General Electric Building
570 Lexington Avenue | also 566 Lexington Avenue | East Midtown | built 1931
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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.
- 1930
Demolition clears the corner lot and Cathedral High School's exposed wall is shielded
On April 15, 1930, the Jacob Volk Demolition Corp. finished tearing down the existing buildings on the corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street, where the RCA Victor tower was to rise. The work left the northern wall of the neighboring Cathedral High School exposed. Attorneys for the Diocese asked that it be protected with brick, but a cinder-concrete mixture was used instead.
“Volk completed the work April 15, 1930. During demolition the Cathedral High School's northern wall was rendered vulnerable by the new exposure…”
- 1931
RCA Victor and the Girl Scouts of the USA are among the first tenants
RCA Victor moved in by April 24, 1931, although it later cut its lease from ten floors to three. Seversky Aircraft, the White Sewing Machine Company and the National Civic Federation also rented space in the first year, as did the Girl Scouts of the USA, which placed its national headquarters here. In July 1931 Childs Restaurants agreed to a 21-year lease on the ground-floor retail space.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1931
Cross & Cross cap the tower with Art Deco symbols of radio and electricity
Architects Cross & Cross designed the fifty-story tower at Lexington Avenue and 51st Street for the Bartholomew Building Corporation, with the Radio Corporation of America leasing nine floors as anchor tenant. Completed in 1931, its crown bristles with lightning-bolt figures, radio dials, and other Art Deco ornament that architect John W. Cross said was meant to capture radio's intangible power.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1933
General Electric puts its own logo on the RCA clock over the corner entrance
When General Electric took over the tower in 1933 it made only a few design changes, because the radio-wave and electric-bolt ornament suited an electrical company as well. The most visible was the clock over the entrance, where the RCA mark gave way to the GE logo, placed beneath two fists holding an electric bolt.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1933
General Electric renames the tower after RCA moves to Rockefeller Center
RCA, the building's original chief tenant, relocated to the new Rockefeller Center in 1933, and General Electric took over the Lexington Avenue tower and renamed it the General Electric Building. Workers swapped the RCA clock above the entrance for a new one bearing the GE logo, and GE kept its headquarters there until 1974.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1935
A fire in the 48th- and 49th-floor dining rooms is the highest the Fire Department has fought
In January 1935 the architects Pruitt & Brown filed plans to turn the building's two uppermost floors into a clubhouse for the Elfun Society, an organization of General Electric executives. That July a fire heavily damaged the 48th- and 49th-floor dining rooms, and no blaze the city's Fire Department had fought had been higher up to that time.
“…dining rooms on the 48th and 49th floors were heavily damaged in a fire, the highest ever fought by the New York City Fire Department…”
Source: Wikipedia
- 1974
General Electric leaves for Fairfield, Connecticut, and the tower struggles to fill its offices
General Electric moved its headquarters out of the Lexington Avenue tower in 1974, relocating to Fairfield, Connecticut. The company then struggled to rent space in an aging, dated skyscraper amid hard economic times, and by 1993 only about a third of the building was occupied and the rents did not cover expenses.
Source: Daytonian in Manhattan
- 1985
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the General Electric Building
On July 9, 1985, the Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the tower and its tax lot a New York City landmark, calling it a major example of Art Deco architecture in the Gothic mode. Public hearings had been held on January 11 and February 8, 1983, and six witnesses spoke in favor of designation with none against.
- 1993
General Electric donates the building to Columbia University
After nearly two decades in which much of 570 Lexington Avenue sat vacant following GE's 1974 move to Connecticut, the company donated the tower to Columbia University in 1993 in exchange for a forty-million-dollar tax deduction. Columbia then had architect Ernest de Castro of the WCA Design Group extensively renovate the Art Deco building between 1993 and 1995.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1995
A renovation restores the lobby and adds chandeliers left out of the original design
Between 1993 and 1995 Ernest de Castro of the WCA Design Group led a major renovation, which refurbished the lobby and elevators and cleaned the exterior. It put in chandeliers that the original design had called for but never received, and the adjacent 51st Street subway entrance was rebuilt in an Art Deco style.
“The renovation also added some elements, such as chandeliers, that had been planned but not installed in the original design.”
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- General Electric BuildingWikipedia
- The Gothic-Art Deco General Electric Building - 570 Lexington AvenueDaytonian in Manhattan
- Art Deco beauty of an East Side subway entranceEphemeral New York
- An Art Deco clock on Lexington AvenueEphemeral New York
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