One Chase Manhattan Plaza Guide from New York Hotels
One Chase Manhattan Plaza is a skyscraper in the Financial District of downtown Manhattan in New York City, between William, Nassau, Liberty, and Pine streets. At 813 feet tall, it is the 137th tallest building in the world, the 40th tallest in the United States of America, and 11th tallest in New York City. One Chase Manhattan Plaza has 60 floors and 5 basement floors, covering 2,200,000 square feet. The banking skyscraper was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The white steel façade with black patterns below the windows is similar to the international style of the Inland Steel Building in Chicago. It sits on a 2.5 acre space with about 70% of it comprising the plaza public space. There are many fine hotel accommodations available near Once Chase Manhattan Plaza in the Financial District.
One Chase Manhattan Plaza was commissioned by David Rockefeller, the president of Chase Manhattan Bank at the time and the head of the Rockefeller family. He picked the location in Manhattan's Financial District because many other companies had moved uptown. The building is currently occupied by JP Morgan Chase. The original major tenants included some of New York's premier law firms. One of the original tenants remains in the building, the law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, which served as Chase Manhattan's primary outside counsel. The building itself, while massive, is not particularly awe inspiring by New York City standards, but the plaza lends much needed public space to an otherwise congested part of the city. The art at One Chase Manhattan Plaza attracts a number of visitors in its own right.
One Chase Manhattan Plaza is the site of the outdoor sculpture "Group of Four Trees" by Jean Dubuffet and the water sculpture "Sunken Garden" by Isamu Noguchi. The Sunken garden is in the open plaza in front of the building, and is set one floor below street level in a round space cut out of the plaza. The opening is surrounded by a metal railing, which allows viewers to stand close to the edge to observe the circular space below. The sculpture is also viewable from inside the building through the floor-to-ceiling windows surrounding it. The bottom of the garden is made of light colored stones which resemble the raked lines of a zen garden. The garden is dry in the winter and the summer the garden is a fountain. There are seven black boulders from Japan that stand on higher within the garden, so when there is water, some are partially submerged and others dry.
Chase Manhattan was in the process of preparing One Chase Manhattan Plaza for sale, but did not receive enough interest from buyers. A clever marketing tactic to attract commercial brokers was to mail out 750 puzzle pieces, 14 of which could be exchanged for American Express Gift Cards valued from $200 to $5000. The project had a high response rate. The building is now under consideration for official historic landmark status, which would have to be conferred by the New York City Council.
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