811 Tenth Avenue (also called the AT&T Switching Center) is a skyscraper in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

in New York City. It was designed by

Kahn & Jacobs Ely Jacques Kahn (June 1, 1884September 5, 1972) was an American commercial architect who designed numerous skyscrapers in New York City in the twentieth century. In addition to buildings intended for commercial use, Kahn's designs ranged throu ...

and completed in 1964, occupying the full block of 10th Avenue's western side between West 53rd and 54th Streets. Windowless and designed to withstand a

nuclear blast Nuclear Blast is a record label and mail order record distributor with subsidiaries in Germany, the United States and Brazil. The label was founded in 1987 by Markus Staiger in Germany. Originally releasing hardcore punk records, the label mov ...

, it was built by

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

to house telephone switching equipment. "It was the first of several windowless buildings to be constructed" by the telecommunications company in Manhattan, "and it caused considerable controversy", the ''

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' wrote in 1975. After 1985, it was used by the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens under its Fairview surveillance program. In 2000, AT&T upgraded the facility from a "hardened Telco data center" to an "AT&T Internet Data Center," according to an AT&T fact sheet on the facility. As of 2014, it contains four 2,000-kilowatt generators, along with three 20,000-gallon storage tanks for fuel oil, to provide power during interruptions to the grid.

Notes

AT&T buildings Telephone exchange buildings Telecommunications buildings in the United States Communication towers in the United States Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan 1964 establishments in New York City Office buildings completed in 1964 1960s architecture in the United States Brutalist architecture in New York City {{Manhattan-struct-stub