Mutual of America Building (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper

476-foot, 34-story postmodern office building originally completed in 1960. Designed by Emery Roth & Sons in an early modern style, it was re-clad to a newer design by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects in 1995 when it was taken over as the new headquarters of the Mutual of America Life Insurance Company.

The building is clad in light-grey granite on the first 11 floors; after the first setback at the 12th floor, it switches to painted aluminum panels. The vertical piers that separate the window bays are capped by stainless steel moldings. The double-height ground floor has an expansive central entrance, with a glass wall and doors recessed behind two octagonal piers, each with a lozenge-shaped light fixture below a base for pairs of flagpoles projecting out at angles. There are two revolving doors set into the glass wall, which angles out slightly toward the top. The three bays on either side have black stone bases at the piers, and are filled by glass-and-bronze storefronts, topped by pairs of square windows at the mezzanine level, separated from the storefronts by metal louvers.

The north and south facade span seven bays, with additional storefronts, as well as loading docks at the west end on 50th Street. The stone cladding extends to the 12th-floor setback at the four eastern bays, but only includes the base at the three western bays, above which it is light-grey metal paneling, with square, dark-tinted windows (six per floor), in contrast to the curtain walls of glass with thin metal mullions between the stone piers at the eastern bays and main east facade. At the 9th-11th floors of the east four bays (and all along the east facade), the pattern of mullions becomes denser, and the piers have projecting, vertical steel moldings, wider at the top of the 11th floor, where they project just above the setback. At the western bays, the five westernmost windows set back above the 5th, 8th & 11th floors. Above the shallow first setback at the east end of the building, the cladding matches the west end, with large square windows and metal cladding.

There is a major setback above the 13th floor on all three main facades; on the east elevation, the center section is recessed further, creating two 5-story wings, each five windows across. These frame a center section of curtain wall with dark glass and thin metal mullions. Both wings end above the 18th floor, above which the metal cladding with large square windows continues on the north and south elevations, and 2-window-wide end sections frame the central curtain wall on the east facade. The end sections terminate at a setback above the 28th floor, with the central section continuing as a narrow rectangle with the curtain wall cladding on all three main elevations, except for at the rear of the north and south sides, where there is metal cladding with no windows. This cladding also covers the 33rd & 34th floors on the north and south elevations. All of the setbacks have steel moldings. Above these floors, there is a 52-foot-high gabled peak, which covers the rooftop mechanical equipment. The gable is clad in metal except for on the east facade, where the glass curtain wall extends upward into the gable, while at the center, an enormous steel spike at the east end, held by Art-Deco styled angular brackets, rises above the gable, topped by a flagpole.

The rear, west-facing elevation is faced in plain brick with no openings; the only exception is at the crowning gable, where there is metal cladding to match the sides. The ground floor is occupied by a Chipotle restaurant, Mutual of America Financial Group Regional Office, a First Republic Bank branch, Just Salad restaurant, The Little Beet restaurant, and Sushi Ann restaurant.