American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society. Located in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, it shares Audubon Terrace, a complex on Broadway between West 155th and 156th Streets, with the Hispanic Society of America and Boricua College; the academy's galleries are open to the public on a published schedule. Exhibits include an annual exhibition of paintings, sculptures and works on paper from contemporary artists nominated by its members, an annual exhibition of works by newly elected members and recipients of honors and awards. A permanent exhibit of the recreated studio of composer Charles Ives was opened in 2014; the auditorium is sought out by musicians and engineers wishing to record live because the acoustics are considered among the city's finest. Hundreds of commercial recordings have been made there; the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters was formed from three parent organizations. The first, the American Social Science Association, was founded at Boston.
The second was the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which ASSA's membership created in 1898. The qualification for membership in the NIAL was notable achievement in music, or literature; the number of NIAL members was at first limited to 150. The third organization was the American Academy of Arts, which NIAL's membership created in 1904, as a preeminent national arts institution, styling itself after the French Academy; the AAA's first seven academicians were elected from ballots cast by the entire NIAL membership. They were William Dean Howells, Samuel L. Clemens, Edmund Clarence Stedman, John Hay, representing literature; the number of NIAL members was increased in 1904, by the introduction of a two-tiered structure: 50 academicians and 200 regular members. Academicians were elected over the next several years; the elite group were called the "Academy," and the larger group was called the "Institute." This strict two-tiered system persisted for 72 years. In 1908, poet Julia Ward Howe was elected to the AAA.
In 1976, the NIAL and AAA merged, under Institute of Arts and Letters. The combined Academy/Institute structure had a maximum of 250 living United States citizens as members, plus up to 75 foreign composers and writers as honorary members, it established the annual Witter Bynner Poetry Prize in 1980 to support the work of young poets. The election of foreign honorary members persisted until 1993; the Academy holds a Congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code, which means that it is one of the comparatively rare "Title 36" corporations in the United States. The 1916 statute of incorporation established this institution amongst a small number of other patriotic and national organizations which are chartered; the federal incorporation was construed as an honor. The special recognition neither implies nor accords Congress any special control over the Academy, which remains free to function independently. Active sponsors of Congressional action were Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and former-President Theodore Roosevelt.
The process which led to the creation of this federal charter was accompanied by controversy. Sen. Lodge re-introduced legislation which passed the Senate in 1913; the Academy was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York in 1914, which factors in decision-making which resulted in Congressional approval in 1916. The Academy occupies three buildings on the west end of the Audubon Terrace complex created by Archer M. Huntington, the heir to the Southern Pacific Railroad fortune and a noted philanthropist. To help convince the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which were separate but related organizations at the time, to move to the complex, Huntington established building funds and endowments for both; the first building, on the south side of the complex, along West 155th Street, was designed by William M. Kendall of the firm of McKim, Mead & White; this Anglo-Italian Renaissance administration building was designed in 1921 and opened in 1923.
On the north side, another building housing an auditorium and gallery was designed by Cass Gilbert an Academy member, was built from 1928-30. These additions to the complex necessitated considerable alterations to the Audubon Terrace plaza, which were designed by McKim, Mead & White. In 2007, the American Numismatic Society, which had occupied a Charles P. Huntington-designed building to the east of the Academy's original building, vacated that space to move to smaller quarters downtown; this building, which incorporates a 1929 addition designed by H. Brooks Price, has become the Academy's Annex and houses additional gallery space. In 2009, the space between the Annex and the administration building was turned into a new entrance link, designed by Vincent Czajka with Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Members of the Academy are chosen for life and have included some of the leading figures in the American art scene, they are organized into committees. Although the names of some of the members of this organization may not be well known today, each of these men were well known in their own time.
Greatness and pettiness are demonstrable among the Academy members during
Edward Durell Stone
Edward Durell Stone was a twentieth century American architect known for the formal decorative buildings he designed in the 1950s and 1960s. His works include the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, the United States Embassy in New Delhi, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C. Stone was raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas, he attended the University of Arkansas, Harvard and M. I. T, but did not earn a degree. In 1927 he won the Rotch Travelling Scholarship, which afforded him the opportunity to travel through Europe on a two-year stipend. Stone was impressed by the new architecture he observed in Europe, buildings designed in what would come to be known as the International Style, he took up residence in Manhattan. Hired by the architectural firm of Schultze and Weaver, he designed interiors for the new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, he subsequently worked for the Associated Architects of Rockefeller Center and became the principal designer of Radio City Music Hall. Stone was an early advocate of the International Style.
