1251 Avenue of the Americas Building

The 1251 Avenue of the Americas Building is an International Style skyscraper designed between 1963 and 1967 by Harrison, Abramovitz & Harris, with Wallace Harrison as lead architect, and built between 1967 and 1971 in New York, NY.

1251 Avenue of the Americas Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The 1251 Avenue of the Americas Building is also known, or has been known as, 1251 6th Avenue, Exxon Building, or Esso Building.

Its precise street address is 1251 6th Avenue, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

In 2004 the 1251 Avenue of the Americas Building was awarded with the Kingsley Excellence Award.

The building features a seven-story base along its western side, with a recessed plaza that includes a spacious two-tiered pool and fountains overlooking Sixth Avenue.

Pablo Picasso authorized the creation of a replica of a tapestry he designed for the ballet Mercure, specifically to be placed in the building’s atrium.

The building underwent a major restoration between 2020 and 2022. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was FXCollaborative.

Harrison, Abramovitz & Harris, with Wallace Harrison as the lead architect, was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

That being said, architecture is a complex discipline involving many professionals from different fields, without whom this building would have not been possible. We will surely be leaving out a lot of names here, but here is a list of the people we do know also played their part in making the 1251 Avenue of the Americas Building a reality:

• Edwards & Hjorth in charge of Structural Engineering
• George A. Fuller Co. as the Main Contractor
• Rockefeller Group as the Main Developer
• Pablo Picasso, Kan Yasuda and Hiroshi Senju as the collaborating Artist

The 1251 Avenue of the Americas Building can be categorized as an International Style building.

The 1251 Avenue of the Americas Building was designed in 1963. By 1963 the International Style movement had already left its early days behind and could be considered a mature movement, which does not mean it was loved and accepted by everyone, on the contrary. The International Style was accepted by the architecture community way before it was by the general public, and it is therefore likely that the 1251 Avenue of the Americas Building was not well received by everyone at the time.

The 1251 Avenue of the Americas Building uses a trussed-frame structure made of steel columns and concrete and steel slabs.

A trussed-frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight, and diagonal elements to provide stability against horizontal forces such as wind or seismic activity by triangulating the structure. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade of the building however, is load bearing. This doesn't imply that it is a traditional load-bearing wall. Rather, it means that the structure's exterior pillars have been pushed to the very edges, becoming integrated with the facade, and therefore, technically, a part of it.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a thick succession of narrow pillars clad in beige limestone. Only one of every two pillars is structural, while the others were purely a design choice, giving the building a strong sense of verticality. These pillars frame the narrow bands of curtain wall that feature brown-tinted glass and also brown but opaque spandrels.