One Worldwide Plaza is an office skyscraper in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), One Worldwide Plaza is tall, with an alternative address of 825 Eighth Avenue. It is the easternmost of three buildings in Worldwide Plaza, a commercial and residential complex that occupies the entire city block bounded by Eighth Avenue, Ninth Avenue, 49th Street, and 50th Street and is built on the site of New York City's third Madison Square Garden. Adjacent to One Worldwide Plaza to the west are a public plaza and two residential buildings.
The classically inspired building contains a three-story granite base, a brick midsection with setbacks, and a pyramidal copper roof with a glass lantern. Inside, there are storefronts and entrances to the New York City Subway's 50th Street station, while three double-height lobbies lead to different sets of office floors.
Worldwide Plaza was developed in the late 1980s by a syndicate led by William Zeckendorf Jr. Upon opening, One Worldwide Plaza was nearly fully occupied, with two anchor tenants: advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather and law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. During the mid-1990s, the office space was leased at a very low price. The Blackstone Group acquired the complex in 1996 and sold it to Equity Office Properties in 1998. When Blackstone took over Equity Office in 2007, it sold the office building to Harry Macklowe, who lost the building to foreclosure. George Comfort and Sons took over One Worldwide Plaza in 2009. American Realty Capital New York bought a controlling ownership stake in 2017, selling off a non-controlling stake to RXR Realty and SL Green Realty.
Site One Worldwide Plaza is part of Worldwide Plaza, which occupies the entire city block bounded by Eighth Avenue, Ninth Avenue, 49th Street, and 50th Street in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Worldwide Plaza was developed in the late 1980s by a syndicate led by William Zeckendorf Jr. One Worldwide Plaza, the easternmost structure in the complex, was designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). To the west are two residential buildings, Two and Three Worldwide Plaza, both designed by Frank Williams; they are respectively composed of a 39-story tower and a series of five- and six-story-tall townhouses. In addition, the complex contains of retail space, as well as theaters and a garage. According to Zeckendorf, Worldwide Plaza was intended to be "a self-contained community and also a destination point for other people in the city".
The Worldwide Plaza complex is built on the site of New York City's third Madison Square Garden (MSG). Following the opening of the current Madison Square Garden arena at 34th Street, the former arena was closed in 1968 and demolished. By the 1980s, the surrounding area consisted mostly of lower-income tenements and small retail buildings, and The New York Times described the area as "a neighborhood best known for pornography and cheap bars".
Architecture One Worldwide Plaza is a 50-story office skyscraper measuring high, with a pyramidal roof at its top. Several architectural details of One Worldwide Plaza were inspired by early-1930s classical designs, specifically the Art Deco style. The building is divided horizontally into three sections: a base, shaft, and capital. The materials used in its construction were sourced from a variety of locations. The brick was manufactured by Glen-Gery at a factory in Pennsylvania, while the windows were made in Wisconsin. By contrast, the roofing and precast concrete were made in Canada, the structural steel was bought in Luxembourg, and the project used Brazilian granite and Italian marble. HRH Construction was the building's general construction contractor.
Including the residential buildings, the complex was to cover , more than the maximum size allowed without zoning bonuses. Under normal zoning regulations, the maximum floor area ratio (FAR) for any building on Worldwide Plaza's site was 10, but the developers received two bonuses of 2 FAR each, bringing the FAR to 14. The developers added a midblock plaza for the first bonus and renovated the adjacent 50th Street station for the second bonus.
Facade
The base of the building is three stories tall and is designed to relate to the neighboring residential buildings. It is clad with gray-purple granite and contains outwardly curved entrances on all four sides. These curved sections contain Renaissance-inspired colonnades with granite pilasters, behind which is an oval passageway with a vaulted ceiling. The building's two original anchor tenants, advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather and law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, had their own entrances. This was because Ogilvy & Mather had requested a private entrance during the building's construction. Ogilvy & Mather's entrance faced 49th Street; Cravath, Swaine & Moore's entrance faced Eighth Avenue; and other tenants had an entrance facing west. The entrance on the northern elevation, facing 50th Street, is used for retail rather than as an office lobby.
The rest of the facade is made largely of brick and is designed in a manner reminiscent of the Gothic Revival style. Glen-Gery was hired to manufacture the brick because it was one of the few contractors capable of manufacturing the tinted brick that the developers wanted. The main section of the building is clad with maize-colored brick, but the windows at the center of each elevation are emphasized by vertical strips of rust-colored brick. The facade originally contained single-paned windows, which gave the effect of a flat facade. The building contains several setbacks, which are decorated with white brick that is designed to evoke the appearance of stone. The building's shallow setbacks give it a much larger floor area than older Art Deco skyscrapers in New York City, which had deeper setbacks and consequently less interior space.
