450 Lexington Avenue is a 38-story office building located on

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 ...

between East 44th and 45th Streets, in

East Midtown 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 Buildi ...

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 ...

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, which was built in 1992, is clad in Sardinian gray

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

and features a repeating diamond motif that highlights the building setbacks and its crown. The stone used in the building was quarried direct at source in Italy and tested by Cawdor Ramsey prior to shipment to New York and the subsequent installation. The tower was built within and on top of the preexisting Grand Central Post Office, which was designed by

Warren and Wetmore Warren and Wetmore was an architecture firm in New York City which was a partnership between Whitney Warren (1864–1943) and Charles Delevan Wetmore (June 10, 1866 – May 8, 1941), that had one of the most extensive practices of its time and w ...

and constructed from 1906 to 1909. It was originally developed by Hines after anchor tenant and original developer

Prudential Financial Prudential Financial, Inc. is an American Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 company whose subsidiaries provide insurance, retirement planning, investment management, and other products and services to both retail and institutional customers t ...

backed out of the project. It was ultimately developed by

Sterling Equities Sterling Equities in Great Neck, New York, is a diversified, family-run group of companies whose portfolio consists primarily of holdings in real estate, sports, and media in the New York area. These include the New York Mets, the Brooklyn Cyclon ...

and still stands below the modern skyscraper. The building was owned by

Istithmar World Istithmar World ("istithmar" (Arabic) for "investment" (English)) is an investment firm based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). This company is a state-run business owned by Dubai World, a Dubai government-owned company, and was establishe ...

from 2006 to 2012, and has been owned by

RXR Realty RXR Realty is a real estate owner, manager, and developer located in New York City and surrounding areas of Westchester County, Long Island, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The company is headquartered in New York, New York and Uniondale, New York. RX ...

since 2012. Istithmar purchased 450 Lexington in 2006 but refinanced the property the following year for $600 million. Current tenants include

Brixmor Property Group Brixmor Property Group is a publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust that primarily invests in shopping malls. They own and operate over 400 open-air shopping centers totaling over 73 million square feet of retail space. Brixmor Property Gr ...

Davis Polk & Wardwell Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP, better known as Davis Polk is a white-shoe, international law firm headquartered in New York City with 980 attorneys worldwide and offices in Washington, D.C., Northern California, London, Paris, Madrid, Hong Kong, Be ...

Herbert Smith Freehills Herbert Smith Freehills is an international law firm with headquarters in London, United Kingdom and Sydney, Australia. It was formed on 1 October 2012 by a merger between the United Kingdom-based Herbert Smith, then a member of the "Silver Circl ...

Warburg Pincus Warburg Pincus LLC is a global private equity firm, headquartered in New York, with offices in the United States, Europe, Brazil, China, Southeast Asia and India. Warburg has been a private equity investor since 1966. The firm currently has over ...

, and

WeWork WeWork Inc. is a provider of coworking spaces, including physical and virtual shared spaces, headquartered in New York City. As of December 31, 2021, the company operated of space, including in the United States and Canada, in 756 locatio ...

. File:Grand Central Post Office 1988.jpg, The original building File:450 Lexington Avenue 02.jpg, The tower atop the former post office building

References

External links

* Office buildings completed in 1992 Skyscraper office buildings in Manhattan Lexington Avenue Skidmore, Owings & Merrill buildings Grand Central Terminal {{Manhattan-struct-stub