General Electric Building

This article is about the 1931 building at 570 Lexington Avenue. For the 1933 building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, now known as the Comcast Building, see 30 Rockefeller Plaza. For buildings outside of New York City, see General Electric Building (disambiguation).

General Electric Building
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
NYC Landmark
General Electric Building
Location	570 Lexington Ave., New York, New York
Coordinates
Area	less than one acre
Built	1931
Architect	Cross & Cross (Cross, John Walter; Cross, Eliot)
Architectural style	Art Deco
NRHP Reference #	03001515
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	January 28, 2004
Designated NYCL	July 9, 1985

The General Electric Building, also known as 570 Lexington Avenue, is a historic 50-floor, 640-foot (200 m)-tall, skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States, at the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street). Originally known as the RCA Victor Building when designed in 1931 by John W. Cross of Cross & Cross, and sometimes known by its address to avoid confusion with the much later renaming, (1988), of the RCA Building at 30 Rockefeller Plaza as the 'GE Building', later renamed 'Comcast Building'.

It backs up to the low Byzantine dome of St. Bartholomew's Church on Park Avenue and shares the same salmon brick color. But from Lexington, the building is an insistently tall 50-floor stylized Gothic tower with its own identity, a classic Art Deco visual statement of suggested power through elaborate Art Deco decoration with lightening bolts showing the power of electricity. The base contains elaborate, generous masonry, architectural figural sculpture, and on the corner above the main entrance, a conspicuous corner clock with the curvy GE logo and a pair of silver disembodied forearms. The crown of the building is a dynamic-looking burst of Gothic tracery, which is supposed to represent electricity and radio waves, and is lit from within at night.

Gallery

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  General Electric Building (detail)

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  The crown of the building with its "electric waves" design

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  Plaque at the General Electric Building

See also

• List of tallest buildings in New York City

References

Notes

Further reading

• Dirk Stichweh: New York Skyscrapers. Prestel Publishing, Munich 2009, ISBN 3-7913-4054-9

External links

• History of the building from the City Review
• in-Arch.net: The General Electric Tower
• More photos from Emporis Buildings, a public database on architecture.
• Parts of the movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith were filmed at 570 Lexington.