General Electric Building
- Architects
- Cross & Cross John Walter Cross
- Year
- 1931
- Style
- Art Deco
- City
- Manhattan, NY
The General Electric Building at 570 Lexington Avenue is an Art Deco skyscraper completed in 1931 by Cross & Cross. It was built as the RCA Victor Building during construction and later renamed for General Electric, and it's often distinguished by its address to avoid confusion with 30 Rockefeller Plaza, once itself called the GE Building.
the building
The crown. The 50-floor, 640-foot tower rises to a stylized Gothic octagonal brick crown decorated with Art Deco lightning bolts symbolizing electricity. The tracery at the top is meant to evoke electricity and radio waves, with a clock at the main entrance flanked by silver arms reaching out from the facade.
Deference to the church next door. The tower was designed to blend with the low Byzantine dome of the adjacent St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue, matching its brick coloring and terracotta decoration even as it rose far above it.
the style
The building applies Art Deco ornament to a Gothic-derived massing, with the setback tower rising from a round-cornered base of elaborate masonry and figural sculpture. The lightning-bolt motifs make the building's original purpose, tied to RCA and electric power, visible in its decoration.
More on Art Decothe architect
Cross & Cross, the firm of John Walter Cross, designed the building, completed in 1931.
significance
The General Electric Building is a New York City Individual Landmark (LP-01412), designated 7/9/1985, and is listed on both the National Register of Historic Places and the New York State Register of Historic Places.
nearby
- Saint Bartholomew's Church and Community House
- Waldorf-Astoria Hotel
- Seagram Building
- Villard Houses
- Citigroup Center
- Citicorp Center (now 601 Lexington Avenue) including Saint Peter's Church