Meta Platforms NYC Headquarters

 office building, high-rise, interesting place, 1925_construction, Renaissance Revival (architecture)

217-foot, 14-story Renaissance-revival office building completed in 1925 as an annex to the Wanamaker Department Store across East 9th Street (now replaced by an apartment building). Designed by Daniel H. Burnham & Co. of Chicago and built in two stages (1903-07 and 1924-25) for John Wanamaker, who had planned to expand and occupy the entire block, but an existing lease in the 9-story Jones Building at the northeast corner of Broadway and East 8th prevented the expansion plans from fully realizing at first.

The annex was constructed around this site. Finally, in 1924 the store was able to demolish the Jones Building and complete the Broadway and East 8th street facades of the annex as planned. The completed annex contained 32 acres of retail space, as well as a 1,300-seat auditorium and a large restaurant. In 1945, the auditorium was converted to one of the city's first television studios.

The longer facades on 8th & 9th Street have 15 bays, while the Lafayette & Broadway facades are each nine bays wide. The 3-story limestone base has piers with granite bases and molded capitals, scrolled keystones on the 2nd-story round-arches, rope molding, and crowning denticulated molding. There are paired windows in each bay on the 3rd floor.

The upper floors have three windows per bay, with paneled piers and spandrels, molded window surrounds, egg-and-dart moldings, and an arcaded 13th floor with fluted Ionic columns between pairs of segmental-arched windows. There is an elaborate roof cornice incorporating the 14th floor, featuring lion masks, dentils, scrolled brackets, rosettes, egg-and-dart moldings, deep soffits, and acanthus. The ground floor on the 8th Street side has several recessed loading docks in the middle.

Wanamaker's Department Store closed in 1955, and the cast-iron north building was destroyed in a spectacular fire shortly thereafter. The annex was sold to investors who converted it to offices and showrooms. The building has been redeveloped as a twenty-first-century office environment to attract creative talent identified within the area's growing service-orientated businesses. The first and second floors are occupied by retail spaces. While the building has been largely altered, one original plaster column remains on the second floor interior in the southeast corner at the crosstreets of 8th and Lafayette which was formerly occupied by Kmart until that floor was bought out by Facebook.

Meta Platforms--formerly known Facebook--occupies approximately 800,000 sq ft of the 1 million sq ft building and are now listed as the sole office tenant. Their offices were designed by Gehry Partners.

www.vno.com/office/property/770-broadway/3311677/landin...
www.emporis.com/building/wanamakerstoreannex-newyorkcit...
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archive.org/details/realestaterecord7319unse/page/1395/...
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