One Chase Manhattan Plaza
1961

Architect & Engineer: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Structural Engineer: Weiskopf & Pickworth LLP
General Contractor: Turner Construction Company
Developer & Current Owner: Chase Manhattan Bank
Height: 813 feet /247.8 meters, Floors: 60

Photo courtesy of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Undertaken at a time when Downtown had lost financial hegemony to the new, Modernist towers of Midtown, the glass and aluminum Chase Manhattan Bank Tower rises 800 plus feet and signaled the rebirth of construction in the neighborhood. The building, along with Two Chase Manhattan Plaza (aka The Chase National Bank Building), 18-20 Pine Street (Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, 1926-1928), secured the air rights of two whole city blocks and thus could rise, without set backs, as a pristine rectangle from the plaza below. Numerous plaza and tower combinations would follow in the next decades. One Chase Manhattan Plaza replaced the Mutual Life Insurance Company Building, 32-34 Nassau Street (C.W. Clinton and Clinton & Russell, 1883-1884, 1888, 1892, 1900-1904).