Jonathan Cohen's photos with the keyword: 23rd Street

The New York Life Insurance Building, New York, located at 51 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, New York City, across from Madison Square Park, is the headquarters of the New York Life Insurance Company. Designed in 1926 by Cass Gilbert, who also designed the landmark Woolworth Building, the massive building, which was inspired by Salisbury Cathedral, rises forty stories to its pyramidal gilded roof and occupies the full block between 26th and 27th Streets, Madison Avenue and Park Avenue South. The building stands 615 feet (187 m) tall and contains 40 floors. It was the last significant Gilbert skyscraper in Manhattan. The building was completed in 1928 after two years of construction at the cost of $21 million. It combines streamlined Gothic details and distinctly Moderne massing. The gold pyramid at the top consists of 25,000 gold-leaf tiles. From 1837–1889, the site was occupied by the Union Depot of the New York and Harlem and the New York and New Haven Railroads, a concert garden, and P.T. Barnums Hippodrome. Until 1925, the site housed the first two Madison Square Gardens, the second one designed by architect Stanford White.

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, also known as the Metropolitan Life Tower or Met Life Tower, and currently being converted into the New York Edition Hotel, is a landmark skyscraper located on Madison Avenue near the intersection with East 23rd Street, across from Madison Square Park in Manhattan, New York City. Designed by the architectural firm of Napoleon LeBrun & Sons and built by the Hedden Construction Company, the tower is modeled after the Campanile in Venice, Italy. The original tower was sheathed in Tuckahoe marble, but during the 1964 renovation plain limestone was used to cover the tower and the East Wing, replacing the old Renaissance revival details with a streamlined, modern look. Much of the building’s original ornamentation was removed. The building was constructed in 1909 and served as world headquarters of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company until 2005. It was the world’s tallest building for three years, until 1913, when it was surpassed by the Woolworth Building. There are four clock faces, one on each side of the tower, located from the 25th to 27th floors. Each clock face is 26.5 feet (8 m) in diameter with each number being four feet (1.2 m) tall. The minute hands each weigh half a ton. The clock tower is mentioned in the opening of Murray Leinster’s 1919 story "The Runaway Skyscraper," the clock running backwards indicating that the skyscraper was traveling in time. In the animated TV series Futurama, the tower is seen in the future as wider and its face replaced with a digital clock. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978, and a New York City landmark in 1989.