One New York Plaza

One New York Plaza is an office building in New York City, built in 1969, and is located at the intersection of South and Whitehall Streets (coord|40.70214|N|74.01175|W|scale:1000_region:US). It is the southernmost of all Manhattan skyscrapers.

In 1959 the City of New York attempted to acquire through eminent domain the land under this development as part of the Battery Park Urban Renewal Area. The plan involved consolidating several blocks into a "superblock" for public housing. When that plan fell through the city hoped to entice the New York Stock Exchange to relocate to the property. However the owner of the property - the firm of Atlas McGroth - successfully sued to retain their land, claiming they were more than willing to develop the site privately.

The building is 640 feet (195 meters) tall with 50 floors. The building was designed by William Lescaze & Assocs. and Kahn & Jacobs.

The facade was designed by Nevio Maggiora, consisting of a boxlike "beehive" pattern with the windows recessed within, made of aluminum-clad wall elements resembling a type of thermally activated elevator button popular at the time of construction.

Ironically enough on August 1970, the building suffered a fire in which two people were killed and 35 injured. The deaths were caused after an occupied elevator was "summoned" to the burning floor when one of those thermally-activated call buttons - designed to react to a warm finger tapping it - reacted instead to the heat of the fire on that floor.

The building was renovated in 1994, and repainted from a dark Black/Grey Color scheme to a lighter White/Light Grey color. Today One New York Plaza stands as one of the more prominent buildings of Lower Manhattan, being the most Southern Skyscraper on Manhattan Island.

Notable occupants of One New York Plaza include Goldman Sachs, Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson cite news
title=Burst Pipes Halt Goldman's Nasdaq Trading
publisher=Fox News.com
year=2001
url=http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,32005,00.html] , and Morgan Stanley cite news
title=Morgan Stanley to Move 2,300 Employees Downtown
publisher=LowerManhattan.info
year=2005
url=http://www.lowermanhattan.info/news/morgan_stanley_to_move_52052.aspx] .

teampipe Explosion

One New York Plaza's air-conditioning chiller depends on Con Ed's Manhattan steam-power network cite web
title=One New York Plaza Building Specs
publisher=Brookfield Properties
accessdate=2007-07-02
format=PDF
url=http://www.brookfieldproperties.com/formslibrary/ONYP%20Building%20Specs.pdf ] . On August 11, 2001, a steam turbine failed in the basement, and the damage from the resulting explosion disrupted Goldman's market-making NASDAQ activities for the day.

ee also

*List of tallest buildings in New York City

References

External links

* [http://www.wirednewyork.com/1_ny_plaza.htm Wired New York: The 1 NY Plaza]
* [http://www.nyc-architecture.com/LM/LM024-ONENEWYORKPLAZA.htm New York Architecture Images-ONE NEW YORK PLAZA]