Skyscraper in Manhattan, New York
Olympic Tower is a 51-story, building at 641 and 645 Fifth Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Skidmore, Owings &amp; Merrill (SOM), the mixed-use development contains condominium apartments, office space, and retail shops. The tower is named after Olympic Airways, whose president Aristotle Onassis jointly developed the tower with the Arlen Realty and Development Corporation between 1971 and 1974. It was the first skyscraper to be constructed within a special zoning district to encourage retail and mixed-use development along Fifth Avenue.
The building's glass facade is designed to reflect St. Patrick's Cathedral immediately to the south. The superstructure is made of steel on the lower stories and cast concrete on the upper stories. The first two stories contain a public atrium, Olympic Place, which connects the 51st and 52nd Street facades. The next 19 stories contain office space while the top 30 stories contain 230 condominium apartments. Upon Olympic Tower's completion, architectural writers such as Ada Louise Huxtable and Christopher Gray criticized its design.
Construction of Olympic Tower dates to the late 1960s, when Best &amp; Co. sought to build an office tower above their store at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street. Morris Lapidus was initially hired for the project, but the plans were changed after the zoning district was created. When the building was completed, wealthy non-American buyers purchased most of its residential units. Crown Acquisitions bought Olympic Tower from its original owners in the 2010s.
Site.
Olympic Tower is in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is along the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue to the west and 51st Street to the south, with an arm extending north to 52nd Street. The building carries the addresses 641 Fifth Avenue for its residential units; 645 Fifth Avenue for its office units; and 10 East 52nd Street for its entrance on 52nd Street. The land lot is L-shaped and covers around , with a frontage of on Fifth Avenue and a depth of . The building wraps around Cartier Building and 647 Fifth Avenue to the northwest and is on the same block as 11 East 51st Street and 488 Madison Avenue to the east. Other nearby buildings include 650 Fifth Avenue to the west, 660 Fifth Avenue to the northwest, Austrian Cultural Forum New York to the north, 12 East 53rd Street and Omni Berkshire Place to the northeast, St. Patrick's Cathedral to the south, and the International Building of Rockefeller Center to the southwest.
Prior to the mid-1940s, a portion of the site was formerly occupied by the Union Club and two residences at 3 East 51st Street and 645 Fifth Avenue. These buildings were demolished by 1944 when a 12-story department store for Best &amp; Co. was announced for the site. The Best &amp; Co. store opened in 1947. Olympic Airways, the national airline of Greece, subleased 647 Fifth Avenue immediately north of the store in 1965 and opened a sales office there the next year.
Architecture.
Olympic Tower was designed in the International Style by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). It is tall, with 51 stories. Whitson Overcash of SOM was the partner in charge and Paul Baren was the project manager. Other firms involved in Olympic Tower's construction included general contractor Tishman Realty &amp; Construction, mechanical engineer W. A. DiGiacomo &amp; Associates, structural engineer James Ruderman, and zoning and code engineer Max Siegel.
Form and facade.
The building was the first to take advantage of a special Fifth Avenue zoning district, with retail on the first two floors, followed by offices on the center stories and condominiums on the highest stories. The presence of the zoning district enabled the Fifth Avenue facade of the tower to rise straight up without any setbacks, but setbacks were still required on the 51st and 52nd Street facades. The tower's developers, Arlen Realty and Olympic Airways president Aristotle Onassis, received a zoning variance that exempted them from having to construct a setback on 51st Street. The only setbacks on the tower are on the northern side, facing 52nd Street, where there is a 22-story "bustle". At the time of Olympic Tower's completion, it was the tallest building that faced Fifth Avenue without a setback there.
Olympic Tower has a floor area ratio of 21.6, the maximum permitted in the city when it was completed. The tower received development bonuses in exchange for including a public atrium and for including more than the minimum of retail space that was required for new buildings in the zoning district. In addition to its land lot, the building uses approximately of air development rights above neighboring buildings, giving it a total lot area of approximately . When Olympic Tower was developed, buildings in the densest commercial districts could have a FAR of up to 18, but the tower's development bonuses collectively enabled a 20 percent increase in the maximum FAR.
The facade is clad with glass that is tinted brown. The curtain wall is made of black anodized aluminum. According to Whitson Overcash, the glass facade was meant to reflect St. Patrick's Cathedral to the south.
Features.
Olympic Tower's facade contains two stories of retail space, 19 stories of office space, and 30 stories of apartments. Olympic Tower has several mechanical systems, including steam heating and cooling, secondary water, ventilation, and domestic hot water systems. In total, it was built with of usable space. According to floor plans, Olympic Tower has a single mechanical core at the center of each floor, which contains the elevators, stairs, restrooms, and utility rooms.
The 21-story retail and office base measures along Fifth Avenue and along the northern side. The southern side of the base is long on 51st Street; the retail space in the lowest stories extends another eastward along that street. The upper stories are rectangular in form, measuring on Fifth Avenue by about 177.5 feet on 51st Street. The pedestrian atrium on the lowest stories measures about wide and long between 51st and 52nd Streets.
Superstructure.
