One Liberty Plaza

 office building, skyscraper, 1973_construction, International style architecture

743-foot, 54-story International-style office building completed in 1973. Desgined by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (Roy Allen) for the US Steel company. Located on the site of the City Investing Building and the Singer Building, the former world's tallest building, One Liberty Plaza is one of the largest office buildings in New York, with each floor offering almost an acre of office space.

Its facade is composed of black cor-ten steel and dark-tinted glass. US Steel wanted to use steel-structures in a clearly visible way on the facade, and thus there are 9-foot deep steel girders (covered in a fire-protection of another layer of steel) as heavy-weight spandrels, spanning the five bays on the north and south facades, and three bays on the east and west elevations. The entrance to the building is from a narrow, below-grade sunken arcade, defined by the supporting massive steel columns and the glass walls of the lobbies.

The building had a large and substantial renovation in 1989 which involved the creation of a new lobby and elevator system. The lobby and elevators have an extensive security system, and the building has a currently unused connection to the New York City Subway in the basement.

After U.S. Steel's relocation, the building was sold to Merrill Lynch, then to Olympia & York. Today the building, called One Liberty Plaza, is owned by Brookfield Properties, which also has the ownership/controlling stake of the World Financial Center towers (renamed Brookfield Place) across the WTC site. Following the events of September 11, 2001, the building had several broken windows and light facade damage, but re-opened just 45 days later. A large Brooks Brothers apparel store occupied the western end of the ground floor.