250 Vesey Street Building

The 250 Vesey Street Building is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by César Pelli & Associates, in association with Adamson Associates, and built between 1984 and 1986 in New York, NY.

250 Vesey Street 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 building has changed names several times over the years, and is also known as:

• Four World Financial Center between 1986 and 2014.
• 4WFC.
• Merrill Lynch Building.

Its precise street address is 250 Vesey Street, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the building sustained considerable roof damage, although the extent of the damage was less severe compared to that of the other three towers in the complex.

The building underwent a major restoration in 2013. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects .

César Pelli & Associates was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with Adamson Associates.

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 250 Vesey Street Building a reality:

• Thornton Tomasetti in charge of Structural Engineering
• Olympia & York Companies as the Main Developer
• WSP Flack + Kurtz in charge of MEP Engineering

The 250 Vesey Street Building can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The 250 Vesey Street Building was completed in 1986. At that time Postmodernism was the prevailing style. Fresh, bold and daring, architects were exploring the freedom of designing without having to follow the strict, sometimes arbitrary rules of a specific architectural movement (which ironically became a movement itself). The 250 Vesey Street Building was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The 250 Vesey Street Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade uses a non-load bearing curtain wall system. This means the curtain wall modules are anchored to the building's structural frame, typically by being attached to the edge of the floor slabs. The curtain wall system connects to the slabs using brackets, anchors, and mullions, which transfer the loads imposed by wind and temperature changes, to the building's primary structural elements.

This setup allows the curtain wall to accommodate differential movement between the facade and the structural frame, such as thermal expansion, floor deflection, or sway from wind forces. This system's integration with the slab edges also allows for continuous insulation and weatherproofing layers.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features a combination of reflective glass and polished granite panels that extend from top to bottom of the building, creating a repetitive squared grid.

The building's volume features several step-shaped setbacks.