His first independent commission was the Richard H. Mandel House, in New York; this was followed by the Ulrich Kowalski house in Mt. Kisco, the Albert C. Koch house in Cambridge Massachusetts. In 1936 Stone was chosen as associate architect for the new Museum of Modern Art in New York City, designed in collaboration with Phillip Goodwin. Stone designed a private residence for MoMA president Anson Conger Goodyear in Old Westbury, NY. Both the Mandel and Goodyear residences are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. At the outset of World War II Stone enlisted in the U. S. Army, he was promoted to the rank of major and served as chief of the Army Air Force Planning and Design Section. Returning to New York after the war, Stone was commissioned to design the ten-story El Panama Hotel in Panama City, the University of Arkansas Fine Arts Center in Fayetteville, the 850-bed Hospital del Seguro Social del Empleado in Lima, Peru. Stone's best-known work was the Embassy of the United States in India.
Tasked with creating a modern building that respected the architectural heritage of its host country, he designed a temple-like pavilion on a raised podium. Frank Lloyd Wright called the embassy one of the most beautiful buildings he had seen, it won a first honor award from the American Institute of Architects. Subsequent commissions such as the Stanford University Medical Center in Palo Alto, the Stuart Pharmaceutical Company in Pasadena and the United States pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair, repeated elements designed for the embassy; the Stuart building and World’s Fair pavilion both won awards from the AIA and Stone was elected to the Institute’s College of Fellows in 1958. Described as romanticist, Stone’s ornate designs brought him commercial success. By the 1960s his firm was among the largest architectural practices in the United States, with over 200 employees and offices on both coasts. Buildings from this period include the North Carolina State Legislative Building in Raleigh, the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology in Nilore, the National Geographic Society building in Washington, D.
C. the Museo de Arte in Ponce, Puerto Rico, the Albany campus of the State University of New York, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C. the General Motors building in New York City, the PepsiCo World Headquarters, in Purchase, New York, the Florida State Capital complex in Tallahassee, the Standard Oil building in Chicago, Illinois. Stone retired in 1974 and died in 1978. Following a New York City funeral his ashes were buried in his hometown of Fayetteville. Doctor of Fine Arts, University of Arkansas, 1951 Doctor of Fine Arts, Colby College, 1959 Master of Fine Arts, Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles County, 1961 Doctor of Fine Arts, Hamilton College, 1962 Medal of Honor, New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, 1955 American Institute of Architects, Fellow, 1958 National Institute of Arts & Letters, Member, 1958 National Urban League, Trustee, 1958 American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Fellow, 1960 American Federation of Arts, Trustee, 1960 National Institute of Social Sciences, Gold Medal, 1961 Building Stone Institute, Architect of the Year, 1964 Horatio Alger Award, 1971 Silver Medal, Architectural League of New York, 1937 – Guest House for Henry R. Luce, Mepkin Plantation, Moncks Corner, South Carolina Silver Medal, Architectural League of New York, 1950 – A. Conger Goodyear Residence, Old Westbury, New York Gold Medal, Architectural League of New York, 1950 – Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York Gold Medal, Architectural League of New York, 1950 – El Panama Hotel, Panama City, Panama First Honor Award, American Institute of Architects, 1958 – Stuart Pharmaceutical Co.
