Олимпиада мұнарасы: Манхэттеннің көкжиегіндегі символ

Skyscraper in Manhattan, New York

Olympic Tower is a 51 story, 188.98 m 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 & 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 & 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.

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 34.42 m on Fifth Avenue and a depth of 58.67 m. These buildings were demolished by 1944 when a 12 story department store for Best & Co. was announced for the site. The Best & 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.

Olympic Tower was designed in the International Style by the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM). It is 188.98 m tall, with 51 stories. Whitson Overcash of SOM was the partner in charge and Paul Baren was the project manager.

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. The curtain wall is made of black anodized aluminum.

Olympic Tower's facade contains two stories of retail space, 19 stories of office space,efn|The office stories cover floors 3 to 19. According to Progressive Architecture, there are only 17 office stories if mechanical floors are excluded. Though the superstructure uses conventional methods of steel and concrete construction, the combination of both types of construction is less common. 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 atrium contains two stories and is 10.52 m high on average. 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. 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 developers included numerous amenities to entice large companies. These included a Telex service, stock quotation machines, and a news ticker. Many of the apartments' living rooms face the Hudson River to the west as well as the East River to the east. 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. 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. 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.

By the late 1960s, Best & Co. was struggling financially despite a program of investment from its owner, the McCrory Corporation. At the time, Best's was considering adding a tower over their Fifth Avenue flagship. The company hired Arlen Realty to manage the development. The developers also considered obtaining the air rights over St. Patrick's Cathedral. Arlen originally hired Norval White and Elliot Willensky to design a building above the Best's store itself.

Aristotle Onassis established a family trust called Victory Development in March 1970. Victory formed a joint venture with Arlen to acquire Best's Fifth Avenue flagship, 647 Fifth Avenue, and the Cartier Building. Architect Morris Lapidus was hired for the initial iteration of the project. 647 Fifth Avenue would have been demolished, but the Cartier and Best's buildings would have remained in place. Onassis and Riklis approved of Lapidus's plan and hired him to create designs for the Olympic/Arlen project. In October 1970, McCrory executives decided to liquidate Best's and close all its stores, including the flagship location at Fifth Avenue and 51st Street. McCrory's president Samuel Neaman said at the time that the site of Best's Fifth Avenue flagship was worth more as a potential real estate development than as a retail location. Cohen was negotiating with several department store chains to open a store in the base, which, along with a public atrium, would allow a greater development bonus for the skyscraper. Shortly after the closure of Best's was announced, an editorial appeared in The New York Times, specifically naming Lapidus's involvement in Olympic Tower as an example of Fifth Avenue's decline. According to Lapidus, the editorial created difficulties with his involvement in the project. Lapidus's exhibit that year at the Architectural League of New York also influenced opinions against his Olympic Tower proposal.

Around the same time as planning for Olympic Tower was taking place, a special zoning district was created along Fifth Avenue. The legislation went into effect in April 1971. After the zoning district was created, the mayoral Office of Midtown Planning, led by Jaquelin Robertson, collaborated with Olympic and Arlen to add mixed uses to Olympic Tower. Robertson's office perceived Lapidus's design as excessively unconventional and influenced Olympic and Arlen to reconsider the design. A two story atrium would run through the building, connecting with St. Patrick's Cathedral to the south and another atrium and Paley Park to the north. Cohen said Terence Cooke, the Archbishop of New York and the cardinal of St. Patrick's, was "very pleased" with the plans. Olympic Tower Associates released an offering plan for its 230 condominiums in May 1974. The offering valued the condos at $46.9 million (equivalent to $ million in ), the most expensive offering for a building in New York City. Olympic Tower was intentionally structured as a condo development because its residences were to be marketed primarily to foreign buyers. At the time, most other luxury developments in the city were housing cooperatives, which Curbed wrote could "reject applications for almost any reason", and the developers wished to avoid this. At the time, more than 70 percent of the commercial space had been leased and 24 of the apartments had been sold. The first residents were expected to move into the building in early 1975. The building cost $95 million in total (equivalent to $ million in ) and the residential units ranged from $40,000 for a studio ($ in ) to $650,000 for a duplex unit with nine rooms ($ million in ).

