Friday, September 20, 2013

Grace Building on Sixth Avenue/42nd Street entrance

This building was originally built for the Grace Corporation, an old NYC institution that included Grace Lines...

The Grace family has been around in NYC for a long time. One of the Graces was the first Catholic mayor to be elected back in the 19th Century...

J. Peter Grace chaired the famous Grace Commission, which came up with a zillion ways for the government to save money, all based on volunteer efforts by top business excutives.

Experts estimated that if the major recommendations had been implemented, it would have eliminated the National Debt in short order back when it was done..

However, the report turned out to be so long ( volumes!) and cost so much from the Government Printing Office that it was hardly a best seller.

In reality, U.S. government agencies just took some advice here and there as they felt like it from the report and bragged how they had implemented it.

After spending so much time and effort on the report. J. Peter Grace was furious and let everyone know it..

To the best of my memory, the company moved out of its NY headquarters at one time because of the crime problem in New York. One of its executives was mauled in Bryant Park right across the street in broad daylight, that was one of the incidents...

This from Wikipedia about the building

W. R. Grace Building

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W. R. Grace Building
Curved vertical facade fronting on 42nd Street
General information
Type	Commercial offices
Location	Sixth Avenue & 42nd Street New York City, New York
Coordinates	Coordinates: 40°45′17″N 73°58′57″W
Construction started	1971
Completed	1974
Owner	Brookfield Office Properties
Height
Roof	192.03 m (630.0 ft)
Technical details
Floor count	50
Floor area	1,518,000 sq ft (141,000 m²)
Design and construction
Architect	Gordon Bunshaft Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Developer	W. R. Grace & Co.
References
^[1]^[2]

The W. R. Grace Building is a skyscraper in Manhattan.

History

The building was designed principally by Gordon Bunshaft, and completed in 1974.^[3]^[4] The building was commissioned by the W.R. Grace Company, and was also used by the Deloitte & Touche, LLP, formerly Deloitte Haskins & Sells.

The building is located at 1114 Avenue of the Americas (also known as Sixth Avenue), but the main entrance is on 42nd Street, between 5th and 6th. It overlooks Bryant Park and the New York Public Library. The building size is approximately 1,518,000 rentable square feet, and sits on a site approximately 100 x 442 feet (67,875 square feet). The ownership is currently Brookfield Financial Properties, LP.

Architecture

One of the notable aesthetic attributes of the building is the concave vertical slope of its north and south facades, on 42nd and 43rd Street. This is similar to another of Bunshaft's creations, the Solow Building, which is no coincidence, as he had used the initial, rejected façade design for that building in his design for the Grace Building.^[3] The exterior of the building is covered in white travertine, which forms a contrast against the black windows and makes the building appear brighter than those surrounding it.

The Grace Building is located on the former site of Stern's department stores' flagship location and headquarters.

In 2005, the City University of New York opened a "Welcome Center" on the ground floor of the Grace Building as a one-stop information center for prospective students.^[5]

Cultural references

The Grace Building was featured in the 2007 Marvel Comics motion picture Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. The Silver Surfer, pursued by the Human Torch, surfs down the south face of The Grace Building, imploding windows in his cosmic-energy wake. At street-level, he continues west down 42nd Street towards Times Square and, eventually, the Lincoln Tunnel. The Surfer's landing damages vehicles parked in front of the building, flipping one car upside-down. The end of this scene was also incorporated into an auto insurance commercial in which a mother and daughter greet their husband/father as he exits the Grace Building and begin the task of explaining why their vehicle, which was parked on 42nd St. in front of the Grace Building, is upside-down and ablaze.
The Grace Building also appears in the 2010 comedy film Morning Glory, as the headquarters of the IBS Television network, where aspiring executive producer Becky Fuller snags a job.
The building's distinctive look was also copied in D.C. Comics for the headquarters of S.T.A.R. Labs, and in The Venture Bros. for 1 Impossible Plaza, home of a Fantastic-Four-ish parody team.