3 Times Square, also known as the Thomson Reuters Building, is a 30-story skyscraper at Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Located on Seventh Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Street, the building measures to its roof and to its spire. The building was designed by Fox & Fowle and developed by Rudin Management for news-media company Reuters. The site is owned by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, though Rudin and Reuters have a long-term leasehold on the building.
Fox & Fowle planned a portion of the facade as a glass curtain wall, though the northeast corner and the south facade are made of masonry. The eastern facade has a curving curtain wall with a wedge atop the southeast corner, as well as a triple-height lobby facing Seventh Avenue. The building contains of floor space, much of which was originally taken by Reuters. The lowest three stories contain retail space and an entrance to the Times Square subway station.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Park Tower Realty and the Prudential Insurance Company of America had planned to develop a tower for the site as part of a wide-ranging redevelopment of West 42nd Street. After the successful development of the nearby 4 Times Square, Reuters proposed consolidating its headquarters at Times Square in 1997, enlisting Rudin Management as a development partner. Work started in 1998 and the building was completed in 2001, with Reuters occupying the vast majority of the space. The building was jointly owned by Reuters and Rudin for two decades, and a renovation of the interior was announced in 2021.
Site 3 Times Square is on the western side of Seventh Avenue, between 42nd and 43rd Street, at the southern end of Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The land lot is L-shaped and covers , with a frontage of on Seventh Avenue, on 42nd Street, and on 43rd Street. 3 Times Square is at the eastern end of a city block that also contains the Todd Haimes, Lyric, and New Victory theaters. Other nearby buildings include 229 West 43rd Street and 1501 Broadway to the north, 1500 Broadway to the northeast, One Times Square and 4 Times Square to the southeast, the Times Square Tower and 5 Times Square to the south, and the New Amsterdam Theatre to the southwest.
An entrance to the New York City Subway's Times Square–42nd Street station, served by the , is within the base of the building on 42nd Street. The subway entrance in the building is on 42nd Street, about west of its original location at the corner with Seventh Avenue. The entrance consists of a canopy extending above the sidewalk, as well as a staircase down to the station mezzanine. It was originally planned with escalators, but the entrance was downsized during the building's construction. A "Low Headroom" sign had to be placed on the entrance because of its reduced size.
3, 4, and 5 Times Square and the Times Square Tower comprise a grouping of office buildings that were developed at Times Square's southern end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The surrounding area is part of Manhattan's Theater District and contains many Broadway theaters. The site on the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue had historically been occupied by the Victoria Theatre, which operated from 1899 to 1915. The former theater then became the Rialto Theatre, which opened in 1916. The Rialto was rebuilt in 1935 and continued to operate until 1998, sharing a building at 1481 Broadway with several storefronts. The theater building, in its final years of operation, had a 500-seat theater and in retail.
Architecture 3 Times Square was designed by Fox & Fowle and developed by the Rudin family under Rudin Management. Swanke Hayden Connell Architects designed the interiors. Severud Associates was the structural engineer, while Tishman Construction was the main contractor. Other companies involved with the project included geotechnical consultant Langan Engineering, elevator contractor Otis Worldwide, and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineer Jaros, Baum & Bolles. The building serves as the New York City offices of Thomson Reuters. Officially, the New York City Economic Development Corporation owns the structure.
3 Times Square has 30 usable floors above ground. The building measures to its architectural tip and to the top of the spire. The main roof is only high. 3 Times Square has of space. The building is part of the 42nd Street Development Project and, thus, could bypass many city zoning rules such as those relating to floor area ratio (FAR). Bruce Fowle of Fox & Fowle estimated that the building had a FAR of 31, while The New York Times stated that the FAR was only 25.
Form and facade The building's form was intended in part as a homage to the former Rialto Theatre. The Seventh Avenue portion of the facade is a curtain wall with a curve pointing southwest toward the nearby theaters on 42nd Street. The curved wall was intended to represent Reuters's corporate identity. At the top of the facade's southeastern corner is an illuminated blue wedge. Originally, this wedge had the Reuters logo. The wedge's presence allowed views of the nearby 5 Times Square from Times Square itself. The roof of the building had several satellite dishes, representing the building's satellite broadcasts.
