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General Electric Building

Art Deco architecture in ManhattanLexington AvenueMidtown ManhattanNew York City Designated Landmarks in ManhattanOffice buildings completed in 1931
Office buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in ManhattanSkyscraper office buildings in ManhattanUse mdy dates from October 2020
General Electric Building 570 Lexington
General Electric Building 570 Lexington

The General Electric Building (also known as 570 Lexington Avenue) is a skyscraper at the southwestern corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building, designed by Cross & Cross and completed in 1931, was known as the RCA Victor Building during its construction. The General Electric Building is sometimes known by its address to avoid confusion with 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which was once known as the GE Building. 570 Lexington Avenue contains a 50-floor, 640-foot-tall (200 m) stylized Gothic octagonal brick tower, with elaborate Art Deco decorations of lightning bolts showing the power of electricity. The tower is set back from the round-cornered base with elaborate masonry and architectural figural sculpture. The building was designed to blend with the low Byzantine dome of the adjacent St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue, with the same brick coloring and architectural terracotta decoration. The crown of the building, an example of Gothic tracery, is intended to represent electricity and radio waves. On the corner above the building's main entrance is a clock with the cursive GE logo and a pair of disembodied silver arms holding bolts of electricity. Plans for the building were announced in 1929, and it was completed two years later. The project was originally commissioned for RCA, then a subsidiary of General Electric (GE). RCA moved to 30 Rockefeller Plaza midway through construction, and 570 Lexington Avenue was conveyed to GE as part of an agreement in which RCA and GE split their properties. GE had its headquarters at 570 Lexington Avenue between 1933 and 1974, and retained ownership until 1993, when the building was donated to Columbia University. The building was extensively renovated by Ernest de Castro of the WCA Design Group in the 1990s. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1985 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article General Electric Building (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

General Electric Building
Lexington Avenue, New York Manhattan

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Latitude Longitude
N 40.757222222222 ° E -73.9725 °
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General Electric Building (570 Lexington Avenue)

Lexington Avenue 570
10037 New York, Manhattan
New York, United States
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General Electric Building 570 Lexington
General Electric Building 570 Lexington
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The Benjamin Royal Sonesta New York
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The Benjamin Royal Sonesta New York (formerly the Beverly Hotel and Benjamin Hotel) is a hotel at 125 East 50th Street, at the northeast corner with Lexington Avenue, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The 29-story hotel was designed by Emery Roth in the neo-Romanesque style and contains 209 rooms. The Benjamin, one of several hotels developed around Grand Central Terminal as part of Terminal City, is a New York City designated landmark. The hotel building's facade consists largely of limestone and brick. The building contains light courts facing east, as well as setbacks to comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution, which taper to an octagonal tower at the top of the hotel. The limestone base is two stories high and contains storefronts and a main entrance on 50th Street. The upper stories are generally clad with brick and contain architectural terracotta and cast stone ornamentation. The hotel contained a double-height lobby, which was originally designed in the Spanish style, as well as a restaurant. The upper stories were divided into 177 apartments of one to four rooms each, although these were rearranged into 209 guestrooms in 1999. Moses Ginsberg developed the Beverly as an apartment hotel, which opened in October 1927. Ginsberg continued to operate the Beverly until 1951, when he sold it to real-estate investor Irving Maidman. International Hotels Inc. bought the Beverly in 1959 and renovated it. After a series of sales in the late 20th century, Manhattan East Suite Hotels (later Denihan Hospitality Group) acquired the Beverly in 1997 and renovated it over the next two years, renaming the hotel the Benjamin. The hotel was again renovated between 2010 and 2013, and Sonesta International Hotels acquired the Benjamin in 2021.

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Seagram Building
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