The General Electric Building, also known as 570 Lexington Avenue, is a historic 50-floor, 640-foot (200 m)-tall, skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States, at the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street). Originally known as the RCA Victor Building when designed in 1931 by John W. Cross of Cross and Cross, and sometimes known by its address to avoid confusion with the later GE Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The building was deeded by RCA to GE before construction was completed.
It backs up to the low Byzantine dome of St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue and shares the same salmon brick color. But from Lexington, the building is an insistently tall 50-floor stylized Gothic tower with its own identity, a classic Art Deco visual statement of suggested power through simplification. The base contains elaborate, generous masonry, architectural figural sculpture, and on the corner above the main entrance, a conspicuous corner clock with the curvy GE logo and a pair of silver disembodied forearms. The crown of the building is a dynamic-looking burst of Gothic tracery, which is supposed to represent radio waves, and is lit from within at night.
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Famous quotes containing the words general, electric and/or building:
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“The family circle has widened. The worldpool of information fathered by the electric media—movies, Telstar, flight—far surpasses any possible influence mom and dad can now bring to bear. Character no longer is shaped by only two earnest, fumbling experts. Now all the world’s a sage.”
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