CBS Building
The CBS Building, also known as Black Rock, is the headquarters of the CBS broadcasting network at 51 West 52nd Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The 38-story, building, the only skyscraper designed by Eero Saarinen, was constructed from 1961 to 1964. The interior spaces and furnishings were designed by Saarinen and Florence Knoll Bassett. The building previously served as the headquarters of CBS Records (now Sony Music Entertainment) until the early 1990s. The building is on Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) between 52nd and 53rd Streets, although its main entrances are  on the side streets. The "Black Rock" nickname is derived from the design of its facade, which consists of angled dark-gray granite piers alternating with dark-tinted glass. The facade was designed to make the building appear as a continuous slab. Inside, the building has a gross floor area of approximately . The building's superstructure is made of reinforced concrete, and steel beams are only used below ground. Saarinen referred to the building as the "simplest skyscraper statement in New York". Construction started in 1961 and, despite Saarinen's death shortly afterward, the design was finalized in 1962. The  first employees moved into the building in late 1964 and it was completed the following year. The building initially served as the headquarters of CBS, which occupied all the above-ground space until the early 1990s, when CBS started leasing some stories to other tenants. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the CBS Building as a city landmark in 1997. CBS attempted to sell the building twice between 1998 and 2001, and ViacomCBS again attempted to sell it in early 2020. ViacomCBS announced it would sell the building for $760 million to Harbor Group International in August  2021. Site. The CBS Building is at 51 West 52nd Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It is along the eastern side of Sixth Avenue (officially Avenue of the Americas) between 52nd and 53rd Streets. The land lot covers . The site has a frontage of on 52nd Street to the south, with a depth of between 52nd and 53rd Streets. Nearby buildings include the Credit Lyonnais Building to the west, New York Hilton Midtown to the northwest, 53W53 to the north, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) to the northeast, the 53rd Street Library and 21  Club to the east, and 75 Rockefeller Plaza to the southeast. The CBS Building stands directly above a New York City Subway tunnel connecting the Sixth Avenue and 53rd Street subway lines. The CBS Building, developed for broadcasting company CBS, was designed to occupy only 60 percent of its site. It is three blocks north of Rockefeller Center, headquarters of CBS's rival NBC. By the late 1950s, the midtown section of Sixth Avenue was being developed with office towers and hotels, including the Hilton hotel, the Time-Life Building, and the Equitable Building at 1285 Avenue of the Americas . Just before the building's construction, the site was occupied by five apartment buildings of four stories each, as well as a parking lot. William Zeckendorf had acquired all of these structures but sold them to CBS before he could develop them. Architecture. The CBS Building was designed by Eero Saarinen, with the George A. Fuller Company as the general contractor for the project. Cosentini Associates was the mechanical engineer, while Paul Weidlinger was the structural engineer. Carson, Lundin, and Shaw planned the interior layout of the CBS Building, designing the mechanical systems and interior partitions. Acoustical engineer Paul Veneklasen  advised the firm on how to design different spaces in the building based on varying acoustical requirements for different divisions. The furnishings were manufactured by Florence Knoll Bassett, whom Saarinen had invited to the project shortly before his death in 1961. CBS's design director Lou Dorfsman and president Frank Stanton worked with Knoll to arrange the art in the building. The building measures and is tall with 38 stories. It does not contain any setbacks on intermediate levels. The building is recessed from the lot line on the north, west, and south and from an auxiliary building to the  east. A separate structure with a loading area was provided east of the building, allowing the main structure to be a standalone slab. Plaza. Surrounding the building is a plaza that is about below the Sixth Avenue sidewalk. It is reached by a flight of five steps from Sixth Avenue. The eastern part of the plaza is slightly lower, being six steps below 52nd Street and seven steps below 53rd Street. The plaza contains Canadian black granite pavers, the same material used in the facade. In contrast to the nearly contemporary Seagram Building, which had a decorative plaza with fountains  and plants, the CBS Building's plaza was designed solely as a backdrop for the tower. Consequently, the plaza was not designed with seating, and there were no storefronts at plaza level. Before his death, Saarinen had written of his belief that a tower should stand as a solitary mass, detached from shorter buildings. At