One Worldwide Plaza is an office skyscraper in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), One Worldwide Plaza is tall, with an alternative address of 825 Eighth Avenue. It is the easternmost of three buildings in Worldwide Plaza, a commercial and residential complex that occupies the entire city block bounded by Eighth Avenue, Ninth Avenue, 49th Street, and 50th Street and is built on the site of New York City's third Madison Square Garden. Adjacent to One Worldwide Plaza to the west are a public plaza and two residential buildings.
The classically inspired building contains a three-story granite base, a brick midsection with setbacks, and a pyramidal copper roof with a glass lantern. Inside, there are storefronts and entrances to the New York City Subway's 50th Street station, while three double-height lobbies lead to different sets of office floors.
Worldwide Plaza was developed in the late 1980s by a syndicate led by William Zeckendorf Jr. Upon opening, One Worldwide Plaza was nearly fully occupied, with two anchor tenants: advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather and law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. During the mid-1990s, the office space was leased at a very low price. The Blackstone Group acquired the complex in 1996 and sold it to Equity Office Properties in 1998. When Blackstone took over Equity Office in 2007, it sold the office building to Harry Macklowe, who lost the building to foreclosure. George Comfort and Sons took over One Worldwide Plaza in 2009. American Realty Capital New York bought a controlling ownership stake in 2017, selling off a non-controlling stake to RXR Realty and SL Green Realty.
Site
One Worldwide Plaza is part of Worldwide Plaza, which occupies the entire city block bounded by Eighth Avenue, Ninth Avenue, 49th Street, and 50th Street in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. One Worldwide Plaza, the easternmost structure in the complex, was designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). To the west are two residential buildings, Two and Three Worldwide Plaza, both designed by Frank Williams; they are respectively composed of a 39-story tower and a series of five- and six-story-tall townhouses. According to Zeckendorf, Worldwide Plaza was intended to be "a self-contained community and also a destination point for other people in the city".
The Worldwide Plaza complex is built on the site of New York City's third Madison Square Garden (MSG). By the 1980s, the surrounding area consisted mostly of lower-income tenements and small retail buildings, and The New York Times described the area as "a neighborhood best known for pornography and cheap bars".
Architecture
One Worldwide Plaza is a 50-story office skyscraper measuring high, with a pyramidal roof at its top. Several architectural details of One Worldwide Plaza were inspired by early-1930s classical designs, The building is divided horizontally into three sections: a base, shaft, and capital. The materials used in its construction were sourced from a variety of locations. The brick was manufactured by Glen-Gery at a factory in Pennsylvania, while the windows were made in Wisconsin. By contrast, the roofing and precast concrete were made in Canada, the structural steel was bought in Luxembourg, and the project used Brazilian granite and Italian marble.
Including the residential buildings, the complex was to cover , more than the maximum size allowed without zoning bonuses. The developers added a midblock plaza for the first bonus and renovated the adjacent 50th Street station for the second bonus. It is clad with gray-purple granite and contains outwardly curved entrances on all four sides. These curved sections contain Renaissance-inspired colonnades with granite pilasters, behind which is an oval passageway with a vaulted ceiling. The building's two original anchor tenants, advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather and law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, had their own entrances. The entrance on the northern elevation, facing 50th Street, is used for retail rather than as an office lobby.
Interior
David Childs designed three lobbies at One Worldwide Plaza, each with a separate entrance. There are storefronts along the ground-level colonnade adjacent to the three lobbies, Each lobby had access to a bank of elevators. The building's base also contained a day-care center sponsored by Cravath, Swaine & Moore for its employees' children. Northwest of the lobbies is a truck elevator on 50th Street. The floor slabs measure . The maximum structural load on each column was on average. The superstructure was stiffened by moment frames at the building's perimeter, which were braced to the elevator core. Concrete masonry units were then installed around the outermost beams of the superstructure, providing waterproofing. Cravath, Swaine & Moore originally occupied the 38th to 49th stories. The New York Times described the offices as using of marble and of mahogany. The plaza originally covered , but its owner reduced the plaza's size by 10 percent in 2002 as part of a lawsuit settlement. Jerold S. Kayden wrote of the buildings' plaza: "Its half-acre size, numerous movable chairs, comfortable ledge seating, food service at north and south ends, decorative water fountain, and landscaping of trees and shrubs render it highly functional for the diverse audience." which was designed by sculptor Sidney Simon. Four bronze statues of standing nude women, each representing a season, hold up a globe. The statues were modeled by Molly Ackerman, a student of Richard Pousette Dart at the Art Students League of New York who became an expansionist painter and went to Leiden in the Netherlands. Below the globe are four fountains, each carved in the shape of a man's head.
