550 Madison Avenue

The 550 Madison Avenue is a Postmodernist skyscraper designed between 1978 and 1979 by Johnson/Burgee Architects, with Philip Johnson as lead architect, in association with Simmons Architects, and built between 1981 and 1984 in New York, NY.

550 Madison Avenue 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:

• AT&T Building between 1984 and 1991.
• Sony Tower between 1991 and 2013.
• Sony Plaza.

Its precise street address is 550 Madison Avenue, New York, NY. You can also find it on the map here.

The 550 Madison Avenue is a structure of significant importance both for the city of New York and the United States as a nation. The building embodies the distinctive characteristic features of the time in which it was built and the Postmodernism style. Because of that, the 550 Madison Avenue was officially declared as a national landmark on July 31^st 2018.

The 550 Madison Avenue has received multiple architecture awards for its architectural design since 1984. The following is a list of such prizes and awards:

• ASLA-NY Design Awards in 2023
• AIA Urban Design — Citation in 2023

The entrance portico features a semicircular arch that is 35 meters high and 6.1 meters deep, framing a round-arched door with metal frames and glass panels, surrounded by diamond-shaped tiles. Above the door, there is a round window, and the arch is crowned with recessed lights.

When the building first opened, it featured an open-air gallery extending from north to south through the central arch. However, this design was unpopular with the public, as it was deemed too windy and uncomfortable. During renovations in the 1990s, the gallery was enclosed, with recessed display cases and bronze blinds added.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1993 and 2022.

Johnson/Burgee Architects, with Philip Johnson as the lead architect, was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design, in association with Simmons Architects.

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 550 Madison Avenue a reality:

• Leslie E. Robertson Associates in charge of Structural Engineering
• William Crow Construction, and HRH Construction as the Main Contractor
• American Telephone & Telegraph as the Main Developer
• Cosentini Associates in charge of MEP Engineering
• ISD Inc in charge of Interior Design
• Evelyn Beatrice Longman, and Dorothea Rockburne as the collaborating Artist

The 550 Madison Avenue can be categorized as a Postmodernist building.

The 550 Madison Avenue was designed in 1978. 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 550 Madison Avenue was therefore every much in line with what the architecture community, and the people liked and wanted at the time.

The 550 Madison Avenue uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete and steel 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 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 pink Stony Creek granite cladding arranged in a precise grid pattern, enhancing the building’s clean, monolithic appearance.

The capital is the most iconic part of the building, featuring a Chippendale-style broken pediment with a circular opening at its center. This distinctive element departs from the strict modernist conventions of the time, symbolizing a playful return to ornamentation and historical references, making it an unforgettable silhouette in the NYC skyline..