399 Park Avenue is a 41-story office building that occupies the entire block between

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Av ...

and

Lexington Avenue Lexington Avenue, often colloquially abbreviated as "Lex", is an avenue on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street. Along it ...

and

53rd Street 53rd Street is a Midtown Manhattan, midtown cross street in the New York City borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan, that runs adjacent to buildings such as the Citigroup Center, Citigroup building. It is 1.83 miles (2.94 km) ...

and 54th Street in

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 ...

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 ...

. The building was the world headquarters of

Citigroup Citigroup Inc. or Citi (Style (visual arts), stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services corporation headquartered in New York City. The company was formed by the merger of banking ...

from 1961 when it moved from

55 Wall Street 55 Wall Street, formerly known as the National City Bank Building, is an eight-story building on Wall Street between William and Hanover streets in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City, United States. The lowest three stor ...

until 2015 when the company moved to 388 Greenwich Street.

History

The building lot was assembled by

Vincent Astor William Vincent Astor (November 15, 1891 – February 3, 1959) was an American businessman, philanthropist, and member of the prominent Astor family. Early life Called Vincent, he was born in New York City on November 15, 1891. Astor was the el ...

who initially planned to build a 46-story Astor Plaza on the site. Astor had problems completing the assembly of the lots of mostly residential buildings as a pharmacy held out. In 1974, the company opened the

Citigroup Center The Citigroup Center (formerly Citicorp Center and also known by its address, 601 Lexington Avenue) is an office skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Built in 1977 to house the headquarters of Citibank, it is tal ...

annex across Lexington to the east. In 1987, Citigroup sold one third of its interest in the building along with two-thirds of its interest in Citigroup Center to Dai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance Company for $670 million. At the time, Citigroup said it was moving many of its offices to

One Court Square One Court Square, also known as the Citigroup Building, is a 50-story office tower in Long Island City, Queens across the East River from Manhattan in New York City. It was completed in 1989 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP for Citigroup. T ...

Long Island City Long Island City (LIC) is a residential and commercial neighborhood on the extreme western tip of Queens, a borough in New York City. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; New Calvary Cemetery in Sunnyside to the ...

, Queens. Citigroup moved out of the top two thirds of the building but kept the lower floors. Citigroup later bought back its interest in the building. In 2002, Boston Properties bought the building for $1.06 billion beating out other bidders including

Brookfield Properties Brookfield Properties is a North American subsidiary of commercial real estate company Brookfield Property Partners, which itself is a subsidiary of alternative asset management company Brookfield Asset Management. It is responsible for the pro ...

Equity Office Properties 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 ...

Vornado Realty Trust Vornado Realty Trust is a real estate investment trust formed in Maryland in 1982, with its primary office in New York City. The company invests in office buildings and street retail in Manhattan. Investments Notable properties owned by the ...

, RFR Holdings, and the Paramount Group. Boston Properties paid over $630 per square foot, which was the highest price ever paid for an office building at the time. Boston also bought the nearby

. Citigroup then leased its headquarters from Boston Properties through 2017. After the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

damaged much of their headquarters at Brookfield Place,

Lehman Brothers Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. ( ) was an American global financial services firm founded in 1847. Before filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States (behind Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, a ...

leased in the building until their 2008 bankruptcy. Other former tenants included law firms

Caplin & Drysdale Caplin may refer to: Animals * Capelin, a small forage fish also known as a caplin People * Alfred Gerald Caplin, better known as Al Capp (1909–1979), American cartoonist and humorist * Andrew Caplin (born 1956), British-American economist * ...

, which moved to 600 Lexington Avenue and

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP, also known as Hale & Dorr and WilmerHale, is an international law firm with offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. It is co-headquartered in Washington, D.C. and Boston. It was formed in 2004 thr ...

, which moved to 7 World Trade Center. In December 2013, Citigroup announced it would relocate its global headquarters to 388 and 390 Greenwich Street in Tribeca, a complex it had purchased from

SL Green Realty SL Green Realty Corp. is a real estate investment trust that primarily invests in office buildings and shopping centers in New York City. As of December 31, 2019, the company owned 43 properties comprising 14,438,964 square feet. Notable proper ...

in 2016.

Tenants

* Brigade Capital Management, on 15th and 16th floors *

BentallGreenOak BentallGreenOak is a real estate investment firm based in Toronto and New York City. The firm is the real estate investment arm of Sun Life Financial. It is considered one of the largest real estate investment firms in North America. In 2022, ...

Blue Owl Blue Owl Capital (also known as Blue Owl) is an American alternative investment asset management firm. It is currently listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol: "OWL". The firm is headquartered in New York City with addit ...

Colony NorthStar DigitalBridge Group, Inc. is a global digital infrastructure investment firm. The company owns, invests in and operates businesses such as cell towers, data centers, fiber, small cells, and edge infrastructure. Headquartered in Boca Raton, Digita ...

*Cyrus Capital Partners * C. V. Starr & Co., * Jordan Company, * Lexington Partners, on 20th and 21st floors *

Millennium Management, LLC Millennium Management is an investment management firm with a multistrategy hedge fund offering. It is one of the world's largest alternative asset management firms with over $50 billion assets under management. The firm operates in America, Euro ...

, *

Moelis & Company Moelis & Company is a global investment bank that provides financial advisory services to corporations, governments, and financial sponsors. The firm advises on strategic decisions such as mergers and acquisitions, recapitalizations and restruc ...

*Peterson Management, *

PineBridge Investments PineBridge Investments (also known as PineBridge) is an American asset management firm. It was previously the asset management division of American International Group (AIG) known as AIG Investments before being sold to the Pacific Century Group ...

Robins Kaplan LLP Robins Kaplan LLP is an American law firm headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1938 as Robins & Davis, the firm is active in trial work in intellectual property, business litigation, antitrust, entertainment and media law, and ma ...

, *

Savills Savills plc is a British real estate services company based in London. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. History The business was established by Alfred Savill (1829–1905) in 1855 in London. B ...

, on 11th and 5th floor

References

Emporis profile
{{Park Avenue Office buildings completed in 1961 Skyscraper office buildings in Manhattan Citigroup buildings Financial services company headquarters in the United States Park Avenue Carson and Lundin buildings Midtown Manhattan