100 Park Avenue (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, International style architecture

443-foot, 36-story International-style office building completed in 1949. Designed by Kahn & Jacobs, it was one of the first modern (post-war) buildings in New York City, replacing the Murray Hill Hotel built in 1883. It is built on an L-shaped plot, with the wing stepping back on the 40th Street side and the main mass rising on Park Avenue. As a large speculative office tower that maximized the built space for its plot, 100 Park Avenue set the trend for International Style construction in the following decades. The most notable feature of the building was its bulk, exemplified by the 2,790 square meters floors of the 13-story base, enabled by the introduction of effective illumination and air-conditioning for the deep interiors of the large base.

Above the base, there is another setback above the 16th floor, and then the tower rises to a deeply set-back top with illuminated numbers indicating the building's street number. The facade originally had piers of white brick, with vertical stripes of glass and aluminum spandrels between. In 2007, to designs by MdeAS Architects, the building was re-clad in grey aluminum panels, with a sleek, reflective blue-grey glass curtain wall design on the east elevation. At the top of this facade is a tall, silver metal screen shielding the rooftop mechanical equipment.

There is a freight entrance at the western bay on 40th Street. The facades are mostly divided into bays of four windows, but there are three 5-window bays on the south facade, and two more as well as a 6-window bay on the north side. At the west end of the building, the base sets back above the 8th floor instead of the 13th, with multiple additional setbacks above instead of the two larger setback at the east, main tower part of the building. The upper tower has three bays on the north and south facades, with five windows in the middle bay and four in the end bays. Thin metal mullions divided the windows in all the bays of the north and south facades. The west facade above the base has end bays with five windows. Inward of these are narrow columns of single-windows, and the entire center space of the elevation is faced in blank white concrete.

The ground floor is occupied by Chop't restaurant, Alto pharmacy, a Valley National Bank branch, 2 Beans coffee shop, Willner Chemists, Sweetcatch Poke, and Stout Public House.

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