32 Old Slip Building

The 32 Old Slip Building is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed by Edward Durell Stone & Associates, and built between 1983 and 1987 in New York, NY.

32 Old Slip Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. Between 1987 and 1995 it was also known as One Financial Square.

Its precise street address is 32 Old Slip, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The building underwent a major restoration in 2019. The architect commissioned to undertake this restoration was TPG Architecture.

Edward Durell Stone & Associates 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 32 Old Slip Building a reality:

• Otis Elevators as the company in charge of the elevators system
• HRO International as the Main Developer

The 32 Old Slip Building can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The 32 Old Slip Building was completed in 1987. 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 32 Old Slip Building was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The 32 Old Slip 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 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 light-colored polished granite cladding the rectangular base, surrounded by a neoclassical colonnade that encloses a 12-meter exterior arcade with rectangular openings forming a clerestory at the top, with setbacks on the 3rd, 25th, 29th, 33rd, 37th, and 38th floors. This granite pyramid clads the octagonal curtain wall of silver-tinted glass and aluminum frames up to a certain height.