1540 Broadway (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, commercial building

733-foot, 45-story postmodern office building completed in 1990. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the building was the North American headquarters of media conglomerate Bertelsmann from 1992 until the company vacated and sold the property, of which they occupied all office-use floors, in 2004. The building retained the Bertelsmann name and signage facing Broadway until its eventual removal in late 2013.

The Bertelsmann building was home for many years to the world’s largest record store – the Virgin Megastore, now closed – and Planet Hollywood’s original Official All Star Café, a 100-car valet-attended parking garage and a four-plex movie theater with seating for 1,650.

The building boasts a dynamic exterior façade that combines two traditions – the indigo glass curtain wall is reminiscent of modernistic style, while the recessed pale-green glass wall recollects classic architecture. The 3-story base has retail spaces on the west facade, topped by an array of signs and video boards. The commercial space continues halfway along the south facade, while the east half contains the main entrance, faced in white pre-cast concrete panels and stainless-steel. The entry is deeply recessed behind a pair of 2-story, squared, stainless-steel columns with black granite bases. Flagpoles project from the tops of the columns, and an angled, steel canopy structure spans between them. The north facade of the base is clad in grey metal panels, with loading docks, service entrances, and an entrance to the underground parking garage at the east end. A row of metal louvers tops the ground floor. The top two levels of the base along 46th Street have eight bays of large windows.

The blue-tinted glass facades on the 45-storey building form a pattern of rectangular "openings" of lighter-toned glass wall against the dominating dark blue gridwork. On the north side, these neo-Modernist formations are broken with a cubic mass of a plain light blue-green curtain wall. The most prominent feature of the facade is the triangular "beak" tower on the Seventh Avenue side, a metal lattice extension of the protruding wedge wall.

The ground floor fronting Broadway is occupied by MAC cosmetics, the Disney Store, Forever 21 apparel, U.S. Polo Assn. apparel, and Sunglass Hut, with Buca di Beppo and Planet Hollywood on the south side.