Park Avenue Plaza is an office building at 55 East 52nd Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City.

The 575-foot (175 m) tall, 44-story building was designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) for development company Fisher Brothers and was completed in 1981.

The building has a 15-sided massing, with wide diagonal facades to its northeast and southeast, as well as a deep notch on its east.

Fisher Brothers acquired the site in the 1970s and proposed constructing a ground-level atrium in exchange for additional space.

Park Avenue Plaza is at 55 East 52nd Street[2] in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City.

[3][7] Park Avenue Plaza was designed by Raul de Armas of the firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM).

At the time of Park Avenue Plaza's completion, Lever House (also designed by SOM) was the only other nearby building with a blue-green glass facade.

[19] The space was built in exchange for a zoning bonus;[8][20] its presence contrasted with neighboring buildings that featured a large open plaza.

[22] The atrium contains a large painting by Frank Stella, a pair of brass sculptures with "organic" motifs by William Crovelli, and a waterfall on the eastern wall.

[4] The storefronts cover 20,000 square feet (1,900 m2) and originally contained bow windows as well as brass and granite decorations.

[14][28] For several years in the 1970s, Fisher Brothers had been negotiating with the Racquet and Tennis Club to buy the unused air rights above the latter's clubhouse.

[29] The firm had already acquired a site behind the clubhouse on 52nd and 53rd Streets,[30] and it had hired SOM to design a 15-sided office building facing Park Avenue.

[31][32] The developers planned to name the building "Park Avenue Plaza", though the Manhattan borough president's office had to approve this name.

[34] Instead, the developers' lawyer Samuel H. Liddenbaum requested a Park Avenue address from the borough president's office, and he proposed that the building include an enclosed atrium or galleria.

[35] Negotiations between Fisher Brothers and the Racquet and Tennis Club were halted after the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) announced in 1978 that Fisher Brothers could not only have an address on Park Avenue, but also up to 200,000 sq ft (19,000 m2) of additional office space, if the developers built a 60-foot-high (18 m) galleria.

[36][41] As a result, in November 1978, Fisher Brothers opted not to accept the galleria bonus from the city, and it resumed negotiations with the Racquet and Tennis Club.

[12] This provided funding for the club's protection while also allowing Fisher Brothers to obtain the same amount of floor space that it would have received through the zoning bonus.

[42] The CPC gave Fisher Brothers permission to reduce the atrium's height in exchange for two additional office floors, the construction of which would pay for the air rights.

[15] In December 1978, the city government's Industrial and Commercial Incentive Board granted Fisher Brothers a $6.6 million tax abatement to be payable over ten years.

[46] Fisher Brothers initially charged rents of $22 to $23 per square foot ($240 to $250/m2),[47] and the first tenants signed leases at these relatively low rates.

[48] Fisher Brothers then acquired the adjacent CBS Studio Building to protect westward views from the new tower.

[56] That September, Fisher Brothers reportedly negotiated to sell the building to a Middle Eastern investment group.

This prompted Fisher Brothers to apply for a unique ZIP Code for the building, which required that the owners prove that the tenants would receive a high volume of mail.

[61] First Boston sold back its ownership stake in the building to Fisher Brothers in late 1987 for $80 million,[56][62] in part to raise money for employee bonuses.

[56] Park Avenue Plaza continued to attract financial firms, including Tokai Bank, which leased several floors in 1989.

[67] The next year, the city government gave tax incentives to financial group ING Barings if the company agreed to lease space at Park Avenue Plaza and add jobs during that period.

In a 1981 exhibit of Newman's photographs, the Municipal Art Society described the building as "leaping with tyrannical self-confidence out of the middle of the block".

[20] Conversely, architectural critic Martin Filler thought the building's facade was "virtually identical to those SOM has been producing for over 30 years", saying the material drew attention to Lever House, which by comparison "seems pathetically shrunken" by Park Avenue Plaza's presence.

[9] Goldberger characterized the atrium in 1982 as "too small and tight in its feeling to be the enclosed public square that it aspires to be, but it is a lot more grandiose than the average lobby".

"[99] Richard F. Shepard wrote for The New York Times in 1989 that the atrium had a "warmth that almost contradicts its wall-size waterfall and its manicured interior architecture".