MetLife Building - History

History

When it opened on March 7, 1963 the Pan Am Building (as it was known at the time) was the largest commercial office space in the world. It faced huge initial unpopularity, being described as an "ugly behemoth", due to its lack of proportion and huge scale—it dwarfed the New York Central Building to the north and the Grand Central Terminal to the south.

The last tall tower erected in New York City before laws were enacted preventing corporate logos and names on the tops of buildings, it bore 15' tall "Pan Am" displays on its north and south faces and 25' tall globe logos east and west.

Pan Am originally occupied 15 floors of the building. It remained Pan Am's headquarters even after Metropolitan Life Insurance Company bought the building in 1981. By 1991 Pan Am's presence had dwindled to four floors; during that year Pan Am moved its headquarters to Miami. Shortly afterwards the airline ceased operations. On Thursday September 3, 1992, MetLife announced that it would remove Pan Am signage from the building. Robert G. Schwartz, the chairman, chief executive, and president of MetLife, said that the company decided to remove the Pan Am sign since Pan Am ceased operations. At the time MetLife was headquartered in the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower.

In 2005, MetLife sold the building for $1.72 billion, the record price at the time for an office building in the U.S. The buyer was a joint venture of Tishman Speyer Properties, the New York City Employees' Retirement System, and the New York City Teachers' Retirement System.