1221 Avenue of the Americas

1221 Avenue of the Americas (formerly also known as the McGraw-Hill Building) is an international-style skyscraper at 1221 Sixth Avenue (also known as the Avenue of the Americas) in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The 51-floor structure has a seven-story base and a simple, cuboid massing. The facade has no decoration and consists of red granite piers alternating with glass stripes to underline the tower's verticality. It served as the headquarters of McGraw Hill Financial from 1972 to 2015. The building is set back 115 feet (35 m) from Sixth Avenue. Its sunken courtyard formerly contained Sun Triangle, a 49-foot (15 m) abstract steel sculpture by Athelstan Spilhaus. The tower's lobby is clad in dark red terrazzo and red marble, with aphorisms by Plato and John F. Kennedy.

The building was part of the later Rockefeller Center expansion (1960s–1970s) dubbed the "XYZ Buildings". Their plans were first drawn in 1963 by the Rockefeller family's architect, Wallace Harrison, of the architectural firm Harrison & Abramovitz. Their letters correspond to their height. 1251 Avenue of the Americas is the "X" Building as it is the tallest at 750 ft (229 m) and 54 stories, and was the first completed, in 1971. The "Y" is 1221 Avenue of the Americas, which was the second tower completed (1973) and is the second in height (674 ft and 51 stories). The "Z" Building, the shortest and the youngest, is 1211 Avenue of the Americas with 45 stories (592 ft). The building houses the New York practice of professional services and accountancy firm Deloitte and was previously the headquarters of McGraw-Hill Financial. Other tenants include Sirius XM Satellite Radio, whose headquarters and broadcast facility are in the building, and the law firms Mayer Brown and White & Case. In December 2016, CPPIB sold a 45% stake in the building to CIC for $1 billion, which valued it at $2.3 billion. In 2009, the structure earned a LEED green-building certification. A renovation of the plaza and retail space was announced in 2017, and the $50 million project was underway by 2022. The sunken courtyard formerly contained a 49-foot-tall (15 m) metal triangle designed by Athelstan Spilhaus and fabricated b

Building data from Wikidata (CC0); heights normalised. Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).