the time of the building's construction, New York City planners were considering enacting the 1961 Zoning Resolution, which would allow skyscrapers to have a slab-like shape and additional floor area in exchange for the inclusion of ground-level open spaces. When he was  designing the CBS Building, Saarinen had calculated that each story would need to have a floor area of about to be profitable, even though the new zoning would have only allowed on each floor. The plaza around the CBS Building was one of the influences of the 1961 legislation. In the 1980s, an additional plaza was built to the east, connecting 52nd and 53rd Streets and separating the CBS Building from the then-new EF Hutton building at 31 West 52nd Street. Facade. The facade consists of concrete vertical piers clad with Canadian black granite, alternating with 5-foot-wide  vertical bays of dark-tinted glass. The design of the facade was intended to "keep glass areas to a desirable minimum", according to the general contractors. John Dinkeloo, one of Saarinen's associates, also believed that dark stone was better than glass at showing strength. At the time of the building's construction, granite was generally associated with strength while concrete was largely considered comparatively weak. The combination of black-granite piers and dark glass make the CBS Building appear as a granite slab from some angles. The appearance of the facade led to its nickname "Black Rock", though CBS  itself cites the building's proximity to Rockefeller Center as another influence for the nickname. The piers are triangular, which "Architectural Record" said made the piers appear as a "continuous accordion pleated granite faced wall" when perceived from a certain angle. Architectural writer Ada Louise Huxtable characterized this effect as "trompe-l'oeil", and Dinkeloo called it an example of "op architecture". The piers extend outward 45 degrees from the building line in a "V" shape, thereby creating a 90-degree angle at the tip of the "V". Each of the CBS Building's corners consists of a combination of two  V-shaped piers, which appear as a massive load-bearing chamfer, though this effect was purely aesthetic. The northwest-corner pier bore no load; a section of that pier was designed to be removable so large mechanical equipment could be lifted into and out of the building. Unlike at other contemporary skyscrapers with load-bearing walls, where the walls on the lower stories are thicker than those on the upper stories, the piers in the CBS Building are a uniform width on all stories. During the construction process, CBS executives and Saarinen's team considered using synthetic granite for the facade , but CBS president William S. Paley ultimately decided to use genuine granite, since it was more durable. Between the piers are 12 window bays each on the west and east facades and 15 bays each on the north and south facades. The glass panes contain bronze-finished aluminum frames that are about tall at the ground story and tall on upper stories. The panes are separated vertically by windowsills between each story. The windows are recessed from the piers on the exterior and on the interior. For insulation, of polyurethane foam was sprayed across the facade. According to the insulation  contractor, the CBS Building was the first New York City high-rise to use polyurethane as insulation. To make the building appear imposing, Saarinen designed it without any direct entrance from Sixth Avenue. Saarinen did not want to modify the piers on Sixth Avenue to create a main entrance there, and he also refused to use entasis (applying a convex curve for aesthetic purposes). The main entrances were instead placed on the 52nd and 53rd Street sides, though small doors were later installed on Sixth Avenue. On 52nd Street, the entrances are in the seven center bays and consist of  single, double, and revolving doors; the easternmost set of doors leads to the ground-level restaurant. There are also seven entrances on 53rd Street, but the entrance to the restaurant on that side is separated from the other entrance doorways by a window. On the east facade are doorways that lead directly into the restaurant space. On the second story, a mechanical floor, there are metal grilles instead of glass panes. Similar grates are placed at the top story, also a mechanical floor. Structural features. The CBS Building has a superstructure made of reinforced concrete; it was the city's  first skyscraper to be built after World War II with a concrete superstructure. Paul Weidlinger of Saarinen's engineering team said: "Too many people were saying 'it cannot be done' and we were itching to show them." Saarinen's team had considered making a superstructure of steel, as well as superstructure with a mixture of steel concrete, before deciding on an all-concrete structure after evaluating the cost of each option. During the planning process, the price of steel increased to above the price of concrete, influencing the team's decision. The concrete used in the CBS Building's  floor slabs was 25 percent lighter than that used in conventional concrete slabs. The piers on the building's