Axa Equitable Center (originally the Equitable Tower or Equitable Center West) is an office skyscraper at 787 Seventh Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Completed in 1986 and designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes, the building measures tall with 54 stories. Equitable Center West was developed by the Equitable Life Assurance Society (later renamed Equitable Holdings, part of Axa) adjacent to Equitable's existing skyscraper at 1285 Avenue of the Americas.
The facade is clad in granite, applied in a two-tone pattern of white horizontal and red vertical bands. The building has three setbacks, as well as a penthouse at the top with arched windows. Equitable acquired an extensive collection of artwork to display in the building's public spaces. There is a public galleria from 51st to 52nd Street, which forms part of 6½ Avenue, as well as an arched entrance atrium from Seventh Avenue. The complex also includes an underground concourse, several restaurants, and a corporate auditorium.
The building was proposed in the early 1980s and, after the site was acquired, Equitable's board approved the plans for the tower in 1983. When the tower opened, the company's corporate offices occupied about a third of the space, and the ground story had commercial concerns such as the Le Bernardin restaurant and a branch of the Whitney Museum. Equitable only used the tower as its headquarters until the late 1990s, and the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) acquired Axa Equitable Center in 2016.
Site 787 Seventh (formerly known as the AXA Equitable Building) is at 787 Seventh Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building's rectangular land lot occupies the western half of the city block bounded by Seventh Avenue to the west, 51st Street to the south, Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) to the east, and 52nd Street to the north. The site covers , with a frontage of on Seventh Avenue and along the side streets.
Adjacent is 1285 Avenue of the Americas (1285 Sixth Avenue; Equitable Center East), designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and constructed from 1959 to 1961. The Sixth Avenue building occupies the eastern half of the city block. The sidewalk in front of the building is made of pink granite, extending eastward in front of 1285 Sixth Avenue. The sidewalks adjacent to 1285 Sixth Avenue comprise Urban Plaza North and South, designed by Scott Burton. Axa Equitable Center is also near 810 Seventh Avenue to the northwest, the Sheraton New York Times Square Hotel and Flatotel New York City to the north, Credit Lyonnais Building to the northeast, 1271 Avenue of the Americas to the southeast, The Michelangelo to the south, and the Winter Garden Theatre to the southwest. The site occupied by Axa Equitable Center had contained the Victoria and Abbey hotels just before the skyscraper's construction.
Architecture Axa Equitable Center was designed in the postmodern style by Edward Larrabee Barnes for the Equitable Life Assurance Society. The building is tall with 54 stories. Severud Associates was the structural engineer and Turner Construction was the main contractor. The structure uses of stone and of steel. Rather than dictate the precise style for the building, Equitable CEO John B. Carter had requested only that Barnes create "a top-quality building". Nonetheless, Carter had specific requests for several of the interior spaces.
For Equitable Tower's construction, Equitable acquired $7 million or $7.5 million worth of artwork to display in both public and private spaces. The work includes large murals by Sol LeWitt and Roy Lichtenstein and sculptures by Scott Burton and Barry Flanagan. In addition, works by Milton Avery, George Bellows, James E. Buttersworth, Marsden Hartley, and Alex Katz decorated the offices. Some works, such as a mobile by Alexander Calder and the bronze sculpture Day by Paul Manship, were already in Equitable's art collection when Equitable Tower was built. Equitable hired several experts, including art consultant Emily Braun, to assist in arranging the artwork. Equitable publications referred to 787 Seventh Avenue, along with 1285 Sixth Avenue, as "one square block of art".
Form and facade
The entire building is set back from the street on each side. A public galleria runs from north to south, dividing the lowest six floors of the building. The seventh and eighth stories span the north and south ends of the galleria. The north and south elevations rise with three setbacks, while the west and east elevations rise without setbacks. The setbacks on the north and south elevations are placed at the 12th, 34th, and 50th stories, with each setback being deep. Barnes intended for the setbacks to recall those on 30 Rockefeller Plaza and the International Building, two of Rockefeller Center's tallest buildings. One of the early plans for Axa Equitable Center, which was illustrated in a monograph of Barnes's work, was for the massing to instead contain setbacks on the west and east, with the north and south elevations rising as a slab-like wall from the street. In a subsequent iteration of the plans, Barnes had planned deep porches at the setbacks.
The facade is made of limestone, granite, and glass. The Indiana limestone and Brazilian granite on the facade is applied in a two-tone pattern. The vertical pilasters are clad with reddish-brown granite, which is also used for some horizontal bands just below each setback. The pilasters divide the facades into horizontal spandrel bands of buff-colored limestone, which alternate with glass windows on each floor. Barnes had used these materials because they harmonized with the colors and materials used on the neighboring buildings. Axa Equitable Center uses 5,800 panes of glass on its facade.
