At 915 ft, the aluminum and reflective glass clad tower, the Citigroup Center is one of the tallest building in Midtown Manhattan. But what really makes this skyscraper stand out are the triangular rooftop and the four massive 114ft columns on which the building seems to float.

Those columns were the result of an agreement between Citibank and the St. Peter's Lutheran Church. The church owned a valuable property in Midtown, occupying one third of a city block on Lexington Avenue and 54th street. In the 1960s the church faced financial problems and wanted to sell its property.
At the same time Citibank, which was located just across the street, was looking to expand. Thus the church sold its property to Citibank, but only on the condition that the bank would build a new church replacing their 1904 Gothic Revival church. The two parties also agreed that the new St. Peter's church had to be a distinctive building, not incorporated in the office tower.

As a result, the architects faced a problem: they needed to build an office tower on the block while at the same time providing enough space at the base for the construction of a church building. The solution was raising the building on four tall columns and a supporting core. The columns were placed at the center of each side rather than at the corners. This way, the design opened enough space in the northwest corner for the new St. Peter's Church.

After the purchase of the property of the St. Peter's church, five more years were needed for Citibank to buy the rest of the block. The purchases were done by different companies since property prices would rise dramatically if the owners found out a large bank planned to develop the site. Construction of the tower started in 1972 by Hugh Stubbins & Associates, assisted by Emery Roth & Sons. The skyscraper opened in 1977 as the Citibank Center. With the company's expansion, the building was first renamed Citicorp Center and later Citigroup Center.

The Citigroup Center was the first tower in Manhattan that parted with the then prevalent Internationalist Style. Instead of a flat top, the designers gave the building a distinctive angled roof line. The original plans to construct setback penthouses on the roof were abandoned due to zoning restrictions. It was then intended as a solar panel, but never used as such. The rooftop now houses the building's mechanical equipment, including a computer controlled tuned mass damper. This 400 ton block of concrete slides on a thin layer of oil. The inertia of the damper reduces the swaying of the building by up to 40%.

The construction of the Citigroup Center revitalized the area and several office towers were built in its vicinity. The most notable of these is probably Philips Johnson's nearby postmodern >Lipstick Building.
The Citigroup Center includes a large sunken plaza and a 7 story atrium at the base of the tower with three stories of restaurants and shops. The plaza and atrium are directly accessible from one of New York's busiest subway stations.

More than any other building in the world, the Empire State Building represents the ambition of humans to build towers that reach for the skies. It probably is New York's best known landmark and is prominent on many postcards.
It also features in many films, but the film that made it even more famous then it already was, was the classic King Kong in 1933. Even today, though the building has been stripped from its record, it is a symbol of New York itself and is visited by more than 2 million tourists each year.

At the time it was built on 5th. Avenue, it broke all records and was dubbed 'the 8th world wonder'. It had 64 elevators (now 73) and was built in only 1 year, 45 days. Its 381 meters wouldn't be topped until 1972, when the twin World Trade Towers eclipsed the Empire State Building.

You can visit the Empire State Building from where you have a magnificent view. The Empire State Building is situated south of Midtown, away from the skyscraper clusters downtown in the financial district and midtown, so this is one of the few places in Manhattan where you have a great 360 degrees view.


Views from the Empire State Building Observatory:

UN Secretariat	Chrysler Building	Times Square	Rockefeller Cent.

The Lever House was constructed in 1952 as the new headquarters for the Lever Brothers Company, the biggest manufacturers of soap and detergents. They commissioned Skidmore, Owings and Merrill to build a modern, clean and American building. Gordon Brunshaft, the leading architect, based its design on earlier ideas from European modernist architects such as Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, but it was the first time their radical ideas were implemented in a corporate office tower.

Gordon Brunshaft made the tower a slab with its narrow side towards the street. The slab is counter-posed to a horizontal slab which floats on a series of columns. The horizontal mezzanine is cut out in the center, creating a central courtyard. Due to its inefficient use of the available space (only 25 percent of the surface is used for the tower), the suburban-style layout has not been copied much, but its curtain glass office tower became the de facto standard for modern office buildings in the United States.

The fact that the tower now seems like just one of so many office towers shows how much it has been copied. When it was built in 1952 it was the first glass-walled building amid the masonry structures of residential Park Avenue. It was soon followed by many other modern office buildings, among them Mies van der Rohe's In recognition of its historical importance, the Lever House was designated an official landmark in 1992. The building was renovated in 1998 by SOM and - appropriately for the headquarters of a soap company - is again as squeaky clean as ever.