Citigroup Center

The Citigroup Center (formerly Citicorp Center) is a prominent skyscrapers in the skyline of New York. The building 601 Lexington Avenue, the official name since 2009, was completed in 1977 and is located on the eastern edge of Midtown Manhattan on Lexington Avenue - corner of East 53rd Street. It was designed by architect Hugh Stubbins. The height of the building is 279 meters, it is (as of 2014), the 10 - tallest building in New York City.

The building is not to be confused with the also known as the Citigroup Building One Court Square in Queens, New York. In London there is a building of the same name.

Architecture

The building is architectural history at the interface between the decaying International Style and the beginning of postmodernism. Although it is essentially a regular cube, but differs significantly in some respects from older high-rise buildings. The outer lining of the comprehensive 59 floors high-rise building consists of alternating, horizontal, light and dark stripes, which are intended to reduce the height of the house visually. The stripe effect is achieved by the contrast between natural colored aluminum with glass during the day dark acting. Moreover, the building leaves the box scheme with its pitched roof, which acts by the powerful roof surfaces from a distance as an eye- catcher and as a trademark of Citigroup Center. Below this slope, on the solar panels - here you can feel the beginning of the environmental movement of the time - should be attached, luxurious terraces condominiums were provided. Was realized neither the one nor the other.

Any oscillating movements of the building are reduced by a vibration absorber. This lies at the level of the 59th floor and consists of a 365 -ton concrete block, which is placed on a layer of oil to slide from a computer in movements that counteract the vibrations of the tower. This is the first such application in a U.S. high-rise.

In a corner of the Citigroup Center is a small church, St. Peter 's Lutheran Church, which was built as a replacement for a previously located on the plot Church. Edition of the parish was that no supports of the skyscraper were allowed to pass through the new church building. The Citigroup Center rests therefore on four 35 meter high columns, which are not arranged in the corners of the building but in the middle of the four sides of the building. The high-rise "floats" thus the church.

1978, a year after commissioning of the building, the structural engineer William LeMessurier by a student was made aware of constructive weaknesses. These lay in part in the conception, partly in made ​​by the exporting company changes justified ( pin connection instead of the weld). The stability under obliquely incident on the building storms was not guaranteed. Around the building itself and the neighboring buildings not having to vacate and to avoid a panic, it was decided to keep the matter secret and largely to reinforce the supporting steel skeleton over several weeks by night, and almost unnoticed by the public. Behind the scenes was prepared in parallel from the civil protection under the guise of a market research survey, the evacuation of several blocks, as the hurricane season was approaching and already had a storm toward New York go.

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