767 Third Avenue (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper

525-foot, 39-story postmodern office building completed in 1980. Designed by Fox & Fowle Architects, it is clad in alternating bands of red brick and glass. The ground floor is deeply recessed, especially on the east side, forming a wedge shape that takes up less than half of the footprint of the rest of the tower's 6-story base, which is supported above by numerous round columns. The ground floor is faced in an unusual choice of materials: a grid of yellow oak with small, square window panes. On the west side, facing the avenue, four of the round columns framed entrance bays with revolving doors sheathed in oak housings.

At the northeast corner, where the ground floor is most recessed underneath the rest of the tower is created a small, slightly sunken plaza, with a 1929 model Ford truck and a stagecoach parked among the columns. Across the plaza, on the west wall of the neighboring building, is a 3-story high vertical chess board above a grouping of oak benches. It is the largest chess set in the world. The whole thing is an initiative of the building developers, Melvyn and Robert Kaufman of the William Kaufman Organization, who often carefully programmed the public spaces of their buildings. At 767 Third Avenue, the 2.5 foot chess pieces are moved once a week using a cherry picker. The games underway can also be recreation of historic matches. The flag to the left indicates which side has the next move.

The tower base is rectangular, with rounded corners. At each corner, the window band of each floor dips down slightly to accommodate taller, narrower panes wrapping around the corners. Above the base, the tower is set back on the west, north, and east sides. It also has rounded corners and matching window bands to the base, but the north facade differs in that the east end is further recessed due to a curving angle near the center of the facade. The rear, south-facing facade is clad in beige pre-cast concrete, and rises up slightly higher than the rest of the roof line, containing the mechanical penthouse.

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