International Plaza

 office building, skyscraper, 1988_construction, postmodern (architecture)

473-foot, 31-story postmodern office building completed in 1988. Designed by Murphy/Jahn, Inc., it is clad in a Norwegian Blue Pearl Granite facade with light-grey granite and metal accents and blue reflective glass. The tower is a cobalt blue glass cylinder buttressed by glass and granite wings, rising from a 13-story base of granite and glass.

The base is set back generously along East 59th and East 60th Streets and Lexington Avenue. The double-height ground floor along the avenue is divided into lower and upper levels, and is lined by 11 bays of bowed glass display-windows separated by granite piers that have slightly bowed sections of darker colored stone broken up by flat bands of lighter stone. A couple of the bowed glass bays have glass doors at the ground floor. The 2nd floor is composed of light-grey granite panels between the piers, arranged in two rows of three panels, and each bay has a small, slightly-projecting and slightly-bowed glass window in the middle-bottom panel with a metal cap. On the east facade the base extends up to a setback above the 9th floor, with four bays on each side, and a center bay that terminates above the 3rd floor, setting back to the curved tower section that is framed by the two wings. The piers are flat, dark-colored granite (without banding), and each bay has a triple-window with light-grey stone spandrels. A metal railing caps the base.

Two puzzles erupt from International Plaza’s side facades. The main entrance on East 59th Street is under a boxy 3-story portico at the west end; it has glass doors flanking a revolving door set in a glass wall with a marble backdrop. At the east end is 3-story projecting section with floor-to-ceiling glass at the first two floors, and a small window band at the 3rd floor's south-facing facade, with a small single-window at the west-facing facet of this projecting section. In between there are three bays with large plate-glass windows on the lower two floors (the eastern one also with a glass door), and smaller, square windows on the 3rd floor. The rest of the base rising above has seven bays like those on the east facade, with the end bays terminating above the 9th floor.

On the East 60th Street side, a 4-story grey box juts out into the sidewalk, with no apparent purpose. Further, the box is pierced by windows and doors of another era, as though torn from the face of a brownstone. That is what remains of 134 East 60th Street, a townhouse whose last tenant refused to move. The stubborn holdout died in the 1990s, but the townhouse remains, now refaced to match the granite of the tower. A 2-story show-window has been installed on its left side (with glass double-doors at the ground floor), and the right has a grey metal service door below a triangular pediment supported by two columns, with a round oculus window above it (filled in by granite). The west end of the base has an entrance and exit to the underground parking garage, with roll-down metal gates. The rest of the base otherwise matches the upper floors on the south facade.

The tower section continues the center bay of the base on the north and south facades, with a 45-degree angled curtain wall of blue glass (with grey metal spandrels) on either side. These extend out to a bay of triple-windows (like those on the base) on the east facade that frame the cylindrical center portion of the tower, which is also clad in a glass-and-metal curtain wall, with spandrels across every fourth floor. At the rear, west-facing facade, the angled facets simply meet a flat, west-facing curtain wall; the cylinder form only breaks out at the middle of the east facade. All of the flat and angled facade surfaced terminate at the 26th floor, with the complete cylinder rising above.

There are complete circle setbacks above the 29th & 30th floors. The conical-stepped crown – visible only from a distance – is the structure’s most distinctive feature; it is capped by a metal sphere. The ground floor storefronts are occupied by Zara clothing store, Innisfree Health & Beauty Shop, and Sephora Cosmetics.