55 Water Street (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, 1972_construction, International style architecture

687-foot, 53-story International-style office building completed in 1972 for the Uris Brothers. Designed by Emery Roth & Sons, it was the largest office building in the world when completed. It contains 278,800 square meters of office space. The facades are clad in concrete panels, with piers dividing each elevation into bays of four dark-tinted windows. The north and south facades have seven bays each, while the west and east facades have 14. Each of the piers sits on a grey granite plinth. The windows in each bays are deeply recessed, with horizontal spandrels up to the 13th floors, which is double-height. Above, the piers continue almost uninterrupted to the roof (there is one last horizontal band of spandrels below the top floor), giving the building a look of vertical striping on its upper floors. A new, stainless steel canopy on the Water Street side was added in the 1990s, extending out from between the ground floor piers and swooping outwards and up.

The adjoining 15-story wing is connected to the main tower by smoked-glass passage at all levels, bridging over an open-air throughway with escalators leading to the complex's elevated plaza. The north elevation is clad is an identical manner to the lower floors of the main tower. The eastern facade is a blank wall of white concrete panels. This wing has a sloping facade toward the East River which overlooks the 52,000-square-foot plaza constructed above the 500-vehicle parking deck, which is accessed from both South Street and Old Slip. The plaza is known as the "Elevated Acre", about 30 feet above street level and accessible via escalator and stairs from the sidewalk on Water Street.

The development is built on a superblock created from four joint city blocks -- an arrangement made in co-operation with the Office of Lower Manhattan Development, which expected provision of public amenities in return. The Whitney Museum of American Art established a branch museum in the building, space being rented for a token fee and operating costs paid by several Wall Street corporations. The museum was open from 1973-1983. The plaza was originally designed as a part of a series of high-level public spaces along East River, to be connected with walkways running above the street level.

The building was once the headquarters of Lehman Brothers. It is now primarily occupied by the Americas headquarters of Standard's & Poor's financial services (S&P).

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