Bear Stearns World Headquarters
New York, USA

HEIGHT: 230m/754 feet
FLOORS: 47 floors
COMPLETION: 2001
ARCHITECT: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

was constructed in 1999-2002 at 47th Street as a world headquarters building for the Bear, Stearns & Co., an investment banking, securities and brokerage firm.
It replaced the Webb & Knapp Building (Cross & Cross, 1922-1923, demol. May 1998), a 12 storey building, featuring two facade mosaic murals of Manhattan skyline, one of which is preserved within the new tower, above the escalator leading to the Grand Central Terminal corridor. In 1952 I.M. Pei and William Lescaze, the former acting as the head of Webb & Knapp's architectural division, designed a critically acclaimed duplex penthouse office for the company owner, developer William Zeckendorf and his design team, topped with a cantilevered turret-like private lounge. In 1982 the Manhattan Savings Bank sold the building (although remaining in it for four more years) and subsequently a group led by G. Ware Travelstead were planning a replacement tower, only to fall victim of the lack of necessary development rights.

In 1994 the developer Howard Ronson got a two-year option on the site, requiring him to find tenants for 60% of the projected $80,000 m² building, utilizing only the as-of-rights of the site itself. When he fell 10% short of the occupancy target and failed to renew his option, Bear Stearns stepped in.

Fred Wilpon, the Chairman of the developer firm, Sterling Equities (along with Hines Interests), was also in the board of directors of Bear Stearns, although obtaining the rights for the site from the land-owner, the Saudi al-Babtain family required 18 months of negotiations, during which time the firm almost settled on the west Midtown location now housing the Lehman Brothers' new HQ building. Also Chase Manhattan Bank was interested in the site until Bears Stearns's 99-year lease deal was struck.

The building has a total of 47 floors, rising as a granite-clad octagonal tower from a square 8-storey base to the flat top at 231 m. The top 7 floors of the building are illuminated at night to create a "crown" of light on the night sky.

The octagonal shape of the building was chosen to increase the outer wall space for natural light and views. The $330 million building has 116,100 m² of total space, with 26,500 m² of development rights gained as air rights as enabled by the Grand Central zoning subdistrict.

The building is partly located above rail tracks from the nearby Grand Central Terminal, necessating the location of the basement as well as the core with the elevators to the Madison Avenue side of the full-block building. The lack of basement space also required to locate part of the electrical systems on the 15th and 16th floors, which in fact also lessened the costs of building the wiring to transfer the power to the office floor locations.

Five of the floors on the base are dedicated 3,900 m² trading floors, each able to accommodate up to 420 traders, the open space enabled by the offset core of the building. The trading floors have raised floors for installation of the wiring required by the trading operations. Moreover, the building is equipped with extensive wiring for both conventional and wireless networks.

The lobby has a black and white marble decor, with faceted columns, a checkerboard terrazzo floor and an illuminated "skylight" ceiling. The public passageway, required by the development rights program, is separated by a glass colonnade by the artist James Carpenter.

Bear Stearns moved its first operations into the building in April 2002.

http://www.som.com/resources/projects/2/2/2/383_madisonsm_e16_222.jpg

http://www.som.com/resources/projects/2/2/2/383madison_jg_e3_222.jpg

http://www.som.com/resources/projects/2/2/2/383madisonsm_e5_222.jpg

http://www.som.com/resources/projects/2/2/2/383_madisonsm_e14_222.jpg

http://img51.photobucket.com/albums/v156/AtlanticaC5/Bear_Stearns.jpg

http://img51.photobucket.com/albums/v156/AtlanticaC5/Bear.jpg

Looks very nice. I give it an 8. I havent seen this one before, maybe because Midtown Manhattan covered it up. I like the crown.

You never know what SOM is gonna do next. :nuts: :rotf: :cool: :D

Really well done, fits so well in the skyline. I'm pleased with the final product, it's much classier than the renderings were. The lobby is quite sophisticated as well.

could use some more height though......

8.5/10

7.5/10

Extra points for that brilliant crown! This building is similar to 311 South Wacker in Chicago, but better.

yeah, I see that. It is pretty similar. Nice structure.

7.5/10

this one's pretty cool - the crown is amazing

8.5/10

8/10 nice building;)

good enough. 6.5

A nice building
8/10

http://www.som.com/resources/projects/2/2/2/383_madisonsm_e9_222.jpg

http://www.som.com/resources/projects/2/2/2/383madison_jg_e2_222.jpg

http://www.som.com/resources/projects/2/2/2/383_madisonsm_e18_222.jpg

http://www.som.com/resources/projects/2/2/2/383_madisonsm_e15_222.jpg

9/10 i like this building especially the top.. kind of looks chicagoish

the crown is the jewel here

Beautifull, esspecialy on the last photograph.

