One Chase Manhattan Plaza

Identification

Map

Structure in general

Usage

Facts

• Featured in the 1965 film "Mirage", directed by Edward Dmytryk.
• The sculpture work Group of Four Trees (1972) on the plaza is by Jean DuBuffet. There is also the 5-meter deep circular sunken well for Isamu Noguchi's Sunken Garden (1964), a water sculpture garden with basalt rocks imported from Japan.
• The complex spans two city blocks and uses the development rights from both. The office tower slab and five underground floors, occupying the Liberty Street side block and the adjoining block having an open plaza above two floors of banking space.
• Except for the central core for elevators etc., the only vertical supports are the massive columns outside the facade, thus freeing the office space from further columns.
• Construction started on 28 January 1957 and was completed by the summer of 1960. Construction cost US $121 million, plus the cost of obtaining the city blocks as the building site.
• Chief designer of the building was Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings And Merrill LLP, who is also responsible for the famous Lever House on Park Avenue.
• The design is derived much from an earlier SOM project, the much smaller Inland Steel Building (1954-58) in Chicago, which pioneered the use of an exterior column system along with a vertically accentuated glass wall facade.
• The plaza is featured in the "Fun To Be Had" music video by Nitzer Ebb.
• First announced in 1955.