JPMorganChase Tower
270 Park Avenue | Midtown | built 2023
Open on the map21 entries
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.
- 1917
Charles V. Paterno's Hotel Marguery opens on the Park Avenue block that 270 Park later fills
An earlier building stood on this site: the Hotel Marguery, a six-building complex developed by Charles V. Paterno that opened in 1917. It was 12 stories high, clad in stone and designed in the Renaissance Revival style. The hotel rose in Terminal City, the area that grew quickly after Grand Central Terminal was completed. It occupied the block until 1957, when it was demolished for a new headquarters.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1919
Harry Harkness, son of a Standard Oil stockholder, dies of influenza in his new Marguery apartment
Before today's tower, this block held the Hotel Marguery, a large apartment complex at 270 Park Avenue (an earlier building on the lot). Harry S. Harkness, son of one of Standard Oil's largest stockholders, had given his yacht Wakiva II to the Navy, which credited it with sinking three German submarines. He presented his wife with a furnished apartment here as a Christmas gift in 1918, and only a month after moving in he died there on the night of January 23, 1919, aged 38, a victim of the influenza pandemic.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1923
Nikola Tesla, sued over unpaid hotel bills, moves into the Hotel Marguery
In 1923 the inventor Nikola Tesla ran up an unpaid balance of about $3,000 at the St. Regis, which sued him and forced him out. He relocated to the Hotel Marguery, the apartment hotel that then filled this block (an earlier building on the lot), and took midnight walks to Bryant Park to feed pigeons. He soon moved on to the Pennsylvania Hotel but kept his room at the Marguery.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1925
Rudolph Valentino faces a battery of questions while applying for citizenship from his Marguery apartment
In November 1925 the film star known as Rudolph Valentino, listed under his birth name Rudolph Guglielmi, kept a spacious apartment in the Marguery complex (an earlier building on this lot) when he applied for United States citizenship. Examiners asked why he had not served in the war; he blamed a slight defect in his left eye, and the Italian government's listing of him as a slacker was reported to be an error that had been corrected. He was also asked why his wife Winifred lived on 96th Street instead.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1929
A dinner party in a Marguery apartment ends with one guest dead and another charged with murder
On April 11, 1929, Florence Harkness Schuette gave a small dinner and bridge party in her apartment at the Marguery, the apartment hotel that preceded the present tower on this block. When the guests left at 2:20 a.m., Samuel Bell and Arthur Morgan Smith apparently quarrelled over who would escort a woman guest to her hotel, and a cab driver saw Bell shove Smith to the pavement. Police arrested Smith as apparently drunk, but he had a fractured skull and died the next afternoon.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1930
A basement explosion and fire at the Hotel Marguery kills two people
On January 3, 1930, an explosion in the basement of the Hotel Marguery set off a fire that cut the building's power. Two people died of smoke inhalation. The Marguery, an earlier building on this lot, was a six-building apartment hotel complex built around a central Italian garden, and it stood until 1957, when it was torn down for the Union Carbide tower.
“…an explosion started a fire in the basement of the building which cut power and killed two people due to smoke inhalation…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1945
Textile executive Albert Langford is shot dead at the service door of his Marguery suite
On the night of June 4, 1945, Albert E. Langford, a 63-year-old shirt manufacturer, opened the service door of his six-room suite at the Marguery (an earlier building on this lot) and found two strangers. Moments later his wife Marion heard a thump and found him on the carpet with a bullet in his brain, though no one had heard a shot. Weeks earlier she had told police that people were trying to extort money from her, and the killing was never solved.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1955
Union Carbide drops its suburban plan and leases the Marguery site for a Park Avenue headquarters
Union Carbide announced in 1952 that it would move its headquarters to suburban Elmsford, but the company reversed course, and in August 1955 its executives agreed to lease the Hotel Marguery site from the New York Central Railroad. The lease ran at least 22 years at $250,000 a year plus taxes, and Carbide paid the railroad another $10 million for an option to buy the land. Developer William Zeckendorf said the deal signaled the end of a short vogue for "corporate rustication."