Quite simple but also quite powerful looking. ->9/10

8/10 I like it.

8/10 - The tower is NOT a box, and it has fairly good height, helped by some good use of setbacks. The contrasting corner windows are also a good touch. And the crown is quite impressive, especially when it's lit - it relates well to the rest of the building.

I do wish, though, that the crown had continued upward with some sort of a spire. And maybe the facade could have used some metal mullions to give it more height...

I like the design. Crown is unique. 8

My favorite in the 101-200 range:
http://www.metalbuildingreplicas.com/Buildings/bear/bear.html

I like this one mostly because of it's crown.Could be slimmer though 8.5/10

Well not spectacular, but still very nice and classy! 7

10 AWESOME building! Great hexagonal shape... beautiful facade... lovely window scheme... and this building just has a soaring effect... great height.... and the crown is genius.

One of the best buildings in NYC, and the best octagonal building I've seen. I looooove its pinkish facade. Very stately. Too bad the other buildings partially cover this up as it deserves to be seen from as many angles as possible. 8.5/10

8.5/10

I gave this building a 9/10. THe crown and shape of this building is just awesome. This is probably my favorite skyscraper in New York.

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/arts/architecture/reviews/5815/

Bearish on Mad Ave.
Skidmore Owings & Merrill has produced some of the city's sleekest skyscrapers, but its Bear Stearns headquarters is a throwback to an era when stolid rectitude triumphed over beauty.

By Joseph Giovannini

In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark defined the popular image of the architect as an uncompromising hero when he blew up his misbuilt skyscraper. But the reality that most architects now face is far from heroic. As David Childs, the head of Skidmore Owings & Merrill -- and arguably the most powerful architect in America today -- admitted in a casual remark not long ago, "I get beat up by developers all the time."

SOM's most recent beating, Bear Stearns World Headquarters, now stands 45 stories tall at 383 Madison Avenue, and New Yorkers will have to put up with the wounded design for a long time. This is a building you wouldn't want to get anywhere near at a cocktail party. Dressed nearly head to toe in dour granite, and geometrically proper, it's stiff to the point of pass-out boredom. Out of character with SOM's current work, the design recalls the firm's unfortunate postmodern interlude a decade ago.

SOM has built much better work, and very close by -- at the old Union Carbide Headquarters (1960; now J.P. Morgan Chase) kitty-corner from the new Bear Stearns, and at Lever House up Park Avenue (built in 1952, and just now being beautifully refurbished). And its glassy, dynamic AOL Time Warner Center is rising vertiginously on Columbus Circle, fulfilling the promise of the models. That something went wrong at 383 Madison should concern New Yorkers because the politically astute SOM has emerged as the most visible architectural firm in the dialogues about rebuilding at ground zero.

Building is a very complex process, and the blame for the 45-story yawn can't be laid only at the drafting table: It has to be shared with the boardroom. The financial industries that Bear Stearns represents are among the most dynamic in the world, juggling hundreds of millions of dollars daily in complex deals that make string theory look simple. Although Lloyd's of London is housed in a high-tech building, and the new New York Stock Exchange downtown, being designed by SOM, is emerging as an attempt at an architectural prototype for the twenty-first century, Bear Stearns is, well, bearish rather than bullish about innovative design (despite all its wiring). "The bankers wanted a solid, traditional stone banking façade," said Childs -- i.e., a traditional, historicist building. The result, however, is not so much a benign nod to gray-suit classics like the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center as an aesthetic and cultural throwback. For an investment bank expert in venture capital, nothing has been ventured here and nothing gained.

There are a lot of background buildings in New York that merit, and receive, little attention, but Bear Stearns's full-block, high-profile site in the epicenter of Manhattan was among New York's most prized and historically charged commissions when design started in 1997. Remember the controversy about building atop Grand Central that brought Jackie O out from under her sunglasses? The successful preservationist fight to save the terminal in the seventies finally has its dénouement here, because 285,000 square feet of the building that would have been parked over Grand Central were transferred to this site, as part of the specially created Grand Central subdistrict.

