MetLife Building

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MetLife Building as seen from the Empire State Building, 2005.

The MetLife Building, formerly the Pan Am Building, is located at 200 Park Avenue in New York City.

History

The Pan Am Building was the largest commercial office building in the world when it opened on 7 March 1963. It is an important part of the Manhattan skyline and one of the fifty tallest buildings in the USA.

Pan American World Airways was the building's owner for many years. Its logotype was depicted on a sign that was placed on the north and south faces and its globe logo was depicted on a sign that was placed on the east and west faces. In 1981, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company purchased the building from Pan Am. When Pan Am ceased operations in 1991, MetLife replaced the Pan Am logos with its own, renaming the building the MetLife Building. This name is also informally held by the MetLife Tower.

The building was also known for its helicopter service to JFK International Airport, a seven-minute flight that left from the rooftop helipad. This service was offered only between 1965 and 1968 and for a few months in 1977 and was ended after a spectacular accident that killed five people. On May 16, 1977, a broken landing gear caused a parked Sikorsky S-61L with rotors still turning to tip over, killing four people who were outside the helicopter waiting to board, including exploitation filmmaker Michael Findlay. Part of a rotor blade sailed over the side of the building and killed a pedestrian on the corner of Madison and 43rd street. Two other people were seriously injured.

Another notorious moment in the building's history was Eli M. Black's spectacular suicide on February 3, 1975. The CEO of United Brands Company (now Chiquita Brands International) used his briefcase to shatter an external window and then jumped out of the forty-four story window to his death on Park Avenue. This incident was an inspiration for a similar suicide in the 1994 film, The Hudsucker Proxy.

The building's most famous "residents" are a pair of Peregrine Falcons nicknamed Lois and Clark who nest there and dine on the pigeons.

Architecture

Designed by Emery Roth & Sons with the assistance of Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, the Pan Am Building is an example of a Brutalist or International style skyscraper. It is purely commercial in design with large floors, simple massing, and an absence of luxurious detailing inside or out. Although disliked by architecture critics and many New Yorkers, it has been popular with tenants, not least because of its location next to Grand Central Terminal.

The MetLife Building is arguably the most hated skyscraper in the city. In 1987, the lifestyle periodical New York revealed in a poll that MetLife—then Pan Am—was the building that New Yorkers would most like to see demolished. Perhaps contributing to the hatred of the building is the fact that it is so visible. Situated behind Grand Central Terminal outside of the grid, the building, which would have otherwise been tucked away into the city, is left totally exposed and contrasted with the other buildings around it, most notably, the New York Central Building which is now called the Helmsley Building.

Statistics

• Height: 808 ft (246.6 m)
• Floors: 58 (above ground)
• Floor space: 2.8 million ft² (260,000 m²)

Pop cultural references

As a prominent New York landmark, the Metlife Building has been featured in numerous movies, including "Coogan's Bluff" in which Clint Eastwood's character arrives in city by helicopter, the American version of Godzilla as its middle body is destroyed, after Godzilla storms Grand Central Station, in the main titles of the HBO presentation of Angels in America, and at the end of Antz.

The movie Hackers also features the building, and in a strange continuity error, features the Pan Am logo in the helicopter shots and the Met Life logo in the ground shots.

Several games also feature the Metlife Building, such as Freedom Fighters for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

See also

• Buildings and architecture of New York City
• Tallest buildings in New York City

External links

• [Official page]
• [The Midtown Book]
• [The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream] by Meredith L. Clausen (MIT Press Blurb)
• [NTSB accident report of the helicopter accident in 1977]

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