Grand Central Terminal, now polished and celebrated, has suffered many indignities since its 1913 opening on 42nd Street and Park Avenue. The two most notorious: having the monolithic 59-story Pan Am (now MetLife) Building wedged between it and the distinctive 1929 New York Central (now Helmsley) Building just one block north, in the early 1960s; and Donald Trump’s late ‘70s transformation of the adjacent Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt, a black glass edifice wildly unsympathetic to the stately monument to the east on 42nd Street.
It’s in that context that preservationists are dismayed about Grand Central’s future next-door neighbor to the west, which is almost certain to be Midtown’s tallest tower, Kohn Pedersen Fox’s (KPF) One Vanderbilt , a 1,450-foot glass skyscraper with an asymmetrical façade. Occupying the block bounded by 42nd Street, 43rd Street, Vanderbilt, and Madison Avenues, the new tower will replace several historic buildings, including the 1912, 200-foot masonry structure at 51 East 42nd Street by Warren & Wetmore, Grand Central’s architects, the last of the remaining original buildings designed to frame the station in a complementary Beaux Arts style.
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