Pasadena, California Award of Merit, American Institute of Architects, 1958 – U. S. Pavilion, Belgium First Honor Award, American Institute of Architects, 1961 – U. S. Embassy, New Delhi, India Award of Merit, American Institute of Architects, 1963 – Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, California Honor Award, American Institute of Architects, 1967 – Ponce Museum of Art, Puerto Rico Radio City Music Hall and the Center Theater, in Rockefeller Center, New York City, Richard H. Mandel House, Bedford Hills, New York (with Don
Twenty-five Year Award
The Twenty-five Year Award is an architecture prize awarded by the American Institute of Architects to buildings and structures that have "stood the test of time for 25 to 35 years", that " design of enduring significance". The Twenty-five Year Award was first presented in 1969, has been handed out every year from 1971 onward. In 2017, the prize was awarded to the Louvre in Paris, for the project titled Grand Louvre – Phase I by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners; the project receiving the award can be located anywhere in the world, but must be designed by an architect licensed in the United States. Only four buildings outside of the United States have received the award, one each in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Spain, London and Paris, France. New York City has the most awards at five, while Boston, New Haven, Washington, D. C. are all tied in second with two awards each. Buildings to which Finnish American architect Eero Saarinen has contributed have received six awards, tied with the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Louis I. Kahn has been honored five times. Buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright have received this award four times, both Ludwig Mies van der Rohe as well as the firm Pei Cobb Freed & Partners have each had three of their buildings honored. Of the 48 projects that have received this award, only two, Eames House and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, had women as contributing architects; the Twenty-five Year Award can be awarded to any type of architectural project and may be either a single structure or a group of structures that compose a larger whole. Past examples of projects winning the award in this way include both monuments, such as the Gateway Arch and Vietnam Veterans Memorial, groupings of buildings, such as the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Most buildings nominated for this award are new structures but one winner, Faneuil Hall Marketplace, was a substantial renovation of warehouses into a festival marketplace. For a project to be eligible to win the Twenty-five Year Award, it must have been built between 25 and 35 years before the year of the award.
It must have been designed by "an architect licensed in the United States at the time of the project’s completion". This means that the award candidate can be anywhere in the world, but must have been designed by a licensed American architect, such as the Fundació Joan Miró in Spain. To be nominated the project must be in a "substantially completed form" as well as "in good condition". Potential candidates must not have been altered since they were built. Change of use is allowed by the rules, but the "original intent" of the structure must still be intact; these changes of use include reorganization of interior space. This was taken into account with the Price Tower, which when built was a mix of offices and apartments, but when awarded, had only one apartment remaining; the award is presented at the AIA National Convention each year. "Any AIA member, group of members, component, or Knowledge Community" is allowed to nominate a project for the Twenty-five Year Award. A project may be nominated multiple times, as long as it still complies with the eligibility requirements.
Nominees are judged by today's architectural standards in their function and creativity. The project and its site are judged together, with any changes in context taken into account; the "Year awarded" column states the year the award was handed out, has a link to an article about the significant architectural events of that year. Stirling Prize General"Twenty Five Year Award Recipients". American Institute of Architects. Retrieved July 3, 2013. Specific Official website
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was a German-American architect. He was referred to as Mies, his surname. Along with Alvar Aalto, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Frank Lloyd Wright, he is regarded as one of the pioneers of modernist architecture. Mies was a director of a seminal school in modern architecture. After Nazism's rise to power, with its strong opposition to modernism, Mies went to the United States, he accepted the position to head the architecture school at the Armour Institute of Technology, in Chicago. Mies sought to establish his own particular architectural style that could represent modern times just as Classical and Gothic did for their own eras, he created his own twentieth-century architectural style, stated with extreme clarity and simplicity. His mature buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces, as conducted by other modernist architects in the 1920's and 1930's such as Richard Neutra. Mies strove toward an architecture with a minimal framework of structural order balanced against the implied freedom of unobstructed free-flowing open space.
He called his buildings "bones" architecture. He sought an objective approach that would guide the creative process of architectural design, but was always concerned with expressing the spirit of the modern era, he is associated with his fondness for the aphorisms, "less is more" and "God is in the details". Mies was born March 1886 in Aachen, Germany, he worked in his father's stone carving shop and at several local design firms before he moved to Berlin, where he joined the office of interior designer Bruno Paul. He began his architectural career as an apprentice at the studio of Peter Behrens from 1908 to 1912, where he was exposed to the current design theories and to progressive German culture, he worked alongside Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, also involved in the development of the Bauhaus. Mies served as construction manager of the Embassy of the German Empire in Saint Petersburg under Behrens. Ludwig Mies renamed himself as part of his transformation from a tradesman's son to an architect working with Berlin's cultural elite, adding "van der" and his mother's maiden name "Rohe" and using the Dutch "van der", because the German form "von" was a nobiliary particle restricted to those of genuine aristocratic lineage.
