One Vanderbilt
51 East 42nd Street | also 317 Madison Avenue, 1 Vanderbilt Avenue, 10 Vanderbilt Avenue | Midtown | built 2021
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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.
- 1902
An earlier Vanderbilt Avenue Building opens as a six-story office complex on the One Vanderbilt site
Long before the tower, this block held the Vanderbilt Avenue Building at 51 East 42nd Street, designed by Warren and Wetmore and opened in 1902 as a six-story office complex. It was enlarged in the 1920s to 18 stories and ended up with a two-story Modell's sporting-goods store at its base. When the block was cleared, terracotta porpoises and cherubs from its facade were saved and kept in storage until the New York Landmarks Conservancy found them a new home.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2013
Bloomberg withdraws the East Midtown rezoning that the planned One Vanderbilt tower depended on
In November 2013 the Bloomberg administration pulled its rezoning plan for the blocks around Grand Central because the City Council would not back it. Under that plan SL Green would have built a 65-story, 1.6-million-square-foot tower, then called 1 Vanderbilt, on this block. SL Green's chief executive, Marc Holliday, said afterward that he would not go ahead with the building unless he received the development rights the Bloomberg proposal had offered.
Source: The New York Times
- 2014
De Blasio revives the 65-story tower plan with TD Bank as its likely anchor tenant
Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration proposed rezoning a Vanderbilt corridor that would let SL Green build a 65-story tower, about 1,200 feet tall, on the block west of Grand Central. TD Bank was expected to make it its corporate home. In return the plan called for an underground link to the terminal, a public waiting room in the lobby and a pedestrian plaza on the stretch of Vanderbilt Avenue beside the site, and SL Green's Marc Holliday promised more than $100 million for transit work.
Source: The New York Times
- 2014
Grand Central's owner offers $400 million to take over SL Green's tower block
Andrew Penson, whose investment group owned Grand Central Terminal, offered SL Green $400 million for the block so that he could build a 1,395-foot tower there himself. An SL Green spokesman called the bid a publicity stunt, and Penson admitted that acceptance was unlikely. His real aim, he said, was to show that the public was getting a poor deal if the city let SL Green build twice the permitted size in exchange for about $210 million of improvements at Grand Central.
Source: The New York Times
- 2015
A chandelier and banister fall on four workers during demolition of the old buildings
After the city approved the project, SL Green announced it would start clearing the site. In July 2015, while one of the old buildings was coming down, four construction workers who were removing the chandelier were hurt when it and a banister dropped on them. Some excavation had begun by the following month.
“…a chandelier and a banister fell on four construction workers who were taking down the chandelier, injuring them…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2015
Grand Central's owner sues the city and SL Green for $1.1 billion over air rights
Andrew Penson filed a $1.1 billion federal lawsuit against SL Green, the City Council and the de Blasio administration. He argued that the city had let SL Green build a tower twice the size zoning allowed without buying Grand Central's unused air rights from him, which he called a taking of private property for a private benefit. SL Green dismissed the suit as frivolous and said the project would improve commutes for millions of New Yorkers.
Source: The New York Times
- 2015
Five older buildings are demolished to clear the One Vanderbilt site
After the project wins city approval in 2015, SL Green begins clearing the block for One Vanderbilt, which replaces five older structures. They include the Vanderbilt Avenue Building at 51 East 42nd Street, which started out in 1902 as an office complex of six stories and grew in the 1920s, and the 23-story Liggett Building at 317 Madison Avenue, which Carrère and Hastings designed in 1922. The developer saves some ornate facade details, including terracotta porpoises and cherubs, until the New York Landmarks Conservancy finds a place for them.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2015
SL Green puts $220 million toward Grand Central subway improvements
In 2015 SL Green gives $220 million toward the project, two-thirds of it for redesigning the Grand Central-42nd Street subway station, the biggest private contribution to the subway system so far. The work adds new mezzanines and exits, three new stairways to each Lexington Avenue Line platform, and an underground link between Grand Central Terminal and the tower. It lets the station handle 4,000 to 6,000 more passengers an hour.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2016
The Grand Central owners drop their lawsuit, clearing the last legal hurdle for the tower
Midtown TDR Ventures withdrew its $1.1 billion lawsuit, and SL Green paid the group a sum that briefed executives described as de minimis. The settlement followed a change in the group's ownership: Lehman Brothers' stake went to Michael Dell's MSD Capital, which teamed with the Elghanayan family to buy out another partner. The new owners promptly dropped the litigation, and SL Green had nearly finished demolishing four buildings on the block despite the suit.
