New York Architecture Images- Exxon Building

New York Architecture Images- Midtown

Exxon Building

architect

Harrison, Abramovitz & Harris

___location

1251 Sixth Ave., bet W49 and W50.

date

1971

style

International Style II

construction

229m, 750ft, 54 floors. steel structure, limestone
The vertical facade striping consists of narrow limestone-clad piers as vertical structural members, with a similar structural system used on the other buildings within the new complex. The windows and opaque spandrels form continuous glass stripes -- an automatic washing machine that slides down the facade is used in washing the windows .

type

Office Building

Part of the Rockefeller Center Extension (also known as XYZ plan)

notes

-	1251 Avenue of the Americas was built in 1967-1971 as the second building in the Rockefeller Center Extension across Sixth Avenue, with the Exxon oil company as the main occupant.
-	The first plans for the three new office towers, called the Exxon Building, McGraw-Hill Building and Celanese Building, were made in 1963 by Harrison and Abramovitz. The plan arranged the buildings around a large sunken central plaza (with entrances to the new buildings, as well as the Rockefeller Center concourse), with the centermost one placed north-south, at right angles with the established Manhattan gridline. In the realized plan, however, all the buildings were placed east-west on adjacent blocks.
-	Due to the buildings' excess bulk, as opposed to the allowances given by zoning, the western ends of the plots were to be used as north-south public promenades running through each block.
-	The vertical facade striping consists of narrow limestone-clad piers as vertical structural members, with a similar structural system used on the other buildings within the new complex.
-	Facing Sixth Avenue, there is a sunken plaza with a large pool and fountains as well as trees and the lifelike bronze statue Out to Lunch, of the same series as the one outside the former Union Carbide Building.
-	The 54-storey Exxon building occupies the plot opposite the RCA Building (today GE Building), and its vertically accentuated form rises to the height of 228.5 meters, being the second-tallest building in the whole Rockefeller Center.

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