks into a "superblock" for public housing. When that plan fell through the city hoped to entice the New York Stock Exchange to relocate to the property. However the owner of the property—the firm of Atlas McGrath—successfully sued to retain their land, claiming they were more than willing to develop the site privately.
The building is 640 feet (195 m) tall with 50 floors. The building was designed by William Lescaze & Assocs. and Kahn & Jacobs.
The facade was designed by Nevio Maggiora, consisting of a boxlike "beehive" pattern with the windows recessed within, made of aluminum-clad wall elements resembling a type of thermally activated elevator button popular at the time of construction.
On August 5, 1970, the building suffered a fire in which two people were killed and 35 injured. The deaths were caused after an occupied elevator was "summoned" to the burning floor when one of the thermally-activated call buttons - designed to react to a warm finger tapping it - reacted instead to the heat of the fire on that floor.
The building was renovated in 1994, and repainted from a dark Black/Grey Color scheme to a lighter White/Light Grey color. Today One New York Plaza stands as one of the more prominent buildings of Lower Manhattan, being the southernmost skyscraper on Manhattan.
Notable occupants of One New York Plaza include Salomon Brothers in its heyday, Goldman Sachs, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, and Morgan Stanley.
Read more about this topic: 1 New York Plaza
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