MetLife Building
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The MetLife Building, formerly the Pan Am Building, is located at 200 Park Avenue in New York City.
The Pan Am Building was the largest commercial office building in the world when it opened on 7 March 1963. It is an important part of the Manhattan skyline and one of the fifty tallest buildings in the USA.
Designed by Emery Roth & Sons with the assistance of Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, the Pan Am Building is an example of a Brutalist or International style skyscraper. It is purely commercial in design with large floors, simple massing, and an absence of luxurious detailing inside or out. Although disliked by architecture critics and many New Yorkers, it has been popular with tenants, not least because of its location next to Grand Central Terminal.
The building was also known for its helicopter service to JFK International Airport, a seven-minute flight that left from the rooftop helipad. This service was offered only between 1965 and 1968 and for a few months in 1977, but was ended after a spectacular crash that killed five.
Pan American World Airways was the building's owner for many years, and their logo was prominently visible at the top of four faces of the building. When PanAm ceased operations in 1991, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, which had offices in the building, replaced the PanAm logos with its own, renaming the building the MetLife Building.
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Culture
The Metlife Building is featured in the American version of Godzilla as its middle body is destroyed, after Godzilla storms Grand Central Station, in the main titles of Angels in America starring Al Pacino as well as at the end of Antz.
The movie Hackers also features the building, and in a strange continuity error, features the Pan Am logo in the helicopter shots and the Met Life logo in the ground shots.
Several games also feature the Metlife Building such as Freedom Fighters for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox.
Statistics
- Height: 808 ft (246 m)
- Floors: 59
- Floor space: 2.8 million ft² (260,000 mē)
See also
External links
- Official page (http://200parkavenue.com/)
- The Midtown Book (http://www.thecityreview.com/panam.html)
- The Pan Am Building and the Shattering of the Modernist Dream (http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=E40D461C-19CF-4F33-A3CC-D8DCADCC9100&ttype=2&tid=10235) by Meredith L. Clausen (MIT Press Blurb)de:MetLife Building