1740 Broadway (formerly the MONY Building or Mutual of New York Building) is a 26-story building on the east side of

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

, between 55th and 56th Streets, in the

Midtown Manhattan Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildin ...

neighborhood of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

.1740 Broadway, New York, NY – Vornado Realty Trust.
/ref> The building is owned by

EQ Office EQ Office is a real estate investment company that owns 80 office properties comprising 40 million square feet. The company is owned by funds managed by The Blackstone Group. The company was formerly known as Equity Office. History The company w ...

and shares a

city block A city block, residential block, urban block, or simply block is a central element of urban planning and urban design. A city block is the smallest group of buildings that is surrounded by streets, not counting any type of thoroughfare within t ...

with the

Park Central Hotel The Park Central Hotel is a 25-story, 935-room hotel located across the street from Carnegie Hall at 870 7th Avenue (between West 55th and 56th Streets) in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was designed in the Renaissance Revival style an ...

Mutual of New York The Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York (also known as Mutual of New York or MONY) was the oldest continuous writer of insurance policies in the United States. Incorporated in 1842, it was headquartered at 1740 Broadway, before becoming a wh ...

built the structure in 1950 for its corporate headquarters and hired

Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Shreve, Lamb, and Harmon, founded as Shreve & Lamb, was an architect, architectural firm, best known for designing the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world at the time of its completion in 1931. History The firm was founded in ...

to design it. It left the building after being acquired by

AXA Axa S.A. (styled as ''AXA'' or GIG in the Middle East) is a French multinational insurance company. The head office is in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, France. It also provides investment management and other financial services. The Ax ...

. Mutual Insurance had been renamed MONY Life Insurance Company in 1998. The building was completely renovated in 2007.

Signage on the facade

Its most famous attribute was once a

sign A sign is an object, quality, event, or entity whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. A natural sign bears a causal relation to its object—for instance, thunder is a sign of storm, or me ...

at the top of its facade which

advertised Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

for

, the structure's original owner. The first version spelled out the entire name, with the first letter of each of the words in it (MONY) being red

neon lighting Neon lighting consists of brightly glowing, electrified glass tubes or bulbs that contain rarefied neon or other gases. Neon lights are a type of cold cathode gas-discharge light. A neon tube is a sealed glass tube with a metal electrode ...

which was twice the size of the rest. It was in this form that the sign served as both the inspiration for

Tommy James and the Shondells Tommy James and the Shondells are an American pop rock/psychedelic rock band, formed in Niles, Michigan, in 1964. They had two No. 1 singles in the U.S. – " Hanky Panky" (July 1966, their only RIAA Certified Gold record) and "Crimson and Clov ...

' 1968

hit single A hit song, also known as a hit record, hit single or simply a hit, is a recorded song or instrumental that becomes broadly popular or well-known. Although ''hit song'' means any widely played or big-selling song, the specific term ''hit record' ...

Mony Mony "Mony Mony" is a 1968 single by American pop rock band Tommy James and the Shondells, which reached No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart and No. 3 in the U.S. Written by Bobby Bloom, Ritchie Cordell, Bo Gentry and Tommy James, the song has appeared in ...

" and as a motif in ''

Midnight Cowboy ''Midnight Cowboy'' is a 1969 American drama (film and television), drama film, based on the 1965 Midnight Cowboy (novel), novel of the same name by James Leo Herlihy. The film was written by Waldo Salt, directed by John Schlesinger, and stars ...

''. The subsequent version was the

corporate logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordm ...

, which was the

insurance company Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...

acronym An acronym is a word or name formed from the initial components of a longer name or phrase. Acronyms are usually formed from the initial letters of words, as in ''NATO'' (''North Atlantic Treaty Organization''), but sometimes use syllables, as ...

with a

dollar sign The dollar sign, also known as peso sign, is a symbol consisting of a capital " S" crossed with one or two vertical strokes ($ or ), used to indicate the unit of various currencies around the world, including most currencies denominated "pes ...

inside the "O."Dunlap, David W. "No More MONY in the Midtown Skyline," ''City Room'' (''The New York Times'' local news blog), Monday, February 4, 2008.
/ref> The MONY sign was removed by Vornado in December 2007, and replaced with "1740" to reflect its

street address An address is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally using political boundaries and street names as references, along ...

. The numerals, tall and in Futura typeface, are illuminated at night by light

light-emitting diode A light-emitting diode (LED) is a semiconductor device that emits light when current flows through it. Electrons in the semiconductor recombine with electron holes, releasing energy in the form of photons. The color of the light (cor ...

The Weather Star

Perched on the roof is the Weather Star, a tower of lights topped with a star-shaped

weather beacon A weather beacon is a beacon that indicates the local weather forecast in a code of colored or flashing lights. Often, a short poem or jingle accompanies the code to make it easier to remember. The beacon is usually on the roof of a tall buil ...

which was built by

Artkraft Strauss Artkraft Strauss is a sign design and consulting company headquartered in Manhattan, New York. Throughout the 20th century, the company was the preeminent designer and creator of Times Square's iconic signs and displays. These included the “s ...

. The star was green if the following day's

weather forecast Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the conditions of the atmosphere for a given location and time. People have attempted to predict the weather informally for millennia and formally since the 19th centu ...

was

fair A fair (archaic: faire or fayre) is a gathering of people for a variety of entertainment or commercial activities. Fairs are typically temporary with scheduled times lasting from an afternoon to several weeks. Types Variations of fairs incl ...

; orange for cloudy; flashing orange for rain; and flashing white for snow. The direction the lights on the tower moved depended on whether the temperatures were expected to rise or fall; absence of movement meant no change. The Weather Star is still operable, but is no longer used for meteorological forecasting purposes. At the base of the tower is a four-sided electronic digital board that has always displayed the current time and temperature. 1740 Broadway Building in New York City

Tenants

L Brands Bath & Body Works, Inc. (formerly known as L Brands, Inc., Limited Brands, Inc. and The Limited, Inc.) is an American specialty retail company based in Columbus, Ohio. It owns Bath & Body Works, posted $11.9 billion in revenue in 2021, and wa ...

* Davis & Gilbert LLP

References

External links

1740broadway.comEmporis profile
{{Broadway (Manhattan) Skyscraper office buildings in Manhattan Office buildings completed in 1950 Midtown Manhattan Broadway (Manhattan) 1950 establishments in New York City Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design basic silver certified buildings