909 3rd Avenue (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, 1968_construction, commercial building

408-foot, 32-story modernist/brutalist office building completed in 1968. Designed by Emery Roth & Sons and Max Urbahn Associates, it consists of a slab tower clad in concrete, set back above a large base of grey-brown brick with a concrete and glass ground floor. The base spans 13 wide bays on 54th & 55th Streets, and seven along Third Avenue, with the end bays slightly narrower. Each is defined by concrete piers with beveled, angled edges. The bays along the avenue, and the three western bays on the side street are deeply recessed under the rest of the base, which has no openings in the brick facade, but only thin vertical divisions between the bays. The base is primarily occupied by Franklin D. Roosevelt United States Post Office. The main entrances to the office building are in the center three bays on the avenue, each with glass walls and glass doors and revolving doors. A metal canopy extends out from the middle bay. The other bays to the north have glass walls enclosing the lobby, while to the south is the post office entrance. Most of the bays on the north and south facades have wide loading docks or metal service doors set in grey metal infill.

The tower slab is set back on all four sides (with a much shallower setback at the west, fronting the avenue), and has a bold waffle pattern of pre-cast concrete squares projecting from the facade and framing square windows. There are ten such squares on the east and west facades, and 30 on the much wider north and south sides. The top floors are mechanical spaces, with metal vents in place of windows.

www.vno909.com/