Amenities
The complex also has a health club measuring . The health club was originally operated by Bally Health and Tennis. Beneath the plaza is a parking garage with 450 operated by the Cineplex Odeon Corporation. The multiplex's lobby was just below ground level, while the auditoriums themselves were in the second basement level. The multiplex was completely reconstructed as part of that project. The modern theatrical complex contains a double-level lobby, accessed by escalators from 50th Street. There is an elevator entrance on 49th Street and an escalator entrance on 50th Street. The mural, measuring tall, contains black relief panels depicting the site's history. A closed stairway on 49th Street was also refurbished as part of the project. Several proposals for redeveloping the site had all failed due to a lack of funding. In 1966, a "Cinema City" with two office towers, two Broadway theaters, four movie theaters, and several film and recording studios was proposed for the site. Three years later, New York City Center proposed developing a four-theater complex, a film production center, and a new home for the American Film Institute on the site. In 1973, Cushman & Wakefield and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill were hired to study the feasibility of constructing a large commercial showroom complex on the site similar to the Merchandise Mart in Chicago or AmericasMart in Atlanta. The complex would be topped by a tower.
In December 1976, developers Frank Stanton and Victor Elmaleh of the World‐Wide Group proposed Hippodrome Park, an indoor amusement park that would cost $30 million. The name was a homage to the former New York Hippodrome. The amusement park would have been designed by Randall Duell and would have included a variety of rides, restaurants, and films. The City of New York was supportive of the project as part of its initiative to clean up nearby Times Square. Ultimately, the developers chose not to spend $12 million on an option for the site.
Conglomerate Gulf and Western Industries acquired control of the site in 1977 as part of its acquisition of the Madison Square Garden Corporation. The company devised plans in 1980 for a mixed-use project on the site, including an office building on Eighth Avenue and apartments on Ninth Avenue, both designed by SOM. Gulf and Western operated the site as a parking lot in the meantime.
Development
alt=Looking east across Ninth Avenue and 49th Street at 3 Worldwide Plaza in the foreground, with 1 and 2 Worldwide Plaza in the background|thumb|Looking east across [[Ninth Avenue (Manhattan)|Ninth Avenue and 49th Street in the foreground; 1 and 2 Worldwide Plaza are in the background]]
Gulf and Western sold the site to a group led by William Zeckendorf Jr. in December 1984 for $100 million. His partners in the project included Arthur G. Cohen, an independent real-estate investor; Victor Elmaleh and Frank Stanton, the principals of the World Wide Realty Corporation; and KG Land New York Corporation, a subsidiary of Japanese company Kumagai Gumi. The group had to raise a $12.5 million letter of credit and finalize their sale within 18 months. It was one of several development projects planned within Hell's Kitchen, which at the time was characterized by physical decay and high crime. Zeckendorf said of Hell's Kitchen: "Ten years from now people will look back and marvel at how bad this neighborhood was."
Planning
SOM began designing the project in early 1985. The advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, which was negotiating to lease a large amount of space in the building, was involved in the design. Zeckendorf's syndicate announced in November 1985 that it would erect a mixed-use complex on the MSG site, costing $500 million. The complex would include a 45-story office building on Eighth Avenue, as well as a 38-story condominium tower and several 6- and 7-story residential buildings to the west. Ogilvy provided additional funds for the complex's construction in exchange for a 17 percent equity stake and some of One Worldwide Plaza's income. In addition, the complex would receive an eight-year, $60 million tax abatement. and Zeckendorf announced in early 1986 that he would add affordable housing to the neighborhood. He proposed renovating 132 apartments in other parts of the neighborhood, rather than adding these apartments to his new development. Zeckendorf made six other modifications to the project to improve neighborhood residents' quality of life, including storefronts for local merchants, a day-care center, and job training. said the developers could not sell 60 of the complex's luxury units until all of the affordable units had been sold. They ultimately fulfilled this requirement by acquiring six buildings on the block to the south. That October, Gulf and Western finalized its sale of the site to the joint venture of Zeckendorf, Cohen, KG Land, and Worldwide Holdings Corp. Zeckendorf also leased the theatrical complex to the Cineplex Odeon Corporation. That month, workers began excavating the site to 17 feet below grade; the excavation was completed by February 1987. Newsday reported that the development of Worldwide Plaza would relocate the western boundary of Midtown Manhattan westward to Eighth Avenue. from a syndicate of 15 banks