4 Times Square (New York City, New York)

809-foot, 48-story postmodern office building completed in 1999. Designed by Fox & Fowle Architects for the Durst Organization, its official height is to the top of the mast structure. The roof deck is at 701 feet, and the mast antenna reaches 1,143 feet. A new 358-foot antenna replaced the original antenna in October 2003.

Formerly known as the Condé Nast Building, now officially 4 Times Square, the office tower has two orientations: on the side facing Broadway it takes on the character of Times Square and its active and dynamic environment, and on the side facing 42nd Street it takes on the more sober characteristics of the mid-town Manhattan business community. It excels as a piece of urban theater, with a cluster of neon signs at the base and an eruption of high technology hardware popping out of the top.

NASDAQ's MarketSite is located at the northwest corner of the building. It is a 7-story cylindrical tower with a high-tech electronic display, providing market quotes, financial news and advertisements. The ground floor of the MarketSite contains a television studio with a wall of monitors and an arc of windows looking out onto Times Square.

The north facade on 43rd Street, clad in a grid of grey stone and glass, spans 13 bays to the corner cylinder. In the easternmost bay is a secondary entrance to the messenger center, topped by vents; the next three bays have the main north entrance, with a slightly-recessed 2-story glass wall. There are two revolving doors and a central traditional door, all covered by a stainless-steel and glass canopy. The other ground-floor bays have wide loading docks and service entrances. The upper floors of the 8-story base have double-windows with vents on top in each bay. The 3rd-4th and 5th-6th floors are grouped together, as are the 7th-8th floors, in which every other pier is eliminated, creating double-wide bays. The northwest corner cylinder rises just higher than the base.

The ground floor on Broadway is lined with a variety of storefronts in different styles and materials; above, most of the glass-and-metal curtain wall is covered by large sign boards. The rounded southwestern corner was (until June 2010) home to a flagship restaurant & store for the ESPN (Sports News Network), but as of Oct 2012 this has been replaced by a branch of the Swedish design clothing store "H&M" instead, with one large video board wrapping around the rounded corner. Above two lower levels of plate-glass show-windows, the curtain wall of the base continues onto the south facade on 42nd Street, ending two bays into the grey masonry that clads the rest of the facade. Here there is a large, triple-height main entrance, recessed at an angle with a glass wall. The opening is topped by a band of rough-faced stone, and the five doorways at the ground level are covered by a projecting, stainless-steel and glass canopy.

Above, the window grid starts at the level of the 5th floor with double-windows separated by rough-faced pilasters. From the 6th floor up, the windows return to the normal double-window configuration seen on the north facade, eight bays wide above the base. The floors are grouped into pairs, with the facade further grouped into 4-floor sections by thin horizontal lines of darker stone and lighter-colored stone at the intersections at alternating piers. At the 34th-37th floors projecting, vertical fins divide the windows in each bay, and the masonry grid section ends, set back above the 37th floor to join to glass curtain wall rising from the rounded southwest corner.

The west facade on Broadway has two lower, projecting sections above the base toward the north half, setting back above the 16th and 24th floors. The second, higher section has a different pattern in the curtain wall, with broken horizontal stripes of darker glass. Both of these curtain walls sections are carried onto the north facade, above the masonry base.

The east facade facing the interior of the block has a masonry grid facade at the lower levels, seven bays across. The northern two bays end the grid above the base, with the northern bay setting back and the tower rising with a glass curtain wall on the remaining northern bay. Above the 18th floor the next bay to the south also shifts to curtain wall, leaving the four south bays as masonry. There bays set back and become curtain wall at the same level as on the south facade (above the 37th floor), with the same projecting vertical fins at the 34th-37th floors.

The upper floors match on all four sides, but with the rounded corner on the southwest continuing. The two middle bays on each facade are outlined by vertical metal mullions, and there are black metal spandrels between the floors. The crown sets back to mechanical equipment covered by metal screens at the four sides, and recessed, rounded, grey metal panels at the corners. Near the top of the tower, all four sides have 70' x 70' illuminated "H&M" billboards, added in 2013. The central mast rises out of a white, steel framework cube on top, peppered with communications gear. The building is largely occupied by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and the Durst Organization.

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