McGraw-Hill Building

Identification

Map

Structure in general

Usage

Facts

• The 35-meter setback from Sixth Avenue accommodates a sunken plaza dominated by the 15-meter abstract steel sculpture Sun Triangle by Athelstan Spilhaus.
• The 205 meters tall building has its piers clad in red granite. Around the west side of the tower is a seven-storey base, behind which runs the landscaped through-block public passageway, necessitated by the city authorities for all the Extension buildings.
• The lobby is clad in dark red terrazzo and red marble and decorated with aphorisms from Plato and John F. Kennedy.
• On the western portion of the building site is the McGraw-Hill's contribution to the through-block Extension promenades, most notable by its waterfall wall, with a transparent plexiglass tunnel leading through.
• The McGraw-Hill publishing company had studied the possibility of expanding to a planned new office building above the Port Authority Bus Terminal expansion on 42nd Street -- next to the company's existing building McGraw-Hill Building. Because of the then-questionable status of 42nd Street the plan was dropped and the company occupied two-thirds of its namesake building in Rockefeller Center instead.