He began his independent professional career designing upper-class homes. In 1913, Mies married the daughter of a wealthy industrialist; the couple separated in 1918, after having three daughters: Dorothea, an actress and dancer, known as Georgia and Waltraut, a research scholar and curator at the Art Institute of Chicago. During his military service in 1917, Mies fathered a son out of wedlock. In 1925 Mies began a relationship with designer Lilly Reich that ended when he moved to the United States. Mies carried on a romantic relationship with sculptor and art collector Mary Callery for whom he designed an artist's studio in Huntington, Long Island, New York, he was rumored to have a brief relationship with Edith Farnsworth, who commissioned his work for the Farnsworth House. Marianne's son Dirk Lohan studied under, worked for, Mies. After World War I, Mies began, while still designing traditional neoclassical homes, a parallel experimental effort, he joined his avant-garde peers in the long-running search for a new style that would be suitable for the modern industrial age.
The weak points of traditional styles had been under attack by progressive theorists since the mid-nineteenth century for the contradictions of hiding modern construction technology with a facade of ornamented traditional styles. The mounting criticism of the historical styles gained substantial cultural credibility after World War I, a disaster seen as a failure of the old world order of imperial leadership of Europe; the aristocratic classical revival styles were reviled by many as the architectural symbol of a now-discredited and outmoded social system. Progressive thinkers called for a new architectural design process guided by rational problem-solving and an exterior expression of modern materials and structure rather than what they considered the superficial application of classical facades. While continuing his traditional neoclassical design practice, Mies began to develop visionary projects that, though unbuilt, rocketed him to fame as an architect capable of giving form, in harmony with the spirit of the emerging modern society.
Boldly abandoning ornament altogether, Mies made a dramatic modernist debut in 1921 with his stunning competition proposal for the faceted all-glass Friedrichstraße skyscraper, followed by a taller curved version in 1922 named the Glass Skyscraper. He continued with a series of pioneering projects, culminating in his two European masterworks: the temporary German Pavilion for the Barcelona exposition in 1929 and the elegant Villa Tugendhat in Brno, Czech Republic, completed in 1930, he joined the German avant-garde, working with the progressive design magazine G, which started in July 1923. He developed prominence as architectural director of the Werkbund, organizing the influential Weissenhof Estate prototype modernist housing exhibition, he was one of the founders of the architectural association De
Dearborn, Michigan
Dearborn is a city in the State of Michigan. It is part of the Detroit metropolitan area. Dearborn is the eighth largest city in the State of Michigan; as of the 2010 census, it had a population of 98,153 and is home to the largest Muslim population in the United States. First settled in the late 18th century by French farmers in a series of ribbon farms along the Rouge River and the Sauk Trail, the community grew with the establishment of the Detroit Arsenal on the Chicago Road linking Detroit and Chicago, it developed as a major manufacturing hub for the automotive industry, as Henry Ford built his Rouge River Ford Complex here. Henry Ford was born on a farm here and established an estate in Dearborn, as well as his River Rouge Complex, the largest factory of his Ford empire, he developed mass production of automobiles, based the world headquarters of the Ford Motor Company here. The city has a campus of the University of Michigan as well as Henry Ford College; the Henry Ford, the United States' largest indoor-outdoor historic museum complex and Metro Detroit's leading tourist attraction, is located here.
Dearborn residents are Americans of European or Middle Eastern ancestry, descendants of 19th and 20th-century immigrants. Because of new waves of immigration from the Middle East in the late 20th century, the largest ethnic grouping is now composed of descendants of various nationalities of that area: Christians from Lebanon and Palestine, as well as Muslim immigrants from Syria and Yemen; the primary European ethnicities as identified by respondents to the census are German, Polish and Italian. Before European encounter, the area had been inhabited for thousands of years by varying indigenous peoples. Historical tribes belonged to the Algonquian-language family the Council of Three Fires, the Potawatomi and related peoples. In contrast, the Huron were Iroquoian speaking. French colonists had a trading post at Fort Detroit and a settlement developed there in the colonial period, as well as on the south side of the Detroit River in what is now southwestern Ontario. France ceded all of its territory east of the Mississippi River to Britain in 1763 after losing to the English in the Seven Years' War.
