383 Madison Avenue (Bear Stearns Building)
383 Madison Avenue | also 377 Madison Avenue, 381 Madison Avenue | Midtown | built 1999
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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.
- 1952
I. M. Pei and William Lescaze give William Zeckendorf a round penthouse office atop the Knapp Building
The Knapp Building, which stood on this block before the Bear Stearns tower, gets a modernist two-story rooftop penthouse designed by I. M. Pei and William Lescaze. On its lower floor is a circular, oak-paneled office about 25 feet wide for the developer William Zeckendorf of Webb & Knapp, with a private terrace beside it. Upstairs, a round dining room is reached by a circular elevator and a curving stair.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1982
G. Ware Travelstead buys the old Knapp Building on the site for $77.75 million to build a skyscraper
An earlier building here, the Knapp Building, belonged to Manhattan Savings Bank until October 1982, when developer G. Ware Travelstead of First Boston Real Estate paid $77.75 million for it. He hired Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, whose first plans ran to 140 stories, taller than the Sears Tower. By 1984 he had switched to Kohn Pedersen Fox, who drew a tower of about 70 stories, with its structure arranged to clear the Grand Central tracks beneath the site.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1987
Travelstead's team unveils a 48-story 'Scheme III' after its 70-story tower stalls
By 1987 the plan for a roughly 1,000-foot tower on this site, which won praise from the Royal Institute of British Architects and scorn from Ada Louise Huxtable, is caught in a dispute over Grand Central's air rights. Developer G. Ware Travelstead's team therefore presents a scaled-down, 48-story version topped by several spires meant to recall older skyscrapers. The Knapp Building stands empty by the late 1980s.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1989
Community Board 5 votes unanimously against the transfer of Grand Central's air rights to the site
Travelstead needed about 800,000 square feet of air rights from Grand Central Terminal and argued that Penn Central's underground tracks formed a chain of ownership. City officials disagreed. Manhattan Community Board 5 voted unanimously against the transfer in June 1989, and the City Planning Commission followed that August. The city created a Grand Central Subdistrict for such transfers in 1991, but the project stalled and the Knapp Building sat empty for over a decade.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1994
British developer Howard Ronson contracts to buy the long-vacant old building on this site for about $57 million
The Times reports in April 1994 that Howard Ronson has agreed to buy the long-vacant older building at 383 Madison Avenue, on 47th Street, and raze it for a 24-story, 800,000-square-foot office tower with huge, nearly column-free floors suited to trading rooms, due in the third quarter of 1996. After more than five years with almost no new office construction in Manhattan, the paper treats the plan as possible proof that the real estate recession is ending.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1996
Saudi al-Babtain family moves to take the site itself weeks after Bear Stearns signs a deal
Less than a month after Bear Stearns contracted to buy the Madison Avenue block where the tower now stands, its co-owner the al-Babtain family of Saudi Arabia announces it will acquire the property itself, using a right of first refusal in its partnership with CS First Boston. Developer Howard Ronson, who held a $55 million option and reportedly had lease commitments from Swiss Re and Morgan Guaranty, will probably partner with the family. Bear Stearns declines to comment.
Source: Internet Archive
- 1997
Bear Stearns agrees to build its headquarters here, with up to $75 million in city sales tax breaks
After several failed schemes, Bear Stearns committed in August 1997 to a new headquarters on the site. Mayor Giuliani's administration offered sales tax exemptions of up to $75 million, tied to the bank keeping 5,800 employees and adding 13,300 jobs in the city. The developers bought 285,800 square feet of air rights from Grand Central, the first deal of its kind in the new subdistrict. Demolition of the Knapp Building began in May 1998.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2001
A bank's restored skyline mosaic from the Knapp Building is installed in the new Bear Stearns lobby
Around 1950 the Manhattan Savings Bank commissioned a glass mosaic of the lower Manhattan skyline, its trademark, and hung it over the Knapp Building entrance on Madison Avenue. One of three mosaics saved before demolition, it was restored for $31,000, with a new 14-by-11-foot white background. It now hangs above the escalators and stairs that link the lobby to a passage to Grand Central; the family mosaic shop V. Foscato signed it.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2002
David Childs's granite tower over Grand Central's tracks lights its glass crown for the first time
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's David Childs designed the 47-story, 755-foot tower, which sits partly above two levels of railroad tracks and so needed sloped girders and trusses, with the elevators pushed to the west side. Its octagonal top carries a 70-foot glass crown, first lit on April 4, 2002, at a ceremony with Bear Stearns chief James Cayne, Senator Chuck Schumer and Governor George Pataki. The building cost more than $500 million.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2008
Bear Stearns' rescue raises a question: who gets a headquarters said to be worth over $1 billion?
When JPMorgan Chase agrees to buy Bear Stearns for $2 a share, real estate blogs ask what happens to 383 Madison Avenue. Curbed notes that the bank was paying about $236 million for a nearly bankrupt firm whose headquarters might alone be worth more than $1 billion. It adds that the answer is tricky because of Bear Stearns' complicated synthetic lease on the building.
Source: Internet Archive
- 2008
JPMorgan Chase buys Bear Stearns and moves its investment bank into the tower
Two of Bear Stearns's subprime hedge funds lost nearly all their value in 2007, and by March 2008 the bank faced sudden bankruptcy. JPMorgan Chase first offered $2 a share, then bought the firm at the end of May for $10 a share. Real estate experts had put the building's worth at several times that first offer for the whole company. JPMorgan kept the tower rather than selling it and installed its investment banking division there.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2025
JPMorgan hires Foster and Partners to redesign 383 Madison Avenue's lobby and facade
Foster and Partners were brought in by JPMorgan Chase in January 2025 to renovate the tower. The plans turn part of the lobby into an extension of the sidewalk, add an entrance on Madison Avenue, and replace the facade panels. The old panels were being removed by early 2026, with the new facade going up later that year. JPMorgan had moved its headquarters to the building during the rebuilding of 270 Park Avenue.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- 383 Madison AvenueWikipedia
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