The great urban architect Louis Sullivan said that the tall building should soar, and Bear Stearns does indeed telescope upwards: The 1.2 million-square-foot tower steps back and pushes up several times to satisfy setback requirements. Beveling the corners to allow more sun and views, the architects also pry back the granite for an all-glass moment there. But they have still devised a fussily gridded façade that stops the eye. Whatever dynamism inheres in the telescoping volumes and mitered corners is lost to the pattern. As if revealing the subconscious desire of what the tower really wanted to be, a tiara of translucent glass emerges at the top.

The façade never quite resolves its identity crisis, and the rigid design straitjackets other intimations of a hidden life. Major bracing x-ing through the façade is papered over by the egg-crate pattern. Symmetry here emerges as a dictator that doesn't acknowledge the flows of urban forces and gravitational pulls on the site. Inside, the lobby is festooned with feel-good design clichés, from checkerboard terrazzo to pendant chandeliers. The Chicago office of SOM has used multistory atria on the upper floors of high-rises, but there are no such breaks in Bear Stearns's pancake structure to create socializing spaces within the building.

The truism among designers is that well-informed clients get better buildings -- i.e., clients get the building they deserve -- but many architects have managed to pull inventive buildings out of discouraging circumstances through a mixture of client education, subversion, and talent. The SOM architects may think they "brought the clients along," but they have not done so far enough: SOM did not transform the traditional skyscraper sufficiently or hybridize old and new into either a tense confrontation or a satisfying reconciliation. Even among postmodernist buildings, there are better and lesser designs, and the Bear Stearns tower remains a lugubrious, predictable structure with little compensatory wit or elegance.

Philip Johnson may have tellingly said that architects are whores, but SOM in fact has a long leadership history, dating from the fifties, when it brought modernism into the corporate marketplace. Indeed, SOM's touchstone, Lever House, now looks fresher, newer, and certainly more progressive than the overweight Bear Stearns, and you could probably trick people who know nothing about architectural history by reversing their dates of construction.

Sometimes architects should just say no, but SOM, which capitulated to postmodernism (and not an inspired version of it at that), emerged in the eighties as a pliant corporate firm willing to please. That lingering history and reputation hold back the SOM of Lever House, and Bear Stearns is evidence of the character struggle that the firm is still waging internally.

Meanwhile, this building sends out a warning that the heir apparent to the reconstruction of the World Trade Center site can be manipulated. The aesthetic muddle that Bear Stearns represents can't be repeated anywhere near that sacred trust. Downtown can't afford the compromise.

looks nice. 7.5/10

6.5/10. The design isnt bad...but the facade should have received better treatment...

An architectural review I found from the web

I'm sorry, but any architectural critique that starts with a reference to "The Fountainhead" is bound to be the work of a sniveling, naive, snot-nosed intellectual poseur with no concept of the realities behind putting up a skyscraper in the 21st C.

This is the same "critic" who despises the Lipstick Building and World Wide Plaza so there you go.

Who wants to wager me this guy isn't a Yale grad?

:D

9/10...Bear Stearns is a MASTERPIECE! It has a unique shape, nice and simple facade with a great combination of colors, and to top this all off you have the elegant crown which is like the icing on the cake!

Yeah i like towers like this one!. It's not over done. It has a nice top also.

8/10.

I just keep thinking a more angular Library Tower in L.A. on looking at this one.

As huaiwei posted, the facades could have done with better treatment.

Along with 90% of folk in this thread - yeah, the crown is pretty funky and tops off a relatively ordinary scraper well.

7.5 (3 of these for the 'tiara' alone)

It's A Dull Building, But It Has A Great Height. Plus The Huge Light On Top Of The Building Makes It Look Amazing At Night.

7.0 Nice, looks like something you'd see in New York, but the top is kind of weird when you view it straight-on.

I think the top had to be more slender....

Originally posted by Naptown

I like the design. Crown is unique. 8

i agree

I like this one, the crown is good. 8/10

would need a decent top 6/10

spactacualr at night.. kool in the day.
8/10

facade: i love it
form: great!
specials: that crown is amazing!
points: i gave 9.5, but thinking again tends me to give 10/10

7.5/10


nothing special

Looks fresh, clean and distinguished.....probably a pleasant building to work in as well.


8.5/10

8/10

looks like metlife, but definitely not as chubby. like its high tech but still corporate look

8.5...don't really think nyc's the place for it though

Sober and elegant. 9/10

It's alright but the top looks just a little bit cheap and it would look better for it's shape and desighn if it were taller. 6.5/10

If this was in anyt other city in America, apart from Chicago, it would probably be the centerpeice of the downtown area, thus showing how great NYC is lol

8.5

Very attractive tower. Great varied shape and top!