By 1975, foreign residents had bought about 80 percent of the condominiums for between $122,000 and $650,000 apiece. Arlen sold its interest in Olympic Tower to Williston S. A., a Panamanian company that was owned by the Onassis family, in late 1979. At that time, Arlen was several hundred million dollars in debt and was selling off many of its properties. In its first five years of operation, none of Olympic Tower's retail space had been rented out, and the atrium was for the most part empty. As a result, New York City Planning Commission head Robert F. Wagner Jr. threatened to revoke Olympic Tower's certificate of occupancy in 1979, saying the building's owners had not upheld an agreement to add stores to the retail mall in exchange for zoning bonuses. Afterward, Olympic Tower's owners opened a newsstand, public restrooms, and restaurant space in the atrium. The restaurant La Cote Basque was operating at Olympic Tower by 1981. In addition, Delices operated a pastry shop, bar, and a terrace called Le Cafe at ground level, as well as a restaurant called La Cascade in the basement, overlooking the waterfall. The atrium was also used for events such as concerts. Other luxury residential towers such as Trump Tower and 500 Park Tower were developed nearby in the 1980s. Afterward, prices of residential units at Olympic Tower started to decline in comparison to units in the newer buildings. By 1985, the average unit at Olympic Tower sold for $202,000 per room ($ million in ). Units at Trump Tower, which was also on Fifth Avenue, sold for an average of $263,910 per room ($ million in ). Olympic Tower's condominium units continued to see high demand from Europeans looking to live on Fifth Avenue, though critics said the residences were not well maintained. The midtown section of Fifth Avenue was again becoming a fashionable retail strip by the mid 1990s. Several large brands had offered to occupy some of Olympic Tower's retail space, but Olympic Tower Associates rejected these offers. One brokerage executive said the building's operators "want a tenant in keeping with H. Stern, Mark Cross and Versace", which already occupied retail space on the block. Demand for apartments also increased in the 1990s due to a dearth of new luxury residential developments in the city at the time. Olympic Tower and the structures at 647 Fifth Avenue, the Cartier Building, and 10 East 52nd Street were valued at about $1 billion. The owners received a $760 million commercial mortgage backed security (CMBS) interest only loan in May 2017 from Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. Olympic Tower's owners used the tower itself to back the CMBS loan. The loan was broken into 11 pari passu senior notes totaling $611 million and 3 junior notes totaling $149 million. The banks also originated a $240 million mezzanine loan which was subsequently sold to TIAA and Mirae Asset Financial Group. Since 1998, the National Basketball Association has had its headquarters at the property. The organization occupies across floors 11 through 20 with a lease extending through 2035. Billionaire Adnan Khashoggi owned a penthouse duplex from 1976 to 1993. including a ten room apartment on the 43rd floor. The administration of Philippine President Corazon Aquino seized the Marcos apartment in the late 1980s while recovering some unexplained wealth of the Marcos family. Foreign demand for the condos declined after the September 11 attacks in 2001, and the tower began to attract local residents and employees. These included General Electric's board of directors, who worked at Rockefeller Center, as well as designers Laurice Rahmé, Giuseppe Zanotti, and Lorraine Schwartz, who preferred the structure for its history, architecture, and proximity to several high end stores. The choreographer, director, and dancer Ron Field also lived in the building, as did musician Roger Waters, actor Nicolas Cage, Alessandra and Allegra Gucci, the daughters of Maurizio Gucci, owned a penthouse, which they listed for sale in August 2015. According to court documents, Venezuelan kingpin Alejandro Betancourt López also bought a penthouse in the building. Curbed wrote in 2022 that the building's residents were "obsessed with anonymity" and that "A number have gone decades without even seeing their next door neighbors." Progressive Architecture magazine characterized the new plans as having attracted attention from members of the public who wanted to see Fifth Avenue's revival. and described it as "overwhelm[ing] Fifth Avenue like an aircraft carrier beside a row of sailboats". Ada Louise Huxtable of the same newspaper said Olympic Tower was "about as nondescript as anything that size can be" and described the residential lobby as "mildly offensive in design and taste and quite disposable". Huxtable saw Olympic Place as a "cop out" and said that, with the inclusion of the plaza, "Olympic Tower has given the city the back of its hand". Suzanne Stephens of Progressive Architecture said that the tower was "awkward in form, but slick in style, a solution that conveys signs of urbanity rather than creating a sense of urban place".