exterior double as load-bearing walls for the superstructure. Within each pier, insulation is placed between the granite cladding and the reinforced concrete, allowing the concrete piers to retain the same temperature as the building's mechanical core. The piers contain electrical wiring as well as air-conditioning and heating ducts. Only the intake pipes and ducts are within the piers; the return pipes and ducts are within the core. In addition, each pier carries floor beams that connect to a  structural core at the center of the building. On the inner face of each pier is an "L"-shaped beam, which carries the floor plates. To avoid the subway tunnel directly underneath the building, some of the piers are placed on large steel girders over the tunnel. The steel girders above the subway are the only significant pieces of steel used in the building's construction. The CBS Building also contains a mechanical core, which includes the elevators and stairs; it measures . The mechanical core was designed to withstand most of the wind shear hitting the building. Most of the structural  loads are carried by the core, but some of the loads are transferred through the concrete floor slabs to the piers on the facade. There are ribs on the central floor slabs, and the walls of the mechanical core are between thick. The office space on each story has a maximum depth of between the curtain wall and the interior service core. Because there are no interior obstructions other than the core, the offices are free of columns. Interior. According to "Architectural Record", the CBS Building has about in gross floor area, though according to the New York City Department  of City Planning, it has . Sixteen elevators are placed within the mechanical core. On each story, a passageway runs from north to south through the core, providing access to both the elevator lobbies and service rooms there. Ground floor. The CBS Building's ground-floor lobby is split into two sections, one each to the north and south of the elevator core. The lobby was designed by Saarinen's office. This was the only portion of the interior designed by the Saarinen firm, which wanted the lobby's design to match the exterior appearance. The architects installed vertical bronze batten  walls on either side of each entrance, interspersed with the flat inner faces of the granite exterior piers. The floor was generally made of granite, except around the elevators, where the floor and walls were made of travertine. The western part of the ground floor originally contained a banking space used by the Bank of New York. Haines, Lundberg Waehler were responsible for the design of the bank. The space extended into the basement. Escalators, a private elevator, and a stairway connected the ground floor and basement. According to Alan R. Griffith, later a president of the bank, the presence  of the branch in the CBS Building gave the bank an advantage over its competitors in lending to communications companies. The eastern part of the ground floor originally had a restaurant called "The Ground Floor", designed by Warren Platner. The restaurant, originally operated by Jerry Brody of Restaurant Associates, was designed to accommodate 220 guests for dinner. The restaurant space had a grill room and an open kitchen at its center, though the food-preparation kitchen was in the basement. There was also a bar facing 52nd Street and a principal dining room facing 53rd Street. The main lighting system  consisted of mahogany-and-glass fixtures with filamented bulbs. Dorfman designed a by mural entitled "Gastrotypographicalassemblage" for the restaurant. The work, removed circa 1995, used varied typefaces of hand-milled wood type to list all of the foods offered to patrons. , the space contains the Nusr-Et steakhouse, operated by Turkish chef Salt Bae. Other stories. The 5-foot-wide bays of the facade influenced the CBS Building's interior arrangement since, at the time, office space could easily be arranged into modules measuring 5 by 5 feet. The arrangement of the building allowed high flexibility in planning interior offices . As originally arranged, CBS's private offices measured at least . The spacing of the facade's piers necessarily meant that the smallest offices along the building's perimeter bordered an exterior wall. There was a high amount of standardization within the executive stories. Presidents had offices measuring , vice presidents , directors , and managers . Conference rooms could be placed around the mechanical core, as conference rooms did not require much natural light. Even so, the lack of interior columns allowed the clerical offices and interior spaces to receive sufficient sunlight. The ceilings contain recessed fluorescent lights along with air-conditioning ducts. At  the building's opening, "Architectural Forum" wrote of the office designs: "Rich materials have been used throughout and no detail has been left unstudied." Movable partitions could be set up on each story at intervals of as small as five feet. The partitions themselves had magnetic hangers because nails could not be driven into the partitions. In designing the offices, the