Beginning in 1786, after the United States gained independence in the American Revolutionary War, more European Americans entered the region, settling in Detroit and the Dearborn area. With population growth, Dearborn Township was formed in 1833 and the village of Dearbornville in 1836, each named after patriot Henry Dearborn, a general in the American Revolution who served as Secretary of War under President Thomas Jefferson; the town of Dearborn was incorporated in 1893. Through much of the 19th century, the area was rural. Stimulated by industrial development in Detroit and within its own limits, in 1927 Dearborn was established as a city, its current borders result from a 1928 consolidation vote that merged Dearborn and neighboring Fordson, which feared being absorbed into expanding Detroit. According to historian James W. Leuwen, in his book Sundown Towns, many of Dearborn's residents "took pride in the saying,'The sun never set on a Negro in Dearborn'". According to segregationist Orville Hubbard, mayor of Dearborn from 1942 to 1978, "as far as he was concerned, it was against the law for a Negro to live in his suburb."The area between Dearborn and Fordson was undeveloped, still remains so in part.
Once farm land, considerable property was bought by Henry Ford for his estate, Fair Lane, the Ford Motor Company World Headquarters. Developments in this corridor were the Ford airport, other Ford administrative and development facilities. More recent additions are The Henry Ford, the Henry Ford Centennial Library, the super-regional shopping mall Fairlane Town Center, the Ford Performing Arts Center; the open land is planted with sunflowers and with Ford's favorite crop of soybeans. The crops are never harvested. With the growth and achievements of the Arab-American community, they developed and in 2005 opened the Arab American National Museum, the first museum in the world devoted to Arab-American history and culture. Arab Americans in Dearborn include descendants of Lebanese Christians who immigrated in the early twentieth century to work in the auto industry, as well as more recent Arab immigrants and their descendants from other nations. In January of 2019, Dearborn Mayor John "Jack" O'Reilly, Jr. terminated the contract of Bill McGraw, new editor of the Dearborn Historian, a city publication, has refused to allow the Autumn, 2018 issue to be distributed to subscribers.
That issue, on the 100th anniversary of Henry Ford's acquisition of the Dearborn Independent newspaper, discussed the influential anti-Semitism of Dearborn's most famous resident. This decision of the mayor received national publicity; the Dearborn Historical Commission held an emergency meeting and passed a resolution calling for the mayor to reverse these actions. The suppressed article may be read here. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 24.5 square miles, of which 24.4 square miles is land and 0.1 square miles is water. The city developed on both sides of the Rouge River. An artificial waterfall/low head dam was constructed by Henry Ford on his estate to power its powerhouse; the Upper and Lower Branches of the river come together in Dearborn. The river channeled near the Rouge Plant to allow lake freighter access. Fordson Island is an 8.4 acres island about three miles (5
Columbia University
Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Established in 1754, Columbia is the oldest institution of higher education in New York and the fifth-oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, it is one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence, seven of which belong to the Ivy League. It has been ranked by numerous major education publications as among the top ten universities in the world. Columbia was established as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain in reaction to the founding of Princeton University in New Jersey, it was renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the Revolutionary War and in 1787 was placed under a private board of trustees headed by former students Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. In 1896, the campus was moved from Madison Avenue to its current location in Morningside Heights and renamed Columbia University. Columbia scientists and scholars have played an important role in the development of notable scientific fields and breakthroughs including: brain-computer interface.
The Columbia University Physics Department has been affiliated with 33 Nobel Prize winners as alumni, faculty or research staff, the third most of any American institution behind MIT and Harvard. In addition, 22 Nobel Prize winners in Physiology and Medicine have been affiliated with Columbia, the third most of any American institution; the university's research efforts include the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Goddard Institute for Space Studies and accelerator laboratories with major technology firms such as IBM. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M. D. degree. The university administers the Pulitzer Prize annually. Columbia is organized into twenty schools, including three undergraduate schools and numerous graduate schools, it maintains research centers outside of the United States known as Columbia Global Centers. In 2018, Columbia's undergraduate acceptance rate was 5.1%, making it one of the most selective colleges in the United States, the second most selective in the Ivy League after Harvard.
