One Penn Plaza
250 West 34th Street | also 242 West 34th Street, 1 Penn Plaza | Midtown South | built 1972
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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.
- 1963
One Penn Plaza belongs to a complex that grew after the demolition of the original Penn Station
One Penn Plaza is one of fourteen buildings in Pennsylvania Plaza, a group that also holds Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. The complex's development began in 1963 with the demolition of McKim, Mead & White's Pennsylvania Station of 1910. Architects and preservationists have judged the replacements mediocre, and the loss helped spark the city's landmarks movement and the effort that saved Grand Central Terminal.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1972
Kahn & Jacobs finish the 57-story tower, with mechanical floors placed low to save construction time
Kahn & Jacobs designed the 750-foot tower, which has gray solar glass and anodized aluminum over a steel and concrete frame. Setbacks come at the 7th, 14th and 55th floors. The mechanical rooms were put on the 12th and 13th floors instead of the roof, so equipment could be installed before the steel frame was finished, cutting six to nine months from the schedule.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1996
Workers stock Manhattan's first Kmart at the base of One Penn Plaza
In August 1996 workers began stocking the shelves of Manhattan's first Kmart, scheduled for an early October opening. The store, at 142,000 square feet, took the ground floor and three lower levels of One Penn Plaza, the tower filling most of the block between 33rd and 34th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Executives said the chain's move showed the growing strength of western 34th Street as a shopping destination; it was the first big store west of Seventh Avenue.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1997
A steam-and-fog fountain is built on the plaza so the wind cannot soak visitors
In July 1997 the owners of One Penn Plaza readied a half-acre park whose $600,000 fountain, a 10-foot stone pyramid in a 2-foot moat, gives off steam in winter and fog in summer. A splashing fountain would have drenched people in the plaza's wind-tunnel gusts, according to the architect Richard Blinder. The steam came from a Con Edison line under the building, reduced from 200 to about 80 pounds per square inch, and the fog was made in the basement. The designers believed it was a first for New York.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1998
Vornado buys the long-term leasehold on One Penn Plaza for about $410 million
In February 1998 Vornado Realty Trust acquired the long-term leasehold interest in the 57-story tower, which fills the whole block between 33rd and 34th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues. Vornado's annual report put the price at roughly $410 million and described the building as 95 percent leased, with 223 tenants and about 2.4 million square feet. Kmart, Metropolitan Life, Cisco Systems and BNY Financial Group were among the larger occupants.
Source: sec.gov
- 2010
One Penn Plaza switches on the largest cogeneration plant in a private New York building
On November 16, 2010, the owner, Vornado, turned on a 6.2-megawatt cogeneration plant on the tower's 12th-floor setback, above Macy's and Madison Square Garden. Vornado's president David Greenbaum said the plant, a 400-ton installation that needed roughly 18 months to build, was the biggest at any privately owned building in the city. It supplies about half of the tower's electricity and was expected to cut the building's carbon footprint by about 40 percent by turning waste heat into steam.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2010
The film Margin Call shoots most of its scenes on the building's 42nd floor
Principal photography for J. C. Chandor's Wall Street drama began on June 21, 2010, and wrapped in 17 days. More than 80 percent of the action was filmed on the tower's 42nd floor, which a trading firm had recently left. The cast included Kevin Spacey, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto and Demi Moore, and the story covers 24 hours at an investment bank in the early stage of the 2008 financial crisis.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2014
Advertising giant Publicis signs a five-year lease for the fifth floor and part of the fourth
In February 2014 the advertising firm Publicis, then in the midst of a merger with Omnicom, signed a temporary five-year lease covering 113,947 square feet at One Penn Plaza: the entire fifth floor and part of the fourth. The furnished space had been occupied by the media firm Direct Brands, which moved to about 30,000 square feet at 2 Park Avenue; the new lease was signed within 35 days of its departure. The brokers noted direct access to Penn Station.
Source: commercialobserver.com
- 2020
Kmart closes on the upper retail floors, and the tower is rebranded Penn 1 by 2021
The 142,000 square feet of retail space on the upper floors had held a Woolworth and then a three-story Kmart, which closed in 2020. The building's lobby was refurbished in 1995 and again in 2019, and by 2021 Vornado had rebranded One Penn Plaza as Penn 1. The Landing, a restaurant, took space on the second floor in 2022.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- One Penn PlazaWikipedia
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