interior designers used varying color schemes to create what "Architectural Forum" characterized as a "bright and cheerful atmosphere". Knoll's team designed the reception area on every story with different color schemes, furniture, and works of art. CBS executives  used large dining tables to hold small meetings and do paperwork, though they also had smaller units with items such as TVs, radios, and personal documents. Furniture and decorations were made as inconspicuous as possible; CBS employees were not allowed to display personal decorations or even family photographs. Mechanical stories are placed directly above the lobby as well as at the top floor. The second story controls the plumbing, heating, and ventilation systems, while the top story contains a cooling tower. In typical New York City office buildings, some mechanical equipment is placed in the basement, but this was unfeasible  for the CBS Building since vibrations from passing subway trains could affect the equipment. History. William S. Paley became chairman of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) in 1928 and, after expanding the number of CBS's broadcasting affiliates, relocated the company's offices the following year to 485 Madison Avenue. Architect William Lescaze designed a headquarters for CBS in 1935, which was not built. By the late 1950s, CBS was again searching for a site for a new headquarters. At the time, the company occupied several sites across Manhattan in addition to 485 Madison Avenue. Paley said: "I think we  were [...] determined that if we went ahead on our own building for CBS, it would have to be of the highest aesthetic quality obtainable." CBS initially considered sites on Fifth Avenue, the East River, and the New Jersey Meadowlands. CBS also considered acquiring sites on Park Avenue, which would later become the Pan Am Building and 277 Park Avenue. Paley dismissed the Park Avenue sites as having "too cold a feeling"; he also believed that Madison Avenue, a block west, was "too narrow to display good architecture". By contrast, Sixth Avenue was being redeveloped in the mid-20th century with speculative  office towers. Many of these new structures were designed as metal-and-glass slabs with public plazas. Development. Planning. In July 1960, CBS announced that it had acquired a site on Sixth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets from William Zeckendorf's company Webb and Knapp. Paley had believed Sixth Avenue to be "more stimulating" than Park Avenue, which was three blocks east. The site cost $7 million, of which Zeckendorf received $5 million. The building would not include broadcast studios, which instead were to be consolidated at the CBS Broadcast Center, simultaneously being planned on 57th Street . CBS acquired a site on 53 West 52nd Street in July 1961, bringing the assemblage to its final size of nearly . CBS president Stanton wanted to hire Eero Saarinen & Associates for the project, having been impressed with the firm's design for the General Motors Technical Center in Michigan. Paley was initially skeptical, as he was acquainted with modernist architects Wallace Harrison and Philip Johnson, but he relented. Ultimately, CBS hired Saarinen to design a new corporate headquarters for CBS on the plot. The CBS corporate building was planned to be Saarinen's first skyscraper and, as it turned out , the only skyscraper he would ever design. Paley and Saarinen both wanted to erect a skyscraper that was distinct from International Style works such as Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's Lever House and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building. Saarinen's biographer Jayne Merkel wrote that the architect particularly wanted to make "the best modern skyscraper anywhere", surpassing even the Seagram. As Saarinen's wife Aline B. Saarinen said after his death, "After all, that's why they came to Eero and not to Skidmore." Saarinen contemplated several alternatives involving rectangular slabs as well as more standard towers with  setbacks that would comply with the 1916 Zoning Resolution. The firm preferred that the tower be square if possible; four of their five sets of blueprints were square in plan. In March 1961, Saarinen wrote to Paley that he had developed a solution: a freestanding slab bereft of setbacks, with a facade composed of triangular piers interspersed with windows. The slab would have been either tall. Saarinen wrote of the design: "It will be the simplest skyscraper statement in New York." Paley twice visited Saarinen's offices in Detroit to see a model of the building. On his first visit  Paley was unimpressed but, after his second visit in July 1961, Paley decided to commit to Saarinen's proposal. Following Saarinen's sudden death on September 1, 1961, his associates, including Kevin Roche, Joseph N. Lacy, and John Dinkeloo, took over the CBS Building's design. Dinkeloo said the CBS headquarters had "especially excited" Saarinen. As Saarinen had said: "I think Louis Sullivan was right to want the skyscraper to be a soaring thing." In the firm's office at New Rochelle, New York, Roche and his associates created