“…in August 1955, its executives decided to lease the Hotel Marguery site at 270 Park Avenue as the company's world headquarters…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1956
Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois enlarge Union Carbide's tower to 52 stories
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois drew three schemes for the Union Carbide headquarters here: a nine-story base under a 48-story tower, a stepped ziggurat, and a tower set at the rear of the site along Madison Avenue. The client rejected the ziggurat because its interior offices would have been too dark. A base-and-tower version won out, and in July 1956 the pair raised it to 52 floors at a cost of $46 million. While designing the offices, the architects also built a full-sized model of one to test exterior and interior features.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1960
Union Carbide moves into its 52-story Skidmore, Owings & Merrill tower, the building that stood here until 2021
The earlier tower on this block was built for Union Carbide, which had once planned to leave the city but in 1955 chose to lease the Marguery site from the New York Central Railroad. SOM's Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois were the architects. The first 700 employees moved in on April 18, 1960, and by September the tower was full, with Union Carbide using 41 floors for more than 4,000 workers. Its lobby hosted exhibits on subjects from atoms to Japanese art.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1961
The earlier Union Carbide tower's open plazas help shape New York's 1961 zoning rewrite
The plazas around the earlier Union Carbide Building at 270 Park Avenue helped influence the 1961 Zoning Resolution, which let developers build more floor area in exchange for open space at the base. That approach replaced the stepped-back wedding-cake form required by the 1916 rules. The tower was one of several slabs set behind plazas before the change, along with the Seagram Building and 1271 Avenue of the Americas, and about twenty acres of plazas followed in the next decade.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1974
A separatist bomb damages the Union Carbide tower, one of five buildings hit in a day
In October 1974 the Union Carbide Building, then the headquarters of the chemical company, was one of five buildings damaged by bombings on the same day. The Puerto Rican separatist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional Puertorriquena claimed responsibility, saying the attacks were meant to pressure the U.S. government into freeing political prisoners and recognizing Puerto Rico's independence. The tower went on hosting exhibits through the rest of the decade.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1980
Manufacturers Hanover completes its $110 million purchase of the Union Carbide tower that stood here
Union Carbide confirmed in 1976 that it would move its staff out of the earlier tower on this site to Connecticut, and in June 1978 it agreed to sell 270 Park Avenue to Manufacturers Hanover for $110 million, payable over 30 years. The sale was finalized in 1980, and the bank started moving in the next year. It spent $75 million on a renovation designed by SOM, which removed the mezzanine and added two fountains to the plaza. Through later mergers the building became JPMorgan Chase's headquarters.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1991
Chemical Bank moves into the tower, and the sculpture Taxi! follows it across Park Avenue
In 1991 Chemical Bank, which had just acquired Manufacturers Hanover, moved its headquarters into 270 Park from 277 Park, directly across the avenue. At the same time, the sculpture Taxi!, made in 1983 by J. Seward Johnson Jr., was carried over from outside 277 Park to the new address. Chemical merged with Chase Manhattan in 1995, and Chase moved into the building the following year.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2003
JPMorgan Chase's headquarters stays powered through the 2003 blackout while Park Avenue goes dark
JPMorgan Chase, formed by the 2000 merger of J.P. Morgan & Co. and Chase Manhattan, ran its world headquarters from the old Union Carbide tower on this block. The building had mechanical backup facilities that let it keep its power during the Northeast blackout of 2003, when every other building on Park Avenue lost electricity. The merger had strained the building's capacity, so the bank also leased space at 245 Park Avenue and elsewhere.
“…allowing it to remain powered during emergencies such as the Northeast blackout of 2003, when all other buildings on Park Avenue went dark…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2021
The Union Carbide Building is dismantled piece by piece, the tallest tower ever voluntarily demolished
JPMorgan Chase announced in 2018 that it would replace the building, after buying air rights from Grand Central Terminal and St. Bartholomew's Church. Crews took it apart in pieces from 2019 because neighboring skyscrapers ruled out an implosion, and demolition finished in mid-2021. No taller building anywhere had been taken down by choice; the Singer Building, razed in 1968, had held that record.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2023
A construction worker dies in a fall on the 12th floor of the tower under construction
In March 2023, a construction worker died at the site of JPMorgan Chase's new headquarters when he lost his balance and fell 20 feet through a hole on the 12th floor, according to the Department of Buildings. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Construction was halted at the Park Avenue site between East 47th and 48th Streets, and an investigation began.
Source: nbcnewyork.com
- 2023
Dimon and Mayor Adams mark the tower's topping out with an Empire State Building comparison
On November 20, 2023, elected officials, union leaders and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon celebrated the topping out of the new headquarters. Mayor Eric Adams likened the moment to the early 1930s completion of the Empire State Building, a symbol of strength during the Great Depression. The Real Deal added that two decades passed before the city saw another office skyscraper, and noted that the bank had cut its New York office space by 22 percent the year before.
Source: therealdeal.com
- 2025
Leo Villareal tunes 181,200 LED pixels to light the crown of the new tower
Artist Leo Villareal's Celestial Passage turns the top two setbacks of the tower into a slow animated display built from 181,200 individually controllable LED pixels, each one inch by six inches. Elements of the work run about 750 feet from the crown down to the 29th floor. Curbed watched him test it in 2025 from a rooftop ten blocks away, adjusting layers of patterns in real time, with background patterns that hold for 2.3 to 4.6 minutes at a time.
Source: curbed.com
- 2025
The Guardian's critic calls the new tower an "eco obscenity" for its 95,000 tonnes of steel
Writing in December 2025, Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright faulted the tower for using about 95,000 tonnes of structural steel, which he said is 60 percent more than the Empire State Building uses. He also objected to the demolition of the Union Carbide Building, which he called a celebrated work of Natalie de Blois at SOM, and to a lobby flag that flutters in an artificial indoor breeze.
Source: theguardian.com
- 2025
Foster + Partners' 1,388-foot tower opens as JPMorgan Chase's global headquarters
The new 270 Park Avenue, designed by Foster + Partners, rises 1,388 feet and cost an estimated $3 billion to $4 billion. JPMorgan Chase began moving employees in on August 25, 2025, and held a formal opening ceremony on October 21. Public plazas front Madison and Park Avenues; the Madison Avenue one holds Maya Lin's A Parallel Nature, made from 239 pieces of Vermont granite meant to evoke the bedrock beneath Manhattan.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- 270 Park Avenue (2025–present)Wikipedia
Nearby
- 383 Madison Avenue (Bear Stearns Building)383 Madison Avenue | 12 entries
- 400 Madison Avenue12 entries
- 299 Park Avenue5 entries
- Roosevelt Hotel45 East 45th Street | 15 entries
- Tower 497 East 48th Street | 8 entries
- 277 Park Avenue6 entries