I am interested in learning more about the building next to Met Life tower. It seems to be truncated, as if half finished. What is the name and history of this building?
It's the Met Life North Building. There were studies of using that basic form for a 90- to 100-story building, but Met Life decided to aim lower and only 29.
Today they call it "Eleven Madison"
Its the U.S. headquarters for Credit Suisse First Boston Corp. It was
completely gutted in the mid nineties except the lobby which was
preserved in near original condition.
Back in the depression days, they planned to grow this building to 80
stories or so, but stopped at 29. So it is massively overbuilt in
terms of columns and some elevator banks were removed during the mid-90's
reconstruction.
The top floor has a space that was at one time used as a practice space
for the Knicks basketball team, Massive girders span the top of that
space to distribute the load for the 50 never-built stories that were to
be built atop it. The girders are useful today to support
locomotive-sized emergency electrical generators.
Today it has a conference center in the basement, a floor full of
computers and telecom equipment, 3 floors which are some of the world's
largest financial trading floors, two posh restaurants.