1585 Broadway, also called the Morgan Stanley Building, is a 42-story office building on Times Square in the Theater District neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. The building was designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects and Emery Roth & Sons and was developed by David and Jean Solomon. 1585 Broadway occupies a site on the west side of Broadway between 47th and 48th Streets. The building has served as the headquarters of financial-services company Morgan Stanley since 1995.
1585 Broadway consists of a low base, with setbacks that recede into a tower section measuring tall. The facade is designed with large signs at the base. The upper stories contain a facade of glass with aluminum spandrels, as well as a glass gable roof. At the ground level, the entire Broadway side contains stores, and the main entrances are placed on 47th and 48th Streets. The office entrances are connected by a wide lobby, which also connects to a basement cafeteria. Morgan Stanley's offices occupy the upper floors, with an executive suite at the 40th and 41st stories. The interior was designed by Gwathmey Siegel and Gensler.
Solomon Equities had developed 1585 Broadway as a speculative development in 1989, on the site of the Strand Theatre and another building. Morgan Stanley had expressed interest in the space during construction but ultimately decided against it. When 1585 Broadway was completed in 1990, law firm Proskauer Rose was the only tenant, occupying eleven floors. The Solomons unsuccessfully attempted to attract more tenants and fell into debt, forcing the building into foreclosure in December 1991. The building was taken over by a consortium of banks who sold it to Morgan Stanley in 1993. Morgan Stanley moved into the building after several renovations. Proskauer Rose renovated its own space in 2000 and continued to occupy part of the building until 2010. Afterward, Morgan Stanley expanded into the former Proskauer Rose space and renovated each floor in the mid-2010s.
Site 1585 Broadway is on the western side of Broadway, between 47th Street to the south and 48th Street to the north. It is at the northwest corner of Times Square in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. The trapezoidal land lot covers , with a frontage of on 47th Street and a depth of . The southeastern end of the building faces Duffy Square.
The surrounding area is part of Manhattan's Theater District and contains many Broadway theatres. The Morgan Stanley Building shares the block with the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and Samuel J. Friedman Theatre on 47th Street and the Longacre Theatre on 48th Street. Across 48th Street are the Eugene O'Neill Theatre and Walter Kerr Theatre to the northwest and the Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan to the north. To the east across Times Square are 20 Times Square, TSX Broadway, the Palace and Embassy Theatres, and the I. Miller Building. In addition, the Hotel Edison and Lunt-Fontanne Theatre are to the south, and the Brooks Atkinson Theatre and Paramount Hotel are to the southwest. The site had contained two six-story buildings before 1986: the Strand Theatre, a movie house, as well as Leighton's Haberdashers and Clothiers, which had operated on Broadway for 67 years.
Architecture 1585 Broadway was designed by Emery Roth & Sons and Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects and was Gwathmey Siegel's first high-rise design. It is 42 stories tall and measures to its roof. Irwin G. Cantor of WSP Cantor Seinuk was the structural engineer, while the Tishman Construction Company was the general contractor. 1585 Broadway has a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold green building certification. The building is also known as the Morgan Stanley Building for its anchor tenant, financial services company Morgan Stanley, which uses 1585 Broadway as a headquarters.
Form and facade The building was proposed with a facade and a gable roof made of glass, as well as a square tower set back from the base. As built, the base occupies the entire site; it is aligned with Broadway, which runs diagonally to the Manhattan street grid. The base is designed with several setbacks that, according to Gwathmey Siegel, "responds to the pedestrian scale of the street in the theater district". Above ground level, there are two rectangular setbacks. There is a double-height mechanical space on the fourth and fifth floors, with an outward curve toward Broadway; this delineates the transition between the base and tower. The mechanical space's facade contains ventilation and heating grilles rather than windows. The tower section is aligned with 47th and 48th Streets, which run parallel to the street grid.
The base is covered in glass and metal, with dark-glass panels hiding the signage behind them. Artkraft Strauss Sign Corporation manufactured the signs on the base, which were included to comply with city regulations. Ten dark-glass "fins" protrude over the sidewalk on Broadway, each containing one of the characters "1585 B'way". Each storefront has signs identifying the retailer there. Three horizontal boards are placed above the fourth-story setback, displaying financial quotations and news. Each board is wide and high; the boards constitute a large ticker tape. Two additional signs at the corners, measuring , display market information. At Broadway's corners with 47th and 48th Streets, there are curved signs measuring tall, which display the current time in cities around the world. Morgan Stanley's name is only displayed at the corners, with letters.
