Finland House (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, 1970_construction, Modern (architecture)

427-foot, 38-story modernist office building completed in 1970. Designed by Kahn & Jacobs, it was renovated in 1999 by Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (HOK), and Moed de Armas & Shannon. The building has a glass curtain wall on the main north and east facades, with dark-tinted reflective glass set back above a 2-story base of both clear and opaque pale-green glass. The ground floor has a storefront for a bank along the avenue, with an entrance at the chamfered northeast corner of the ground floor. Near the west end on 55th Street is the main building entrance, with glass doors flanking a revolving door. A loading dock at the far west end has a opaque glass-paned garage door.

The upper floors have thin metal mullions, and there is another setback above the 11th floor. The west elevation is clad in light-grey brick with bands of windows at the north part of each floor. The south facade was originally a plain brick wall; during the 1999 renovation the brick on the south wall was replaced with new grey bricks, and 94 square windows were cut into the south wall; these are arranged in pairs on the lower floors at the east end, and above the setback they consists of pairs running up the east side, and a single column on the west. The ground floor is occupied by a Wells Fargo bank branch, formerly a Wachovia. The branch contains one of their many heritage Abbot-Downing stagecoaches.

www.540madison.com/
www.wellsfargo.com/about/corporate/stagecoach/