several mockups of the building. Paley recalled that he visited the  Roche-Dinkeloo offices at least thirty times to observe five or six mockups. Construction. In February 1962, CBS announced that it would move forward with its 38-story building after Saarinen's death. The George A. Fuller Company was selected as the general contractor at this time. The headquarters was to house CBS's International, News, Radio, Television Network, Television Stations, and Columbia Records divisions. The contractors chose to decorate the building with granite from Alma, Quebec, after examining samples of granite from numerous countries around the world. A construction fence was erected around the work site in July 1962 . The fence along Sixth Avenue was made of plexiglass, allowing passersby to observe the construction; a CBS spokesperson likened it to 980 "portholes" in a standard plywood fence. The building's first tenant, a branch of the Bank of New York, signed a 21-year lease that August for a portion of the lobby and basement along Sixth Avenue. By early 1964, the superstructure was halfway complete. The concrete piers were poured around steel molds measuring one story high. After the concrete for the first story had hardened, the mold was moved to the second story, where the process was  repeated until construction reached the roof. Two cranes were also installed to lift equipment into place. A section of one pier on the second floor remained wide-open during construction so materials could be lifted into the building. To give the facade piers a rough surface, the top layer of granite cladding was burned at using a process called thermal stippling. The stippling process turned the black granite into a grayish hue; to restore the black color, an abrasive was applied to the granite under extremely high water pressure, a process called liquid honing. 20th century. The first CBS employees  relocated into the building from the old Madison Avenue headquarters in late 1964. At the time, much of the interior was still being completed. By September 1965, most of the CBS Building's initial 2,500 employees had moved into the building. The interior work was mostly complete except for the offices of Paley and Stanton, who had decided that their offices be decorated last. Upon its completion, the CBS headquarters was nicknamed CBS/51W52. The final cost was not revealed at the time, but it was estimated at $40 million. The Ground Floor restaurant opened in November 1965. For the  first quarter-century of the CBS Building's existence, all of the office space was occupied by CBS. The Ground Floor restaurant was overhauled in 1980, becoming the American Charcuterie. Judith Stockman oversaw the renovation, which largely retained the original layout of The Ground Floor. By 1981, CBS had 9,900 employees in New York, many of whom worked at the CBS Building. The restaurant space became the Rose Restaurant in 1983 after Paley asked the restaurant's operators to come to the CBS Building. The restaurant was renovated again in 1987 and the space became the China Grill. Throughout the  1980s, CBS downsized its presence at the building. Sony Corporation of America acquired CBS Records International in 1998 and the CBS Records company became known as Sony Music Entertainment two years later. Sony Music Entertainment briefly continued to lease the space from CBS, but Sony Music's employees moved to 550 Madison Avenue in 1991 after Sony leased that building. By the early 1990s, CBS had downsized to about 4,700 employees and no longer required the entire building for its use. The law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz signed a lease for floors 27 to 33, and brokerage firm Edward  S. Gordon advertised floors 4 to 14 for outside tenants. Real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield had taken another six stories by 1993. To accommodate the new lessees, CBS renovated the building's lobby and mechanical systems for $20 million. Paul Goldberger wrote that the work "represents nothing less than an attempt to convert one of the great modern buildings in New York into an ordinary speculative office tower". The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the CBS Building as a city landmark on October 21, 1997. The CBS Building was placed for sale a little more than a  year later. The sale offer was withdrawn in mid-1999 because CBS received bids of around $300 million, which it considered to be too low. 21st century. After Viacom acquired CBS in 2000, and in the wake of an improving real-estate market, Viacom planned to sell the building for up to $370 million. Viacom planned to allow CBS's existing employees in the building to remain. Shortly after the acquisition, WCBS (AM) and WCBS-FM moved to the Broadcast Center, as the CBS headquarters could not accommodate modern broadcasting technology. By early 2001, Viacom had planned to buy  1515 Broadway (also One Astor Plaza), its own headquarters, in conjunction with its sale of the CBS Building. Two firms had expressed interest in purchasing the building by August, but one of them withdrew after the September 11 attacks shortly afterward. The sale