CBS Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, headquarters, International Style (architecture) (Bauhaus), television broadcast station / TV centre

492-foot, 38-story modernist/International-style office building completed in 1964. Designed by Eero Saarinen with an interior by Carson, Lundin & Shaw, this was the first skyscraper in New York to be built in reinforced concrete rather than a steel frame. The CBS Building in New York City, also known as Black Rock, is the headquarters of the CBS Corporation. Unlike some major skyscrapers built in that section of midtown Manhattan during the 1950s and 60s, its pillars are more dominant than its windows. It received its nickname "Black Rock" for its dark granite cladding and dark-tinted glass.

When seen directly, the tower's bays appear open, with relatively narrow granite piers alternating with relatively narrow window bays of single sheets of plate glass, but when viewed from afar and necessarily at an angle, the V-shape of the piers effectively eclipses the view of the glass, creating the effect of a grey granite slab. The bays of any of the building's four sides thus appear to open directly in front of a viewer but appear to close up like a vertical Venetian blind to the right or left. The main entrances are on 52nd & 53rd Streets; each entrance fits into one bay and has a revolving door. Ground floor commercial uses are set behind the grey glass, making them barely visible from outside.

The tower sits in a shallow plaza, rectangular in plan, with 12 bays on the eastern and western facades and 15 bays on the wider northern and southern facades. Each facade is composed of 5-foot-wide granite piers flanking large, 5-foot-wide panes of glass framed in bronze-finished aluminum. At the first level above the ground floor, instead of glass the bays contain grilles. Since the profile of each pier is a projecting triangular or V-shape; at each of the building's four corners the "V"s meet to form double-width piers, creating the effect of chamfered corners.

Besides the lobby, the ground floor is occupied by Nusr-Et Steakhouse, and Charles Schwab. In 2021, the building was sold for the first time ever to Harbor Group International.

s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1971.pdf