PENN 2 (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, 1968_construction

412-foot, 29-story International-style office building orignally completed in 1968 as Two Penn Plaza. Designed by Charles Luckman of the firm of Pereira & Luckman, it replaced the original Penn Station, along with Madison Square Garden to the west. Today the newer Pennsylvania Station occupies the bottom and underground floors of the building. The tower is set back from the street, with a plaza and main entrance to the train station in front.

Beginning in 2022, a completely new facade replaced the original, designed by MdeAS Architects. The project involved the replacement of the 412-foot-tall tower’s outdated mid-century façade with a new glass curtain wall and set of light-colored metal paneling, a full gut renovation of its 1.61 million square feet of office space, new pocketed corner terraces, and a multi-story cantilevering volume along Seventh Avenue.

The new cantilevered section in front consists of two double-height floors propped up on white metal pairs of angled "stilts", and is cladded with clear glass showing the structural bracing behind, while the underside is clad with triangular LED panels. Below and in front of it is a new ground-floor public pedestrian space.

The tower's east and west facades are organized into 18 bays, following the original plan, with the piers behind the curtain wall expressed by lighter-colored glass. The north and south facades both span seven bays with the same design. A dual set of pocketed corner terraces along the edges of the western side of the building have glass railings. The top two levels are mechanical floor, clad in stark white metal paneling as the curtain wall ends.

At the rear of the building, a low 2-story skybridge connection links Two Penn Plaza to Madison Square Garden. Part of the ground floor is occupied by a Chase Bank branch. Major tenants include: EMC Corporation, Forest Electric, Information Builders, Madison Square Garden, Tetra Tech, and the McGraw-Hill Companies.