8/10

The octagonal shape adds some variety to the cluster of surrounding boxes, I suppose, and the crown has been carefully thought out. In most other respects it's fairly average though.

7.5

6/10

Nice top. 7.5/10

8.5

i love the way the top is lit. but it is a little too fat

8/10

In context with its surroundings - from the Empire State
Bear Stearns has a very noticeable top :

http://img125.exs.cx/img125/6739/nyrimg01775gr.jpg

6/10

Very nice new building for New York City. Gotta love that crown too. I give it a 9.5/10. :okay:

One of my NYC faves. 9.5

8/10

Nice crown. 8.5.

6.5!:|

8.5/10

The shape is great and elegant.The top however could have another design.

8/10

7/10

Nice tower, 8/10

7.5/10

Stylish and elegant design. Fits well to NYC. 8,5/10

8/10

9/10

8/10. I like skyscrapers that are round in shape.

Kind of cool. 7.5

One of my favorite New York skyscrapers 9.0

6,5/10

7/10

Looks rather plain from some angles but nice from street level.
The mix of shapes is nicely done so it's escaping the boxy style succesfulyy (mostly). Nice facade too. A better than average tower, although nothing fantastic.

7.

Nice crown

8.5/10

a 10... a little art deco touch.....

I took this photo today.....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/nyctowers/2006/DSC01141.jpg

7/10

The pics do not do it justice. During the day the crown is a cool green that is easy to spot. Superb addition to NYC's collection. Without the crown it would still be a classy tribute to skyscrapers of old. But with it, it makes a truly iconic tower.

9/10

Nice tower. 8.5/10.

8/10

A nice tower that would stand out in most of the world's city's, but this is in New York. 7.5/10

Excellently proportioned with elegant grace while still retaining some commanding presence and substance. Attention to detail is near-flawless on this one. Unfortunately it fails to look distinct in any conceivable way and loses points for simply looking so generic. A solid design nonetheless.

8/10

7,5/10

4/10

7/10

7,5/10

8/10

not spectacular but i like the top: 8/10

7.5/10

8.5/10

8/10

9/10

6/10

9. cool.

7/10 Only the crown part of it is nice.

iconic indeed, elegant

8.5

It fits really well in NYC 7/10

5.5 / 10

A male body part by day and a lit cigarette by night?

Typical Wall Street mentality and style.

Doesn't really stand out much, but it's a perfect addition to midtown manhattan

7/10

Elegant, unfussy, classy. The right height and form serving function.

this is good, very good. In fact apart from the milestones this is a good as it gets in midtown. I really like this. 8.5.

beautiful crown
9/10

7/10

Not bad. 6,5/10.

8.5/10 Very nice :)

8.5/10:)

5/10

8/10

8/10

4/10

7/10

6,5/10

7/10

looks nice 8/10

8/10

8/10

I like it, but I like the building that was going to be there before it better. 383 Madison by Kohn Pedersen Fox. 8/10

7/10

:) I always like this one.


http://farm1.static.flickr.com/113/252118216_90faea8c96_b.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/40/104468322_3c73b2d5bd_b.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1402/1290961621_f943f3ea9e_b.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/37/75470977_5b3f379082.jpghttp://farm1.static.flickr.com/40/75470978_928bb9bf09.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/48/105930330_5e78f4dacc_b.jpg

231m / 757 ft
47 floors
Completed in 2001
Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

http://img51.photobucket.com/albums/v156/AtlanticaC5/Bear_Stearns.jpg


love it, i like the building on the right too.:)

7..

8/10

7/10

Nice building, I like it!!

9/10

9/10

it looks powerful

9/10

9/10

Hm... I like it :P
8.5/10

8/10

8/10

Not bad...

6.5/10

so awesome 7.5/10

8/10

Nice crown

one of my favourite towers in nyc!!! i'd like to give a 10, but i can't (only esb and chrysler deserve that for now). so it goes 9.5/10.

9/10

8. Good building. Regards.

7.5/10

I voted 7.5/10 design is ordinary, not that exciting but a nice addition to the new york skyline.

7.5/10

Great tower, Nice top 8/10

8.5/10

Not bad. I like the crown a lot.

8/10

9/10

7.5

8.5/10 for me.

7.5/10 It's OK for me.

10/10

Great ageless design. 8.5/10

the building is great!!! but the top ruins it... 8/10

8/10

8/10

9/10

9/10 :)

8/10

I wouldn't agree

5/10

10/10

8/10

8/10

8,5/10

8.5/10

8/10

7/10

Hexagonal building. 7/10

10/10
nice octogonal building

8/10

8.5/10.

9/10