666 Fifth Avenue

666 Fifth Avenue
General information
Location	666 Fifth Avenue, New York City
Coordinates	40°45′37″N 73°58′34″W
Completed	1957
Height
Roof	483 ft (147 m)
Technical details
Floor count	41
Floor area	1,500,000 sq ft (140,000 m2)
Design and construction
Owner	Kushner Properties
Architect	Carson & Lundin
Developer	Tishman Realty and Construction

Front of 666 Fifth

666 Fifth Avenue is a 41-story office building on Fifth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets in New York City.

History

Tishman ownership

The Tishman family via Tishman Realty and Construction built the 1,500,000-square-foot (140,000 m²) tower in 1957. It was designed by Carson & Lundin and the building was called the Tishman Building. One of its most famous exterior features was the prominent 666 address emblazoned on the top of the building. The other distinctive exterior features are embossed aluminum panels.

The original design included lobby sculptures by Isamu Noguchi including the "Landscape of the Cloud" which consists of sinuously cut thin railings in the ceiling to create a cloud effect. The cloud is also carried into a floor to ceiling waterfall.

The penthouse was occupied by the Top of the Sixes restaurant. For many years the building had a distinctive feature of a T-shaped atrium walk-through open to the sidewalks on 52nd Street, 53rd Street and Fifth Avenue with glass storefronts inside the walk-through. This included a bookstore and another area used for years by Alitalia Airlines. The entrance to 666 Fifth Avenue was inside this walk-through.

Sumitomo Realty ownership

Tishman Realty dissolved in 1976 and the building was sold for $80 million. In the late 1990s Japanese firms bought both Rockefeller Center and 666 Fifth Avenue. The new owner of 666 Fifth was Sumitomo Realty & Development Company. Major changes included replacing the Top of the Sixes restaurant with the Grand Havana Room, a cigar bar private club.

Tishman ownership

The newly reconstituted Tishman Speyer Properties bought the building for $518 million in 2000. At about the same time Tishman also bought Rockefeller Center. Shortly after the purchase Tishman enclosed the atrium walk-through and added a third tenant Hickey Freeman. The enclosure cut off the Fifth Avenue entrance. Access is now via 52nd or 53rd Streets. In 2002 the 666 address in the side of the building was replaced with a Citigroup logo. Citigroup is now the building's largest tenant.

The 2006 sale was the third blockbuster deal involving Tishman in two years. In 2005 Tishman bought the MetLife Building for $1.72 billion setting the previous record. A month before the 666 sale, Tishman bought Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for $5.4 billion which was the biggest real estate deal in U.S. history.

Kushner ownership

In December 2006, Tishman Speyer Properties along with the German investment firm TMW announced the sale of the building to the Kushner Properties for $1.8 billion, the highest price ever paid for an individual building in Manhattan

The deal turned heads since the building at 483 ft (147 m) is not even on the list of tallest buildings in New York City. However it is considered a trophy building because of its location on Fifth Avenue across from Rockefeller Center.

Kushner sold the retail condiminium portion of 666 Fifth to a Stanley Chera led group for $525 million.

Tenants

Brooks Brothers and the National Basketball Association store became the initial ground floor tenants. Brooks Brothers moved out in 2009. Hickey Freeman moved out in May 2009. The new Hollister Co. Epic New York flagship moved in in 2010, and Uniqlo will occupy 90,000 square feet (8,400 m²) on the ground, second, and third floors. The Hollister flagship opened in the later part of 2010 and features a live video feed from Huntington Beach, California displayed on 179 flat-screen TVs outside the store along with wave pools. Polished gray columns were placed in the lobby near the elevators and the changes were made to the subway entrance at the base of the building. The NBA Store closed in February 2011. The building is directly above the Fifth Avenue / 53rd Street station which is served by the E M trains. The building has also become an attractive location for law firms, hosting the New York offices of Vinson & Elkins, Fulbright & Jaworski, and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. It also houses the hedge fund Atlantic Investment Management. In addition, the real estate developer Rockrose also moved in in mid 2009 after break up. In Klaus Nomi's self-titled 1981 record, 666 Fifth Avenue Room 2220 is listed as the contact address in the liner notes.

In popular culture

• The construction of the building can be seen in Shirley Clarke's film Skyscraper (1960).
• A high POV shot from behind St. Patrick's Cathedral looking at the intersection of 52nd Street and Fifth Avenue in Godspell (film) (1973)
• The roof of the building can be seen (fittingly) in John Boorman's Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977).
• Klaus Nomi used the address on his self-titled album, Klaus Nomi (1981).
• This building is featured in Good Omens as the headquarters for Famine

In March 2011 Inditex acquired 3,600 square meters of commercial surface in the building for USD 324 million^{[citation needed]}.

External links

• Emporis profile of building