Centrally located in the core of midtown Manhattan's prestigious office submarket between Grand Central Terminal and East 45th Street, The MetLife Building is a 58-story trophy-quality asset, comprised of 3.0 million square feet of office and retail space with an adjacent six-level parking garage.
The history of The Metlife Building begins in 1954 as part of the plan to reconstruct Grand Central Terminal. Erwin S. Wolfson developed the project in the early 1960's with the assistance of the architects Emery Roth and Sons, Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi. When the doors of The MetLife Building opened on March 7, 1963, it was known as "The Pan Am Building" and was the focal point of Park Avenue.
Today, this building is known as "The MetLife Building." It stretches from East 43rd Street to East 45th Street and offers direct access to Grand Central Terminal, an important transportation hub in New York City.
Since opening in 1963, The MetLife Building has served as the headquarters for numerous prestigious corporations. They include, Pan Am World Airways, Rogers & Wells, The Dreyfus Corporation, Kidder Peabody, Lehrer McGovern Bovis, Metropolitan Life Insurance, Mitsui USA & Company, Sky Club, Whitman, Breed Abbott & Morgan and Barclays Bank.
In 1981 the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company purchased the building. The building's identity switched from "The Pan Am Building" to "The MetLife Building" in early 1993. The Pan Am signs were replaced by MetLife when the Pan Am Corporation ceased operations and vacated its space. The two largest single letters weigh about 4,000 pounds each and the MetLife logos measure 22 X 22 feet. They are visible from as far south as lower Manhattan and as far north as the far reaches of Central Park.
Two pieces of the original artwork can be found in the Vanderbilt Avenue lobby - a bronze bust of the building's developer Erwin S. Wolfson and Richard Lippold's elaborate wire sculpture "Flight," created in honor of PanAmerican World Airways.