The International Gem Tower

 office building, skyscraper

460-foot, 34-story modernist office building completed in 2013. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the International Gem Tower was conceived and designed specifically to meet the needs of the world’s evolving diamond, gem and jewelry trade. As an office condominium, each business owns its own space in the lower floors of the tower. Due to the nature of the tenants, the building's security includes biometric access control, G4S guarding services, and state-of-the-art closed-circuit monitoring. The 5-story base spans through the block; the upper portion of the tower (floors 22-34) have a separate entrance at 55 West 46th Street, and has fewer of the elaborate security features of the lower, office condo portion.

The metal-and-glass main entrance is on 47th Street, at the west end, with a silver metal canopy extending out over the sidewalk. The entire ground floor is recessed, further so at the main entrance, where a white marble frame shows through the glass, and the facade to the left angling back to the entrance. There are show-windows along the rest of the ground floor, with an entrance at the east end to the ground-floor IGT Jewelry Shopping Mall, with another metal canopy above its entrance. The rest of the base is clad in a frosted blue glass curtain wall with subtle, narrow, vertical glass fins of varying lengths that project slightly from the facade. The fins have pointed top and bottom ends.

The 46th-Street entrance, with another metal canopy, is also deeply recessed, at the west end, with a glass storefront to its left housing a Starbucks coffee. The middle section of the ground floor is faced in white metal panels, and the east end has a loading dock and entrance to the underground parking garage. The south facade of the base matches the north side.

The main tower is set back on both sides of the base, and features the main visual interest of the building. While the form is a simple rectangle atop a base, all four facades consists of a gleaming curtain wall of dazzling steel and silver-blue glass bristling with regular, yet zigzagging, patterns in two shades that are presumably supposed to resemble the diamonds sold within.

As of 2021, tenants include Nixon Peabody and Millburn.

www.internationalgemtower.com