Ernst & Young Tower (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, 2002_construction

575-foot, 40-story postmodern office building completed in 2002. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (Bill Pedersen), the office tower has a silver-blue glass curtain wall, and features a dramatic angular shape with a sloping fin on the Seventh Avenue side. It is also known as the Ernst & Young Tower, serving as home of the accounting firm.

The building is a celebration of angles. From the white spandrel-accented sloping channel that runs diagonally up the north side of the building to the very roof, itself, which slopes down from the 40th floor to the 38th in a kind of a spiral. The angles help create the illusion that this is several buildings, not just one. Because of the angles, each floor has a different layout, with no 90-degree square corners.

The main entrance is at the center on the 7th Avenue facade, covered by a metal canopy. The storefront to the north wraps around the curved northeast corner to continue across the north facade, which has a recessed subway entrance near the west end, and another storefront at the west end. There is another storefront south of the main entrance, continuing partway onto the south facade. To the left is a smaller subway entrance (covered by a small metal canopy), and several service doors and freight entrances with roll-down metal gates at the west end. Above the main entrance, the 2nd and 3rd floors have wide 4-over-5 panes of glass, framed at the left and top by pale-green translucent panels. There are grey aluminum panels to the north and south, supporting large, angled signboards. A curving video board wraps around the northeast corner, and a single large signboard covers the 2nd & 3rd floors on the north facade, except for at the west end, above the storefront, where the facade is fronted by a giant Sephora logo of three vertical, curving, silver lines with black metal bands. Additional signage is stacked on the northeast corner, up to the 7th floor. On the south facade there are metal and glass panels on the 2nd & 3rd floors, with metal louvers on the 4th floor. At the west end, the facade angles out above the ground floor, with metal louvers on the 2nd-4th floors.

On the main face of the east facade, the south end has narrow silver spandrels, with narrow silver metal fins at their north ends, up to the 12th floor; these are also mirrored on the east end of the south facade. Further north on the east facade, beginning just to the right of the main entrance, a diagonal swath of grey metal, triple spandrel bands, proceeds across the facade, angling up and to the south, and ending at the 23rd floor, where there is a small setback. The north edge of the swath is bordered by a sloping metal fin, with red letters arrange vertically along the fin, spelling out "ERNST & YOUNG" on both sides. The sheer glass curtain wall continues up the rest of the facade to a light-grey metal screening for mechanical equipment at southeast corner of the top three floors that slope gently to the north. The metal screening runs across the full width of the south facade, including the angled west end. The north facade has a similar sloping swath of grey metal, triple spandrel bands, beginning narrower at the east end, and angling up and to the west. The west part of the north facade projects slightly forward, beginning at the left edge of the spandrels, which run higher than those on the east facade, all the way up to a setback at the 37th floor. The far west bay of the north facade is set-back, and the west facade has a plain curtain wall, with a projecting section angling back gently toward the south end. A large, white-lit Ernst & Young logo crowns the north end of the east facade at the top floors.

The ground floor is occupied by a Red Lobster restaurant, Champs Sports, and Sephora cosmetics. On August 13, 2004, a freight elevator suddenly shot up and crashed into the top level ceiling, killing one person, Carl DeClercq, the security guard and elevator operator.

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