was ultimately canceled in November 2001. This was attributed in part to Viacom's demand that any buyer first acquire 1515 Broadway and then swap that for the CBS Building and cash; such a transaction would enable Viacom to avoid paying estate transfer taxes on the transaction. CBS and Viacom ultimately split in 2006. The law firm  Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe leased in the building in 2009, taking up some space that had been leased to Swiss bank UBS. The following year, investment company Charles Schwab leased in the building. Charles Schwab proposed installing planters in front of the building, though the local Manhattan Community Board 5 initially refused to approve the plans. The China Grill restaurant closed in February 2017. It was replaced the following January by the Nusr-Et steakhouse. Also in 2018, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz renewed its lease in the building. Charles Schwab, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, and law firm Dorsey & Whitney retained space at  the CBS Building during this time. Shortly after Viacom and CBS merged again into ViacomCBS in December 2019, the newly combined company's CEO Bob Bakish said the company was looking to sell the building. The company sought more than $1 billion for the CBS Building, but the sale was withdrawn in March 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City. In August 2021, ViacomCBS announced that they had agreed to sell the building to the real estate investment and management firm Harbor Group International for $760 million, the first sale of the building  in its history. ViacomCBS planned to occupy some space under a short-term lease. Harbor Group intended to upgrade the building's lobby, as well as tenant facilities such as the cafeteria. Critical reception. The CBS Building received a large amount of praise upon completion, though much of it came with qualifications. Huxtable called the CBS headquarters "a building, in the true, classic sense". Bethami Probst wrote in "Progressive Architecture" magazine that the CBS Building was a "dignified, pertinent rebuke to its more strident high-rise neighbors", though she did not consider it as good as the Seagram Building. A  writer for "Architectural Forum" summarized the CBS Building thus: "It has enormous unity; it has strength; the proportions of its windows are elegant; it has great dignity; and it even has color." Peter Blake, writing for the same magazine, said the CBS Building "stands aloof, alone, serene", but this was a positive trait compared to the other structures being built on the avenue at the same time, which he summarized as the "slaughter on Sixth Avenue". David Jacobs regarded the building as "a marvelous contribution" to New York City despite its "impersonal and forbidding" profile. The building's design was  different from the architectural norms of the time, leading to some criticism. According to architectural writer Robert A. M. Stern, some critics objected that the consistent width of the facade piers did not accurately express their function, since the piers carry reduced loads at upper stories and thus should be smaller. Conversely, a 1965 "Architectural Forum" article praised this same quality, describing the piers as being "directly expressed from plaza to sky" instead of being recessed behind curtain walls. "Harper's Magazine", likewise, commended "the honesty with which it occupies its context". Huxtable also observed that the public had a  much different perception of the building than architectural critics, saying: "The dark dignity that appeals to architectural sophisticates puts off the public, which tends to reject it as funereal". The interiors were more broadly criticized. Huxtable described the offices as having a "curious deadness" because the style of the exterior was not extended into the interior spaces. Patricia Conway of "Industrial Design" magazine saw the tightly regulated decorative scheme as contrived, saying: "A few pieces [of decoration] have charm but, for the most part, there is a preponderance of hard-edge, straight-line compositions". Conversely, other publications praised the interior  decorative scheme, to the point that "The New Yorker" profiled Stanton's desk. As for the lobby, which did have the same style as the exterior, Stern characterized it as "austere to the point of lugubriousness". Likewise, Probst wrote that the thick facade piers overshadowed the lobby. The Ground Floor restaurant was also perceived as a gloomy environment, especially at night. A writer for "Progressive Architecture" doubted whether the CBS Building's ground story "can ever be a suitable, psychologically acceptable atmosphere for pleasant dining". The CBS Building has also won architectural awards. The Architectural League of New York cited  the CBS Building in 1964 as one of eight CBS facilities being built nationwide to "very high standards". The Municipal Art Society recognized the building with a bronze plaque for "outstanding architecture" the next year. Also in 1965, the New York Board of Trade gave its first-ever architectural achievement award to the CBS Building.