Fox & Fowle designed a masonry facade on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 43rd Street, as well as along 42nd Street. The architects wanted the masonry facade to relate to surrounding masonry buildings such as 1501 Broadway and the New Victory Theatre. In addition, the masonry facade contrasts with the curtain wall on Seventh Avenue. The corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street has a seven-story cylindrical "rotunda", which was intended to attract pedestrians to the retail base. The rotunda is made of cast stone and architectural terracotta. The main entrance to the building is through the lobby, accessed from the middle of the Seventh Avenue facade. The lobby wall originally contained view of the fourth-floor newsroom. The lobby on Seventh Avenue is being redesigned with a triple-height glass wall . The glass wall contains a screen that is intended to refract light from other parts of Times Square. According to William Rudin of Rudin Management, the lobby was redesigned as a "sanctuary from all that's happening outside".
The windows allow natural light to illuminate the offices, though it also serves to deflect much of the heat energy. According to Robert Fox of Fox & Fowle, the walls blocked heat so efficiently that, when considering the amount of heat generated by the building's occupants, the building did not need a heating system even during winter. The walls deflect the ultraviolet rays from sunlight.
Signage William Rudin had initially been opposed to exterior signage on 3 Times Square's facade. He said he changed his mind after seeing that the signage on the Morgan Stanley Building, several blocks north, had increased the value of that building. Furthermore, the New York state government required the building to contain at least of signage. Ultimately, 3 Times Square was designed with approximately of signage. There were originally supposed to be numerous news zippers on the facade, like those at One Times Square, but Fox & Fowle ultimately decided to use full-screen displays rather than zippers. The signs were designed by Edwin Schlossberg's firm, though George Stonbely helped make the signs. Advertising agency R/GA designed the programming for the signage.
Reuters and subsidiary Instinet were allocated of signage. The Reuters sign, a 14-story-tall display at the corner of Seventh Avenue and 43rd Street, is composed of 14 panels. Near street level is a horizontal "crossbar" with nine screens just above the base. On the corner, above the "crossbar", is a screen measuring ; a balcony, originally designed for Instinet's president; and a vertical sign, measuring . The Reuters signage has 5.6 million LEDs and was used to display graphics, financial information, and other data. Rudin rented out another of signage. Some was for Prudential Financial, which had funded the project. Prudential's sign is placed at Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street and consists of five types of illumination. It had a logo measuring high as well as Prudential's name on a banner measuring wide. An additional sign for Chase Bank, measuring wide, was installed on the corner "rotunda" in 2004.
Mechanical features Rudin and Reuters had developed 3 Times Square with green building features in part because it was eligible for a green-building tax credit passed in 2000. 3 Times Square is designed to reduce energy consumption by 30 percent compared to an office building of similar size. The Rudin family initially decided against installing fuel cells or photovoltaic panels in the building, as had been used at Fox & Fowle's previous design for 4 Times Square. The building was designed so it could collect power from fuel cells or PV panels if they were installed in the future. There are five generators on the roof, each capable of , for powering Reuters's offices in case of emergencies. An additional generator powers the building's main mechanical systems during emergencies.
The heating plant includes two absorption chillers. The building is cooled by electric- and gas-powered cooling units, which can be activated or deactivated based on electrical rates. The coolers consists of two 650-ton gas chillers and two 1,350-ton electric chillers, as well as water-side economizers. There is also central air-handling equipment on each story. In addition, the office stories' ventilation systems contain filters with a minimum efficiency reporting value of 15, making them among the most efficient filters on the MERV scale. Air filters have been included in the building since its original design.
Interior Structurally, the underlying rock is capable of supporting , which obviated the need for caissons in the foundation. There is about or of retail space at the base. The retail space includes a lower concourse level, as well as the first three above-ground stories of the building. Because the retail space in 3 Times Square is smaller than in its predecessor building, the Rudin family decided to market the space toward large tenants. On the 43rd Street side, the Rudin family also acquired a building facing 43rd Street, which had office space and a driveway for the adjacent New Victory Theatre. New loading docks were built with 3 Times Square's construction, one of which was allocated for the New Victory. The lobby has security checkpoints with turnstiles.
The office stories each have of space. The floors of 3 Times Square are arranged around a mechanical core with elevators, stairways, and other functions. The elevators contain a destination dispatch system, wherein passengers request their desired floor before entering the cab, and touchless entry points. Generally, each story has a slab-to-slab height of as measured between the floor and ceiling. The 2nd and 4th stories are tall; the 3rd, 5th, 6th, and 7th stories are ; and the 8th and 9th stories are .