Columbia is ranked as the 3rd best university in the United States by U. S. News & World Report behind Princeton and Harvard. In athletics, the Lions field varsity teams in 29 sports as a member of the NCAA Division I Ivy League conference; the university's endowment stood at $10.9 billion in 2018, among the largest of any academic institution. As of 2018, Columbia's alumni and affiliates include: five Founding Fathers of the United States — among them an author of the United States Constitution and co-author of the Declaration of Independence. S. presidents. Discussions regarding the founding of a college in the Province of New York began as early as 1704, at which time Colonel Lewis Morris wrote to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, the missionary arm of the Church of England, persuading the society that New York City was an ideal community in which to establish a college. However, it was not until the founding of the College of New Jersey across the Hudson River in New Jersey that the City of New York considered founding a college.
In 1746, an act was passed by the general assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. In 1751, the assembly appointed a commission of ten New York residents, seven of whom were members of the Church of England, to direct the funds accrued by the state lottery towards the foundation of a college. Classes were held in July 1754 and were presided over by the college's first president, Dr. Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the college's first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan; the college was founded on October 31, 1754, as King's College by royal charter of King George II, making it the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York and the fifth oldest in the United States. In 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queen's College, an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his chief opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777, Alexander Hamilton.
The American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776, was catastrophic for the operation of King's College, which suspended instruction for eight years beginning in 1776 with the arrival of the Continental Army. The suspension continued through the military occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783; the college's library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a military hospital first by American and British forces. Loyalists were forced to abandon their King's College in New York, seized by the rebels and renamed Columbia College; the Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where the
Marine Midland Building
140 Broadway is a 51-story office building located at 140 Broadway between Cedar and Liberty streets in Manhattan's financial district. The building, completed in 1967, is 688 ft tall and is known for the distinctive sculpture at its entrance, Isamu Noguchi's Cube. Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the man who designed the building, had proposed a monolith type sculpture, but it was deemed to be too expensive, it is owned by Union Investment. The building is 688 feet high, measuring 1,170,000 rentable square feet, is the 72nd tallest building in New York; the primary tenant of the building as of 2010 is Brown Brothers Harriman, leasing some 430,000 ft² in 2003. BBH moved to the site from their trademark location at 59 Wall Street, filling a vacancy left after HSBC moved their primary New York offices out of the building, to the HSBC building at 452 5th Avenue; the building was built by a consortium headed by Harry Helmsley and Marine Midland Bank received naming rights as part of its lease agreement which covered the two basement and first 20 floors.
Controlling interest in Marine Midland was purchased by HSBC in 1980 and they secured 100% ownership in 1987. The building is referred to by its prior names. A bombing occurred on the 8th floor on August 1969, injuring 20 people; the bomb, which police estimated to be the equivalent of 25 sticks of dynamite, was placed in a hallway just off the elevators some time during the evening and it exploded at around 10:30PM. The injured were on the night shift in the bank's stock bookkeeping department and were working on the other side of the corridor wall; the inside of this wall was lined with floor-to-ceiling automated file units that weighed 3 tons each and which absorbed most of the blast. Without them, the 20 injuries would all have been fatalities; the blast moved the file units about a foot, blew out all the windows on that side of the building and opened a 5-foot hole in the reinforced concrete floor. The bomber, Sam Melville, was convicted of this and seven other 1969 Manhattan bombings and sentenced to 18 years in prison.
He was killed by a state sharpshooter during the Attica Prison riots in September 1971.140 Broadway is one block east to the World Trade Center site, thus it sustained minor damage on its western façade during the September 11 Attacks when the Twin Towers collapsed. On June 25, 2013, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the Marine Midland Building as a New York City Landmark, under the name "140 Broadway"; the interior and exterior of the building appears a number of times in the 1971 film Klute. The interior shots provide images of the World Trade Center under construction; the building and the Noguchi cube are seen in The April Fools. They appear in the music videoes for Jay Z's "Empire State of Mind" and Beck's "Devils Haircut". HSBC Tower, Midtown Manhattan List of tallest buildings in New York City List of New York City Designated Landmarks in Manhattan below 14th Street Official website Emporis SkyscraperPage.com Photo from former WTC tower
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