BMW Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, automobile / car dealer (sales)

318-foot, 20-story International-style office building completed in 1973. Designed by Eggers & Higgins for the Ford Motor Company, it is clad in metal and bronze-tinted glass above a 4-story base (with a lower level at the west end) of white stone and metal. The building has been home to BMW of Manhattan since 1998. BMW of Manhattan occupies a total of 228,000 square feet in the 1,001,360 square foot building. Other tenants include Beth Israel Medical Center, Greater New York Hospital Association, CBS Broadcasting, Inc. and the City University of New York.

The north and south facades are organized into seven large bays, while the west and east sides have four. The ground floor on 57th Street is set back behind a shallow plaza fronted by a dark-grey stone retaining wall topped by metal railings. The wall grows taller as the street slopes downward to the west. A wide set of steps breaks the wall at the center, leading up to the main entrance, with multiple glass doors and revolving doors covered by a white metal canopy with "555 WEST 57" in metal lettering. The ground floor is somewhat recessed behind light-grey metal piers, with large display-windows enclosing a vast BMW showroom. At the far western bay, the ground floor juts out to the south, completely enclosed in glass, with another set of glass doors at the center. To the right, there is an angled set of steps at the corner of the plaza's retaining wall. The roof of the 1-story showroom projection at the southwest corner extends out over the walls on the south and west sides. On the west elevation, along the avenue, what is the ground floor on the other facades (with a band of plate-glass show-windows) sits above a lower level of loading docks in the middle two bays, and an entrance to the underground parking garage in the north bay. Along the north facade on 58th Street there is a raised plaza with a grey stone wall and metal railings in front of every bay except the west end bay, and the center bay where another wide set of steps extends up to the north entrance, which matches the one on 57th Street. The 2nd-4th floors of the base have rows of narrow, horizontal metal louvers in each bay, covering the windows.

The upper floors have grey metal piers, like those on the base, and sections of curtain wall in each bay, consisting of aluminum mullions with bronze-tinted windows and darker glass spandrel panes. There are black metal vents along the mechanical level at the 7th floor, and again below the roof line.

www.bmwnyc.com/