The main entrance on Seventh Avenue is set within a semicircular-headed arch measuring tall. There is a loading dock at the eastern end of the 52nd Street elevation. There are double-height mechanical spaces at each setback. These double-height floors contain recessed windows to give the impression that the red pilasters are massive piers; the recessed windows were inspired by those in Art Deco buildings. The recessed windows on the double-height floors also wrap around to the west and east elevations. The topmost penthouse is embellished with large triumphal-arched windows on its west and east elevations, which illuminate the Equitable boardrooms. The boardroom windows measure in diameter and tall. While the original plan had been to use ocular windows, Barnes instead used triumphal arches because they allowed more light to enter the boardroom spaces.
Galleria and concourse At the middle of the city block is the galleria from 51st to 52nd Street. It is one of six passageways that form 6½ Avenue, a set of full-block passageways from 51st to 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. The passageway was built as a "through-block connection" under the Special Midtown District, created in 1982. The space measures wide and tall underneath the north and south ends, where the seventh and eighth floors cross the galleria. The center of the space, beneath the skylights, is tall. Burton designed outdoor seating for the galleria. On the galleria's eastern wall is a passageway to 1285 Sixth Avenue's lobby, which originally connected with the Paine Webber Art Gallery in that building. The lobbies of 1285 Sixth Avenue and Equitable Center measured a combined long. An elevator lobby for the First National Bank of Chicago, just east of the galleria, contained Agnes Denes's artwork Hypersphere: The Earth in the Shape of the Universe, a set of 144 glass panels.
LeWitt commissioned a set of six geometric artworks for the walls of the galleria entitled Wall Drawing: Bands of Lines in Four Colors and Four Directions, Separated by Gray Bands. As the name indicates, LeWitt's artwork consists of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal bands in four colors, created in acrylic paint on limestone. These works, which are up to high, are illuminated by natural light coming through the rooftop skylights. In addition, Flanagan designed two bronze sculptures at the galleria's north and south ends, each depicting animals in whimsical scenes. The north end contains Young Elephant (1986), while the south end contains Hare on Bell (1985).
Two escalators lead from the galleria to Axa Center's public basement concourse. The escalators are placed within a glass enclosure containing a gold-colored frame. The basement concourse is connected to Rockefeller Center's underground concourse, which in turn provides a connection to the New York City Subway's 47th–50th Streets–Rockefeller Center station. Axa Center's basement concourse also contains the Athletic & Swim Club, which has a fitness center and a small swimming pool. Valerie Jaudon had created a mural for the swimming pool's wall, measuring .
Interior Axa Center contains of interior space. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the building has a gross floor area of . Equitable was allowed to include an additional in exchange for providing privately owned public space. The steel superstructure contains two-story outrigger trusses wrapping around the 11th and 36th stories, which transfer the structural loads and absorb the wind loads at each of the setbacks. Belt trusses connect the outrigger trusses to the building's structural core. The roof is surrounded by a hat truss, behind which is mechanical equipment.
From the beginning, 787 Seventh Avenue contained several "smart" building systems, such as high-capacity fiber optic cables and conduits, as well as a computerized display to monitor energy use, security, and elevators. The "smart" systems cost $2 to $4 million, though that cost also included a retrofit of 1285 Sixth Avenue. The building is internally connected to 1285 Sixth Avenue at the ground floor, concourse, and first eight stories. The 787 Seventh Avenue building was known as Equitable Center West or Equitable Tower, while the 1285 Sixth Avenue building was known as Equitable Center East. The two structures were initially known collectively as the "Equitable Center".
Atrium and lobby
Leading from Seventh Avenue is a five-story atrium, which serves as the main lobby. The atrium is an cube. Its large size is in part due to a commercial holdout who did not leave the site until construction had already started. At the center of the atrium, Burton designed Atrium Furnishment, which consists of a marble semicircular banquette and a circular marble fountain with trees. Though the atrium in general has a white marble floor, Atrium Furnishment is surrounded by red granite pavers, which were intended to provide a contrast between the circular artwork and the cubical atrium. A bronze band surrounds the artwork as well. On the eastern wall of the atrium, facing the main archway on Seventh Avenue, is a Lichtenstein artwork, Mural with Blue Brushstroke, which measures . Lichtenstein had painted the mural on-site in 1986.
A pair of parallel passageways leads east from the atrium to the galleria, each originally decorated with a separate artwork. Thomas Hart Benton's America Today murals, commissioned in 1931, were originally installed in the northern passageway, around the elevator core. The Benton murals were originally installed in the New School for Social Research, and Equitable had acquired the Benton murals in 1984 for a reported $3.1 million. The murals were relocated to 1290 Sixth Avenue in the mid-1990s. The southern passageway of the lobby has a niche, which contains Paul Manship's sculpture Day. Manship had crafted Day in 1938 as part of a set of four bronze works called The Moods of Time.
Retail and restaurants