Manufacturers Hanover Building

 office building, skyscraper, Art Deco (architecture), 1952_construction, movie / film / TV location

400-foot, 28-story Art-Deco office building completed in 1952. Designed by Carson & Lundin, it was the last addition to the original Rockefeller Center complex, east of Sixth Avenue, replacing the building of the Collegiate Reformed Church of St. Nicholas. The building takes the form of a 28-story limestone tower set on an L-shaped 7-story base.

In its scale, use of materials, major design details, and setbacks, the architects created a design which is integral with the Rockefeller Center complex. The first major tenant was the Sinclair Oil Co., and the building was known for many years as the Sinclair Building. Unlike the 14 structures in the original complex, the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Building was privately constructed in 1950-52 and purchased by Rockefeller interests only in 1963. It was, however, linked to the Center from the start.

The Manufacturers Hanover Trust Building faces onto Fifth Avenue and extends westward on 48th Street, then wraps behind two lower-scaled buildings at 604 and 608 Fifth Avenue to create an L-shaped structure which adjoins 1 Rockefeller Plaza. The base is accentuated by a near-double-height ground floor, devoted to stores and display windows with large expanses of glass, faced with polished brown-gray granite on the Fifth Avenue and 48th Street elevations. The recessed main building entrance is on 48th Street, near the west end, with two glass revolving doors framing a central door, in bronze frames set in a glass wall. There is a service door in the west end bay, and five storefront bays to the right. The east facade on the avenue has five bays with storefront, the center one being wider and having multiple retail doors, including another revolving door. A continuous bronze band runs above the granite facing.

On the rest of the base, the east facade has 11 windows and the south has 22. A pair of projecting flagpoles flank the three middle windows at the 3rd floor. Roof gardens -- the continuation of another Rockefeller Center theme --on the base set off the 3-story office tiers flanking the main tower. The office tiers also have roof gardens. The upper tower spans six windows on the east and west, and 10 on the north and south. The west end of the upper tower is more recessed than the rest, and has a single bay of wide, horizontal windows on the west elevation.

The limestone facing, while more simplified than that on the other Rockefeller Center buildings, continues the theme of the earlier buildings. The stone spandrels below the windows are very slightly recessed from the vertical piers; this gives particular emphasis to the termination of the tower at parapet level. Because of the L-shaped site a relatively small portion of the building, seven stories in height, faces onto 49th Street. Here the use of vertically ridged stone spandrels below the windows, a cabled cornice at the roof line, a low polished granite base, and display windows which closely resemble those in 1 Rockefeller Plaza are features which link this building with its Rockefeller Center neighbors.

The north extension of the base to 49th Street spans six windows, with three storefronts at the ground floor. It has another pair of projecting flagpoles at the 2nd floor. The adjoining 1 Rockefeller Plaza is set back a little, so that there is a 1-bay west-facing elevation on the Manufacturers Hanover Building at the north end (with a display window at the ground floor).

The ground floor at the 49th Street extension is occupied by Free People boutique, and the ground floor of the main building is occupied by Alo apparel, Aritzia boutique, and Other Half Brewing. The exterior was used as a filming location for S1E12 of the USA Network series "White Collar" as Neal is caught in a diversion.

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