Google NYC (New York City, New York)

USA / New Jersey / Hoboken / New York City, New York / Eighth Avenue, 111
 office building, high-rise, data center, interesting place, Art Deco (architecture), 1932_construction

264-foot, 18-story Art-Deco multi-use building completed in 1932. Designed by Lusby Simpson of Abbott, Merkt & Co. as a freight terminal and warehouse for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, it fills the entire block. It was known as the Union Inland Terminal #1, and was intended to relieve congestion by consolidating and redistributing truck shipments. When built, it may have had more cubic space than any building in the world--later surpassed by the Pentagon. To make the project self- supporting, the upper floors were designed to be rented out to private businesses, which set a legal precedent for public entities engaging in commercial transactions. it was later known as the Commerce Building of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and served as its headquarters, before that organization moved the the newly-built World Trade Center in the 1970s. The St. Vincent's Comprehensive Cancer Center (SVCCC) had a 75,000 square foot ambulatory facility located in part of the building at 325 West 15th Street. In 2006 The Atlantic Theater Company opened a 99-seat theater in the basement, with an entrance on West 16th Street.

The building has a 2-story concrete base, and brown brick cladding on the upper floors. Large, gold Art-Deco panels decorate the spaces above each of the entries on both avenues. There are a number of shallow setbacks above the 6th floor at the middle of the long sides of the building, and above the 10th floor on the ends. A parking garage is also built into the base, with entrances on West 15th & 16th Streets.

The building most recently has been used as a carrier hotel, where multiple customers locate network, server and storage gear and interconnect to a variety of telecommunications and other network service providers. The building is the 4th-largest commercial structure in Manhattan by square footage. Recent notable tenants have included Armani Exchange, Barnes & Noble, Cornell Tech, Deutsch Advertising, Digital Ocean, Lifetime Networks, Livestream, MCI, Nike, Qwest, Spotify, Sprint, and WebMD.

In 2010, Google, which had previously leased space in the building, contracted to purchase the entire 2,900,000-square-foot (270,000 m2) building, in a deal reported to be worth around $1.9 billion. Large, white Google signs now top the base on the west and east facades.

The ground floor is occupied by Google Store Chelsea. Services are contracted to Compass Group for dining and Advanced Systems Group for audiovisual.

daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2010/06/art-deco-behomet...
archive.org/details/newyork1930archi0000ster/page/522/m...
archive.org/details/sim_architectural-record_1933-04_73...
archive.org/details/fromplantorealit0000regi/page/n77/m...
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   40°44'28"N   74°0'11"W

Comments

  • Google has 500 employees in this location.
  • Google purchased the building for $1.9B in December 2010.
This article was last modified 4 months ago