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Solow Building

Solow Building

Gordon Bunshaft

Photo: King of Hearts · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
New York City, USA
Client / Owner
Sheldon Solow
Year
Completed 1972
Access
Private
Typology
Commercial

The Solow Building at 9 West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan is a 50-story office tower, 689 feet (210 m) tall, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for the developer Sheldon Solow. Solow assembled 17 parcels from 1965 to 1969. The tower topped out in June 1971, and Avon moved in during August 1972.

The north and south facades curve inward from the ground to the 18th floor, where the tower is 64 feet narrower than at street level, and then rise to the 50th story. Those walls are gray-tinted glass, while the east and west facades are travertine with diagonal steel bracing. It was the first major sloped-facade structure in New York, and its design drew heavy early criticism.

A travertine plaza has a 10-foot red 9 sculpture by Ivan Chermayeff, and Joan Miró's Moonbird stands on the 58th Street plaza. Stefan Soloviev has owned the building since Sheldon Solow's death in 2020.

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