3 Park Avenue Building

The 3 Park Avenue Building is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Shreve, Lamb and Harmon, and built in 1975 in New York, NY.

3 Park Avenue Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. The building is, or has also been known as Norman Thomas High School And Office Building.

Its precise street address is 3 Park Avenue, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The building underwent a major restoration in 2016. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, and AREA Architects.

Shreve, Lamb and Harmon 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 3 Park Avenue Building a reality:

• Rosenwasser/Grossman Consulting Engineers in charge of Structural Engineering
• Irving Marantz as the collaborating Artist

The 3 Park Avenue Building can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The 3 Park Avenue Building was completed in 1975. 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 3 Park Avenue Building was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The 3 Park Avenue Building uses a frame structure made of reinforced concrete columns and beams.

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 window wall system, which by itself is non-load-bearing. However, in this case, the facade is technically load-bearing, since there are structural elements that have been integrated into it, adirectly influencing the facade’s design.

Window walls are easier to install than curtain walls, often resulting in reduced construction time and cost. However, the exposed edge of the slabs, and in this case other structura elements too, are weak points in terms of thermal insulation. These areas need to be carefully detailed to prevent thermal bridging and potential condensation issues.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features light orange-colored bricks combined with dark-tinted windows.

At ground level, the building is clad with red granite panels, framing the three large canopies at the main entrance.