919 Third Avenue

919 3rd Avenue | also 919B 3rd Avenue, 919A 3rd Avenue, 229 East 55th Street | East Midtown | built 1970

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.

1970
December
A fifth-floor fire kills three and spurs new fire codes
In December 1970, a fire on the nearly finished tower's fifth floor killed three people and injured twenty. The disaster helped prompt New York's Local Law 5 of 1973, which required fire safety directors and stricter protections in high-rise buildings citywide.
Source: Wikipedia
1971
A 47-story tower rises around the saloon that refused to sell
When P.J. Clarke's owner refused to sell his corner lot in the late 1960s, developers had Skidmore, Owings & Merrill design the 615-foot office tower at 919 Third Avenue around the low saloon instead, completing it in 1971.
Source: Wikipedia
1996
July
A gust of wind drives two repairmen's scaffold through a window
In July 1996 a gust of wind drove the scaffold of two repairmen through a window of 919 Third Avenue, a 47-story tower designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. The men nearly died in the accident.
Source: Wikipedia
2017
Bloomingdale's offices are the tower's best-known tenant
By 2017 the Bloomingdale's offices were 919 Third Avenue's most prominent tenant, with the department store's flagship three blocks away at Third Avenue and East 59th Street. The writer Kevin Walsh of Forgotten New York, who worked in the building in early 2016 and early 2017, describes it as a beetling, gray-black Skidmore, Owings & Merrill skyscraper.
Source: Forgotten New York

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