MetLife Building

The MetLife Building is a 59-story skyscraper at 200 Park Avenue at East 45th Street above Grand Central Terminal in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Built in 1963 as the Pan Am Building, the then-headquarters of Pan American World Airways, it was designed by Emery Roth & Sons, Pietro Belluschi and Walter Gropius in the International style. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company bought the building in 1981 and used it as their headquarters. MetLife sold the building in 2005. The world's largest commercial office space by square footage at its opening, it remains one of the 100 tallest buildings in the United States.

Plans for what is now the MetLife Building date to 1955, when Grand Central Terminal was proposed for demolition. Developer Erwin S. Wolfson proposed a 65-story tower called Grand Central City to replace the six-story baggage structure north of the terminal. He revised the plan in 1958, downsizing the tower to 50 stories. The tower would contain three movie theaters with a total capacity of 5,000; an open-air restaurant on the seventh floor; and a 2,000-spot parking garage. This plan was ultimately approved. In July 1958, it was announced that architects Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, noted architects in the Modern style, would assist Richard Roth of Emery Roth and Sons in designing Grand Central City. The initial plans called for the tower to rise 708 feet , with 2,703,112 square feet of floor area.

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