One Court Square (Citicorp Building)

1 Court Square | also 25-01 Jackson Avenue | Long Island City | built 1987

Open on the map4 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1985

    Citicorp announces a Queens office tower to back up its Manhattan headquarters

    Citicorp, then the largest bank in the country, planned the Long Island City tower to supplement Citicorp Center across the river, paying for it partly by selling more than 30 floors of that Manhattan building. Because the site lies near LaGuardia Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration reviewed the plans. The City Planning Commission approved the project in 1986 on a parking lot that had once held a hospital.

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1989

    The 50-story green glass tower opens as the tallest building in Queens

    Raúl de Armas of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the 673-foot tower, which rises without setbacks to a pyramidal top; Turner Construction built it for $250 million with $97 million in city tax breaks. In return Citicorp paid $8.5 million to improve the Court Square subway station and built a public plaza. It remained the tallest building in Queens until Skyline Tower topped out in 2019.

    “The tower, officially known as One Court Square, opened in 1989 as the tallest building in the borough, surpassing the North Shore Towers in Glen Oaks. It cost $250 million.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 2018

    The tower is picked to supply up to 25 floors for Amazon's HQ2

    When Amazon chose its three HQ2 locations, One Court Square was selected to provide as many as 25 floors of office space for one of them. Amazon's New York City location was later canceled.

    “In 2018 the building was selected to provide up to 25 floors to Amazon as part of one of its three Amazon HQ2 locations.”

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 2020

    Altice USA's logo replaces Citi's at the top of the tower

    Citigroup had sold the building in 2005 for $470 million while keeping a 15-year lease, and that lease ran out in 2020. The Citi sign came down that year and the logo of Altice USA, later renamed Optimum Communications, went up in its place; the cable company had kept its headquarters on the upper floors since 2017.

    “In 2020, the Citi logo was removed from the building and replaced with a logo of telecommunications company Altice USA (now Optimum Communications)…”

    Source: Wikipedia

Further reading

Nearby

All 61 buildings with stories in Long Island City