Exxon Building
- Architect
- Wallace Harrison
- Year
- 1972
- Style
- International Style
- City
- Manhattan, NY
1251 Avenue of the Americas, formerly the Exxon Building, is an International Style skyscraper between 49th and 50th Streets designed by Wallace Harrison and completed in 1972. It was built as part of the later Rockefeller Center expansion of the 1960s-70s known as the "XYZ Buildings," first planned in 1963 by the Rockefeller family's architect.
the building
Striped facade. The cuboid tower has no ornamentation; its facade alternates narrow vertical stripes of glass and limestone, with the glass stripes formed by windows and opaque spandrels washed by machines sliding down the surface.
The sunken plaza. A seven-floor base wraps the western portion of the building around a sunken plaza with a two-tier pool and fountains facing Sixth Avenue, home to the bronze statue Out to Lunch by John Seward Johnson II.
the style
Built in the International Style, the tower reads as a simple, unornamented cuboid, fitting the plain glass-and-stone vocabulary of that idiom.
More on International Stylethe architect
Wallace Harrison, of Harrison & Abramovitz, served as the Rockefeller family's architect and drew the first plans for the XYZ Buildings expansion in 1963.
nearby
- 1270 Avenue of the Americas
- James Earl Jones Theatre
- Radio City Music Hall
- 30 Rockefeller Plaza
- Rockefeller Center
- Church of Saint Mary-the-Virgin Complex