The superstructure is unconventional in that the lower stories are made of steel while the upper stories are made of cast concrete. Though the superstructure uses conventional methods of steel and concrete construction, the combination of both types of construction is less common. The superstructure for the first 21 stories is composed of structural steel columns and girders, and the floor slabs are covered with reinforced concrete. On the upper 30 stories, the columns and floor slabs are made of reinforced concrete. Concrete had better acoustics, the apartments did not require as deep a floor slab compared to the steel frame, and the apartments did not require flexible partitions like the office stories did. The developer, Tishman Speyer, decided not to use a mixture of steel and concrete superstructures for later projects because it was time-consuming and expensive. Steel frames topped by concrete frames have since been used in structures such as the Bloomberg Tower.
The steel structure for the office and retail stories divides the floor area into bays of . A steel vertical truss rises through the first 21 stories of the building. The 22nd floor is designed as a transitional floor where vertical and lateral loads from the upper stories are transferred onto the steel truss. The concrete columns of the upper stories and the steel columns of the lower stories are not perfectly aligned, so the 22nd floor acts as a truss with transfer girders connecting the columns on the upper and lower stories. Steel billet plates, with thicknesses of between , are welded to the girders' top flanges. Above the billet plates are steel base plates with dowels on their top sides, to which the cast concrete columns' rebar cages are connected. A concrete shear wall rises above the 22nd floor. The concrete floor slabs are about thick for the 23rd through 34th floors and are about thick for the 35th through 51st floors.
Atrium.
A midblock pedestrian atrium, originally known as Olympic Place, is included in Olympic Tower's design. The atrium, connecting 51st and 52nd Streets, covers and is designed as the office lobby. The atrium contains two stories and is high on average. The upper tier of the atrium contains retail space, and the atrium also contains a three-tiered waterfall. The waterfall is built above a driveway for garbage trucks.
The atrium is enclosed at either end with revolving doors and, as designed, had minimal exterior signage advertising its presence. When Olympic Tower was being developed, the city allowed developers to enclose their public spaces as long as these spaces had heating and cooling systems. The city also incentivized developers to build enclosed spaces by awarding higher development bonuses for public spaces that were heated and cooled; this legislation was changed after Olympic Tower was constructed. Additionally, the atrium was originally sparsely outfitted and had few chairs and tables. Under city laws regulating privately owned public spaces, Olympic Tower's owners were obligated to provide a minimum number of trees, light fixtures, benches, movable chairs, and planters. A writer for "The Washington Post" stated in 1992 that the atrium's "white chairs discourage lingering".
Moed de Armas and Shannon renovated the atrium in 2019. As part of the renovation, "Triangulated Passage Work," a set of sculptural artworks by Liam Gillick, was installed in the atrium. The works consist of five sculptured panels mounted on the walls. The atrium's lighting system was designed to be active 24 hours a day, but the intensity of the light throughout the day was adjusted to align with the circadian rhythms. A new cafe was installed in the atrium as well. As part of the renovation, a green wall with five types of plants was installed on parts of the atrium's walls.
Office space.
The office component of the building consists of the third through 21st floors. The office space covers approximately . The office stories cover on average. Initially, the eighth floor was leased as short-term executive offices and the ninth floor was marketed to small tenants. The developers included numerous amenities to entice large companies. These included a Telex service, stock quotation machines, and a news ticker.
Condominiums.
As of October 2019[ [update]], Olympic Tower has 229 condominium units. When the building was constructed, it had 230 apartments on the top 30 stories. The condominium entrance was on 51st Street, just west of the entrance to the atrium on that side. The residential stories start at floor 22 and cover on average.
There are up to eight apartments to a floor, most with one or two bedrooms. The apartments contain full-height windows and ceilings. The designs of the rooms are relatively simple and, because the full-height windows did not allow mechanical systems to be embedded in the facade, each apartment has central ventilation. Many of the apartments' living rooms face the Hudson River to the west as well as the East River to the east. When Olympic Tower opened, its condominiums had bidets, which were not common in U.S. residences. An Associated Press writer called the condos "very European in concept", as most bathrooms had bidets and a hallman delivered mail directly to each apartment. Many of the condos retain their original appliances and designs, while other units have been renovated over the years to match residents' preferences.
The top two floors contain four duplexes with the only fireplaces in the entire building. One of the duplexes was occupied by Adnan Khashoggi and was built with its own swimming pool, as well as five bedrooms, six bathrooms, indoor gardens, a 300-seat catering kitchen, a ballroom, and a sauna. Another duplex contains a living room facing north and west, a dining room, a butler's pantry, a kitchen, a private elevator, four bedrooms, and a sauna. The penthouse apartments were the highest in the world when Olympic Tower was completed, although the uninhabited domes of the Waldorf Astoria New York were slightly taller.
Amenities for the residential portion of the building included a health club, newsstand, sauna, and wine cellar. The residential section also has a fitness center and bicycle parking. When it opened, Olympic Tower had security guards at every entrance, as well as intrusion alarms connected to a computer. The tower also had a high number of service staff, including a doorman, hallman, elevator operators, maids, and three concierges, as well as 24/7 dry cleaning and room service. The concierges