The tower is topped by a pyramidal copper roof with round dormer windows. The pyramid has eight sides and measures tall. The design of the roof was inspired by the pyramidal roofs of several other New York City office buildings in the early 20th century, such as the New York Life Building and the Helmsley Building. The building is crowned by a pyramidal glass lantern.
Interior David Childs designed three lobbies at One Worldwide Plaza, each with a separate entrance. Each lobby was originally decorated with Fiore di Pesco marble. There are storefronts along the ground-level colonnade adjacent to the three lobbies, as well as on both levels of each lobby. In addition, there are restrooms along the western side of the arcade. The two-story-high lobby on Eighth Avenue was used by Cravath, Swaine & Moore, which installed security checkpoints on both levels of the lobby, reducing the amount of retail space there. On each side, visitors had to take an escalator from ground level to the upper lobby, where they could access the elevators. Each lobby had access to a bank of elevators. There are four elevator banks in total, comprising 22 passenger elevators and two truck elevators. The building's base also contained a day-care center sponsored by Cravath, Swaine & Moore for its employees' children. Northwest of the lobbies is a truck elevator on 50th Street.
The building contains a steel superstructure weighing . Each floor slab is made of concrete, which is poured onto a metal deck. The floor slabs measure . The maximum structural load on each column was on average. These loads were carried down into the concrete spread footings at the building's foundation. The superstructure was stiffened by moment frames at the building's perimeter, which were braced to the elevator core. Concrete masonry units were then installed around the outermost beams of the superstructure, providing waterproofing.
One Worldwide Plaza contains of office space. The upper stories each have of rentable space. Each story has an open plan, and the slab-to-slab height of each story is . The restrooms, staircases, and elevators are clustered near the building's core. The banks of elevators taper off at higher levels. For example, the 21st and 28th stories have space for three banks of elevators, although only two elevator banks serve these levels. Cravath, Swaine & Moore originally occupied the 38th to 49th stories. The New York Times described the offices as using of marble and of mahogany.
Other features
Public plaza A mid-block public plaza separates One Worldwide Plaza from Two and Three Worldwide Plaza. The New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) had approved the construction and maintenance of the public plaza in exchange for additional floors in the office tower. The plaza originally covered , but its owner reduced the plaza's size by 10 percent in 2002 as part of a lawsuit settlement. During the summer, the plaza hosts the Worldwide Plaza Summer Concert Series. Jerold S. Kayden wrote of the buildings' plaza: "Its half-acre size, numerous movable chairs, comfortable ledge seating, food service at north and south ends, decorative water fountain, and landscaping of trees and shrubs render it highly functional for the diverse audience."
The landscaping of the plaza includes over 40 trees, numerous plantings, and seating. The plaza also contains a fountain called The Four Seasons, which was designed by sculptor Sidney Simon. Four bronze statues of standing nude women, each representing a season, hold up a globe. The statues were modeled by Molly Ackerman, a student of Richard Pousette Dart at the Art Students League of New York who became an expansionist painter and went to Leiden in the Netherlands. Below the globe are four fountains, each carved in the shape of a man's head.
Amenities The complex also has a health club measuring . The health club was originally operated by Bally Health and Tennis. Beneath the plaza is a parking garage with 450 or 473 parking spaces.
Beneath the public plaza, there was originally a multiplex cinema with six screens, operated by the Cineplex Odeon Corporation. The multiplex's lobby was just below ground level, while the auditoriums themselves were in the second basement level. The cinema operated until 2001 and was converted into New World Stages, a complex of five Off-Broadway theaters, in 2004. The multiplex was completely reconstructed as part of that project. The modern theatrical complex contains a double-level lobby, accessed by escalators from 50th Street.
Subway entrance
One Worldwide Plaza's basement contains two entrances to the southbound platform of the 50th Street station of the New York City Subway, served by the . There is an elevator entrance on 49th Street and an escalator entrance on 50th Street. The entrances were built in exchange for of additional space. They contain a mezzanine, escalators, elevators, and stairs. The Zeckendorfs also commissioned artist Matt Mullican to create an etched-granite mural for the station, which cost $150,000. The mural, measuring tall, contains black relief panels depicting the site's history. A closed stairway on 49th Street was also refurbished as part of the project.
History
Early proposals