The tower's facade is mostly a glass curtain wall with facade panels designed by PPG. The tower section contains silver aluminum spandrel panels at the corners. On the upper stories, the corners are notched inward and contain mirrored-glass panels. The remainder of the facade is made of panels that are either white, blue-green, or mirrored glass. These panels are framed by nearly invisible mullions. The facade panels appear in different colors under different lighting conditions. According to a book about Gwathmey Siegel's architecture, these materials were meant to create "images of both opacity and reflectivity, creating a simultaneous sense of fluidity and permanence". The roof is pitched on four sides, a modification of a mansard roof design, but with four backlit panels. Architectural critic Paul Goldberger described the roof as a "cross between a gabled roof and a cut-off pyramid".
Features The building has of gross floor area. Because of zoning rules, there is no office entrance on Broadway, as that frontage is taken up by shops. Gwathmey Siegel designed the original lobby in 1990 as well as the executive suite of Morgan Stanley in 1995. Gensler designed the remainder of the offices.
Lobby and basements The lobby connects the entrances on 47th and 48th Streets. It is a privately owned public space measuring . The lobby is part of a corridor of privately owned public spaces connecting 44th to 49th Streets. The other spaces on this corridor are Shubert Alley, a passageway under the New York Marriott Marquis, the lobby of the Hotel Edison, and a driveway under the Crowne Plaza Times Square Manhattan.
The lobby contains a marble floor with white, dark-green, and black tiles arranged in a geometric pattern. The walls are made of gray granite with dark green marble strips. One wall curves inward to give the impression that it is shorter than it actually is. The lobby ceiling is made of wood and is supported by two large columns. The ceiling is arranged in a grid, with rectangular coffers measuring wide. There are incandescent lamps with reflectors within the ceiling, creating what Architectural Lighting magazine described as a "luminous" effect. Stephen Margulies designed the lobby lighting.
Behind a glass wall, the lobby contains escalators to a 500-seat dining room in the basement. An overpass passes above the dining-room escalators. The dining room was built in 1995; it was originally storage space and was not connected to the lobby. The lobby and dining room collectively measure . The sub-basement was originally used by law firm Proskauer Rose, whose chairman Alan S. Jaffe euphemistically referred to the space as a "concourse". Part of the sub-basement level became a law library in 2000; the space had 60,000 volumes and was staffed by 14 librarians, with capacity for 34 lawyers. The sub-basement also had locker rooms for the law firm's male and female employees. There are full-height frosted-glass panels, wooden decorations, and indirect lighting fixtures from the walls and ceiling. The space contains three concrete columns measuring , which are covered with stainless-steel panels.
Executive suite Morgan Stanley's executive suite is on the 40th and 41st stories of the tower and covers . It contains offices, dining rooms, meeting spaces, and boardrooms. The foyer to the executive suite contains windows facing in three directions, while the offices can accommodate 30 executives. The suite is clad in granite and three types of wood; architect Charles Gwathmey said this arose from Morgan Stanley's desire for "real materials". Anigre is used for the foyer's walls. Mahogany is used for the steps of the double-width staircase connecting the two floors, as well as for ceiling grids, similar to those in the lobby. Ebonized cherry wood is used for doors and other fixtures. The executive suite also contains a boardroom table, as well as various pieces of modern furniture. Some of the furniture is inspired by those at Frank Lloyd Wright's Coonley House.
History Times Square's Theater District had evolved into a business district after World War II. Nonetheless, there were relatively few large developments there in the mid-20th century. Between 1958 and 1983, only twelve buildings with at least of space were developed in the 114-block area between Sixth Avenue, Times Square, Eighth Avenue, and Columbus Circle. 1585 Broadway was proposed in the 1980s, when there was high demand for office space in New York City. Husband-and-wife team David and Jean Solomon had become involved in acquiring and residential structures in Manhattan during the late 1970s, moving on to office buildings in the following decade. The Solomons decided to develop two structures on Times Square's northern periphery in the late 1980s: 750 Seventh Avenue and 1585 Broadway. Both of these structures were developed speculatively without a commitment from a specific tenant.
Development
The Solomons acquired the Strand Theatre and Leighton's Haberdashers and Clothiers in 1986, with plans to build a 40-story tower on the two sites. This was one of several developments planned for Times Square at that time. The New York City Planning Commission (CPC) was considering enacting regulations that would have forced new buildings along Times Square's northern section to include bright signage as well as deep setbacks. David Solomon opposed these regulations on the basis that they were to be indiscriminate, "without thought of how to apply them to those new buildings architecturally". Leighton's closed in December 1986 to make way for the tower. To attain additional floor area, Solomon Equities purchased the Barrymore Theatre's unused air development rights from the Shubert Organization. In total, the structure would have .