Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower
1 Madison Avenue | also 33 East 23rd Street, 23 East 23rd Street, 31 East 23rd Street | NoMad | built 1932
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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.
- 1890
Metropolitan Life clears brownstones on Madison Square for its original home office
In 1890 Metropolitan Life bought a corner lot measuring 125 by 145 feet at Madison Avenue and 23rd Street, facing Madison Square Park. President Joseph Fairchild Knapp commissioned Napoleon LeBrun for an Italian Renaissance office block of seven stories, and five brownstone mansions were demolished from May. Knapp died before it was finished, and the plan grew to eleven stories. About 650 workers occupied the first section in early 1893, and the building was later replaced by today's east wing.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1906
Metropolitan Life buys the Madison Square Presbyterian Church lot, swapping land for a Stanford White church
In April 1906 the insurer bought the church lot at Madison Avenue and 24th Street, the one parcel on the block it did not yet own, and planned a 560-foot tower there. The 1854 church building was razed soon afterward. In exchange, the congregation received a plot across 24th Street, where Stanford White designed its new church, known informally as the Parkhurst Church after the Rev. Charles Henry Parkhurst.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1909
The 700-foot Metropolitan Life Tower is completed as the tallest building in the world
The tower topped out in June 1908 and was finished in 1909 at a cost of $6.58 million. It held the title of world's tallest building until the Woolworth Building overtook it in 1913. A public viewing platform drew about 120,000 visitors between 1909 and 1914, and the National Kindergarten Association was among the first tenants.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1909
LeBrun models the tower on a Venetian campanile and crowns it with huge clocks and four bells
Napoleon LeBrun and Sons took St Mark's Campanile in Venice as their model, though the New York tower is more than twice the size. Each of its four clock faces is 26.5 feet across, the largest in the world when finished, and the electric mechanism was a novelty. Four bells hang in the peristyle, the heaviest weighing 7,000 pounds. A lantern at the top is lit after 10 p.m., and every fifteen minutes red and white lights flash the time.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1953
Morgan and Meroni replace the old home office with the modern east wing, then remake the tower to match
In 1952 architects Lloyd Morgan and Eugene Meroni filed plans for an entirely new building on the home office site rather than a renovation. The east wing, now One Madison Avenue, rose in two stages, 1953 to 1957 and 1958 to 1960. From 1961 to 1964 the tower was redone as well, with limestone replacing decaying marble and most of LeBrun's ornament stripped away.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1985
MetLife vacates its tower after first renting space to outside tenants in 1982
In 1982 the Cross & Brown Company leased four floors of the clock tower, the first time anyone outside the insurer had rented space there. Metropolitan Life moved its remaining operations into the North Building and the east wing in 1985, by which time 26 of the 40 lower floors were leased. The tower, a National Historic Landmark since 1978, was designated a New York City landmark in 1989.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2015
The clock tower reopens as the New York EDITION hotel after a 2011 sale to Marriott
Tommy Hilfiger and a partner agreed in 2011 to buy the tower for a hotel of his own but backed out in September, and Marriott bought it in October for $165 million. Marriott converted it into the 273-room New York EDITION, which opened in May 2015. The second floor holds The Clocktower, a restaurant led by chef Jason Atherton.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2020
Construction begins on a $2.3 billion Kohn Pedersen Fox glass addition above One Madison Avenue
In December 2018 developer SL Green picked Kohn Pedersen Fox to rework the east wing at One Madison Avenue. The 14-story structure was trimmed to nine floors and eighteen new stories were stacked on top. Work began in November 2020; IBM became the anchor tenant in March 2022, the structure topped out in December 2022, and a temporary certificate of occupancy followed in 2023.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
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