Source: The New York Times
- 2016
SL Green breaks ground on One Vanderbilt with only one tenant signed
The official groundbreaking took place on October 18, 2016. Mayor Bill de Blasio called One Vanderbilt the right kind of development for East Midtown, and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer said the tower had set the bar very high for later projects nearby. At that point TD Bank was the only tenant to have signed a lease.
“No other tenants besides TD Bank had yet signed leases for space in One Vanderbilt.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2017
The tower's subcontractor Navillus goes bankrupt in the middle of construction
Navillus Tile, which held a $135.9 million subcontract to build One Vanderbilt under general contractor Tishman, filed for bankruptcy in November 2017. Tishman moved to end the subcontract, but work on the tower continued. In January 2018 Tishman, SL Green and the guarantor, Liberty Mutual, agreed to let Navillus finish the job, and by February the tower had reached the ninth floor.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2018
Pearl-colored terracotta tiles begin going up on the tower's glass facade
Facade installation started in August 2018, when the steel frame had already passed the 30th floor. Between the tall glass windows, each story has a ventilated terracotta spandrel, 34,845 tiles in all, manufactured by Boston Valley Terra Cotta. The curved, pearl-colored tiles echo the color and material of Grand Central next door; they are said to draw on the terminal's ramps as well as its Guastavino tile vaults.
“The tiles reference the color and material used in Grand Central Terminal and were reportedly inspired by the terminal's ramps and Guastavino tile vaults.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2019
One Vanderbilt tops out at a total cost of $3.31 billion
The tower topped out on September 17, 2019, about three years after the groundbreaking, and the building cost $3.31 billion in all. Its steel core was built first, with steel going up six to twelve floors ahead of the concrete poured around it, so the tower rose much like an ordinary frame building. Because the base sits directly above Grand Central's tracks, builders had to design large custom box columns, and one of them lets the southeast corner cantilever.
“The building topped out on September 17, 2019. The building cost $3.31 billion in total.”
Source: Wikipedia
- 2020
One Vanderbilt opens as the city's fourth-tallest tower
Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox for SL Green, One Vanderbilt tops out on September 17, 2019, and is formally opened with a ceremony on September 14, 2020. Its roof stands 1,301 feet high and its spire reaches 1,401 feet. Three buildings in the city rise higher: 111 West 57th Street, Central Park Tower and One World Trade Center.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2021
Digital artist Kenzo Digital creates Air, an immersive mirrors-and-light experience for the Summit floors
Kenzo Digital, a digital artist known for collaborating with Beyoncé, created Air, an immersive experience of mirrors, lights and views of the city far below. It sits inside the Summit observation deck, which occupies floors 91 through 93 of One Vanderbilt. The New York Times described it in October 2021, in the week before the deck opened, with Digital saying it was built specifically to inspire.
Source: The New York Times
- 2021
Summit One Vanderbilt observation deck opens at the top of the tower
The Summit One Vanderbilt observation deck opens on October 21, 2021, about thirteen months after the tower itself. Its observation area sits roughly 1,020 feet above the street and includes a mirrored infinity room and enclosed glass balconies that project from the facade.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2023
A gas-fired power plant built to be green is already out of date under new city rules
One Vanderbilt has its own self-contained power plant, which the New York Times said can produce the energy of six football fields of solar panels, and it captures rain to heat or cool its roughly 9,000 daily visitors. But its turbines burn natural gas, and New York City has since banned fossil fuels in new buildings, so green choices that were right when design work finished in 2016 looked dated by 2023. An SL Green engineering director called the building a commercial-grade science project.
Source: The New York Times
- 2023
A Summit elevator drops three stories and strikes a buffer spring
On March 21, 2023, an elevator serving the Summit One Vanderbilt observation deck dropped fast through three stories and hit a buffer spring, with no injuries. The collision shook the building and led some tenants to evacuate.
“…an elevator for Summit One Vanderbilt rapidly fell three stories and struck a buffer spring; no one was injured…”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- One VanderbiltWikipedia
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