Black Rock
51 West 52nd Street | also 60 West 53rd Street, 1300 Avenue of the Americas, 52 West 53rd Street | Midtown | built 1964
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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.
- 1960
William Paley picks Sixth Avenue for CBS's new headquarters over Park and Madison
By the late 1950s CBS rented space in buildings scattered around Manhattan, and William Paley wanted a headquarters that could match NBC's home at Rockefeller Center. He turned down Park Avenue as too cold and Madison Avenue as too narrow to show off good architecture, and nothing was available on Fifth. He settled on the east side of Sixth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets, two blocks west of the old Madison Avenue offices, and CBS bought the site in 1960.
“Paley thought Park Avenue had "too cold a feeling", and considered Madison Avenue "too narrow to display good architecture." ... CBS bought the site in 1960…”
- 1961
Paley, unimpressed at first, commits to Eero Saarinen's tower after a second look at the model
In March 1961 Eero Saarinen wrote to Paley describing a freestanding rectangular tower whose triangular piers between the windows would soar 424 feet, which he called the simplest skyscraper statement in New York. Paley went to Saarinen's Detroit office to see a model and at first did not like it. After a second visit he read the austerity as strength and beauty, and in July 1961 he decided to go ahead with Saarinen.
“On a second visit, however, Paley changed his mind: ... In July, 1961 I decided to go ahead with Saarinen.”
- 1961
Eero Saarinen dies suddenly and Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo take over the CBS design
Saarinen died on September 1, 1961, about two months after Paley committed to his design. His associates Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Joseph Lacy formed Roche-Dinkeloo and took over the project. At their office in New Rochelle they built five or six mock-ups of the tower, and Paley recalled driving out there at least thirty times to judge them.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1962
CBS builds a plexiglass fence so passersby can watch its tower rise
In July 1962 a construction fence went up around the Sixth Avenue site. Along the avenue it was made of plexiglass instead of plywood, so people walking by could see the work. A CBS spokesperson compared the effect to cutting 980 portholes into an ordinary fence. The following month a Bank of New York branch took a 21-year lease on part of the lobby and basement, becoming the building's first tenant.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1964
The first CBS employees move into the new tower
The first CBS employees move into 51 West 52nd Street in late 1964, and the network occupies all of the above-ground space until the early 1990s. The granite on the facade piers comes from Alma, Quebec, and its top layer is burned at 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit in a process called thermal stippling to give it a rough surface.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1965
The Municipal Art Society gives the new CBS Building a bronze plaque
In 1965, the year after the Architectural League of New York gave CBS president Frank Stanton a medal for backing the arts, the Municipal Art Society awarded the company a bronze plaque for architecture suited to the city. Accepting it, Stanton said the one controlling idea from the start had been a building on the cutting edge of skyscraper evolution, and that anything people build should be beautiful.
“CBS won a Bronze Plaque from New York's Municipal Art Society for "an outstanding example of architecture befitting the city of New York.”
- 1965
Eero Saarinen's CBS Building, nicknamed Black Rock, is completed
The 38-story CBS headquarters is the only skyscraper designed by Eero Saarinen, who dies in September 1961 soon after its design is finalized. The tower is built from 1961 to 1964 and completed in 1965, with a reinforced-concrete superstructure, the first concrete-framed skyscraper in the city after World War II. The nickname Black Rock comes from its facade, where slanted dark granite piers alternate with tinted glass.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1966
Ada Louise Huxtable finds the public rejects Black Rock as funereal
Writing in 1966, New York Times critic Ada Louise Huxtable observed that the tower's dark dignity delighted architectural sophisticates but put off ordinary New Yorkers, who tended to dismiss it as funereal. She blamed a public eye that equated bright and shiny with new and good. She still judged it a first-rate work of architecture, while faulting the interiors, which neither Saarinen nor his successor firm had designed.
“The dark dignity that appeals to architectural sophisticates puts off the public, which tends to reject it as funereal…”
- 1987
The tower's ground-floor restaurant becomes China Grill after two earlier makeovers
The Ground Floor restaurant opened in the tower in November 1965 and later changed hands repeatedly. It became the American Charcuterie in 1980, then the Rose Restaurant in 1983 after Paley asked its operators to come to the building. A 1987 renovation turned the space into China Grill, which closed in February 2017. The Nusr-Et steakhouse took over the space the next January.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1993
CBS spends $20 million remaking the lobby to rent floors to outside tenants
By the early 1990s CBS had shrunk to about 4,700 employees and was renting out empty floors. The law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz took floors 27 to 33, and Cushman & Wakefield had taken six more stories by 1993. To suit the new tenants, CBS spent $20 million on the lobby and mechanical systems, work that critic Paul Goldberger said amounted to trying to make one of New York's great modern buildings an ordinary speculative office tower.
“CBS renovated the building's lobby and mechanical systems for $20 million. Paul Goldberger wrote that the work "represents nothing less than an attempt to convert…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1997
The city designates the CBS Building a landmark
The Landmarks Preservation Commission grants the CBS Building city-landmark status on October 21, 1997, as landmark number 1971. The building had only just become eligible, since the commission's rules require a landmark to be at least 30 years old.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2021
Harbor Group International agrees to buy the tower for $760 million
In August 2021 ViacomCBS says it will sell the CBS Building to Harbor Group International for $760 million, the first time the property has changed hands since it opened. The new owner rebrands the tower as 51W52 and renovates it, finishing in April 2024 at a cost of $128 million.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2024
CBS prepares to vacate Black Rock after six decades
CBS moves employees out during late 2023 and says it plans to be out of the building completely by November 2024. Its departure, along with the expiration of two other tenants' leases, raises lenders' concerns about whether Harbor Group International can refinance a $420 million mortgage on the tower.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- CBS BuildingWikipedia
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