Shearson Lehman
Shearson was the name of a series of investment banking and retail brokerage firms from 1902 until 1994, named for Edward Shearsonskyscraper at 388 Greenwich Street, with frontages on North Moore and
West
West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth.
Etymology
The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...
Streets, in the
TriBeCa
Tribeca (), originally written as TriBeCa, is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. Its name is a syllabic abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street". The "triangle" (more accurately a quadrilateral) is bounded by Canal Stree ...
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...
. 388 Greenwich Street forms a complex with the neighboring 10-story 390 Greenwich Street near the
Hudson River
The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between N ...
. Currently, the two buildings comprise the global headquarters of financial services corporation Citigroup. 388 Greenwich stands about ten blocks north of the
World Trade Center site
The World Trade Center site, often referred to as "Ground Zero" or "the Pile" immediately after the September 11 attacks, is a 14.6-acre (5.9 ha) area in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The site is bounded by Vesey Street to the north ...
and is among TriBeCa's tallest. Like many other office buildings in Manhattan, 388 Greenwich Street contains in addition to office space, a fitness center, full-service dining facilities, a medical center, a conference center, a day care center, and an outdoor park. The building is one of the few in New York with
double-deck elevator
A double-deck elevator or double-deck lift is an elevator where one cab is stacked on top of another. This allows passengers on two consecutive floors to be able to use the elevator simultaneously, significantly increasing the passenger capaci ...
s. On
September 11, 2001
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 commerc ...
, the building's courtyard was used as a triage center.
Umbrella icon
The building had a , 4-story neon sign near the top of its northern elevation, which depicted a red umbrella. The sign was erected in May 1997; some observers found it emblematic, while others considered it to be distracting. Complementing this neon sign, an iconic, steel , red umbrella sculpture also stood outside 388 Greenwich St at street-level. Both have been removed from the building, the latter in the summer of 2007, as part of a deal between Citigroup and St. Paul Travelers Companies which acquired the logo.
Sale
In December 2007, 388 Greenwich Street and 390 Greenwich Street were sold by Citigroup in order to reduce real estate exposure on its balance sheet. The complex was acquired by a joint venture consisting of
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 ...
and SITQ for US$1.58 billion. Citigroup, however, maintained their primary presence in the complex through a 15-year
leaseback
Leaseback, short for "sale-and-leaseback", is a financial transaction in which one sells an asset and leases it back for the long term; therefore, one continues to be able to use the asset but no longer owns it. The transaction is generally done ...
arrangement. In 2016, the bank repurchased the complex and relocated the company's headquarters from 399 Park Avenue.