Lipstick Building

The Lipstick Building, also known as 885 Third Avenue and 53rd at Third, is a 453-foot-tall (138 m) office building at Third Avenue between 53rd Street and 54th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. It was completed in 1986 and has 34 floors. The building was designed by John Burgee and Philip Johnson for Hines Interests and was developer Gerald D. Hines's first project in New York City. The building's nickname is derived from its shape and color, which resemble those of a lipstick tube. The building has a nearly elliptical massing, with setbacks above the 19th and 27th stories, as well as a two-story granite penthouse. The structure is actually polygonal; both the base and the setback sections have over a hundred sides. The building stands on double-height columns at the base, and the facade is made of red Imperial granite and stainless steel. On the northeast side of the building is a nine-story-tall rectangular annex. The building has 580,000 square feet (54,000 m2) of rentable space, some of which was built in exchange for improvements to the Lexington Avenue/51st Street station. To brace the building against winds from the north, structural engineer Irwin Cantor designed a tube support system and a central core for the building's superstructure. Hines Interests bought the site from Citigroup in 1981 and hired Burgee and Johnson to de

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