Met Life Building

[LexusLS430]

Name:Met Life

Bulit: 1963

58 Floors

808 feet high

[turlough]

Nice building when I go to new york next summer I'll try to take some pics

[cityboi]

Its actually one of the better styled buildings during the 1960s. That was the decaded that had some of the worst building in skyscraper history because many were box biuildings. But Met Life is a cool building.

[LSyd]

the wierd thing is, I don't remember seeing it at all on my first trip to NYC, even though I stayed right next to Grand Central...I guess I was too enamored at having the Chrysler Building across the street.

and I don't think I took any photos of Met Life...even though I have a sihouette pic of the statue on the top of Grand Central, there's just the sky in the background...probably because I was right in front of Grand Central.

it is a cool building though.

-

[Cotuit]

The weird thing about the MetLife Building is that it somehow has maintained it's original PanAm moniker. I moved to NYC long after it became MetLife, but I found myself often referring to it as the PanAm. And it's not that I had any previous history with the building and it's old name, it just sort of speaks to you somehow, that it wants to be called PanAm. Most people call it MetLife, but there is a tendency to call it the PanAm, the names are pretty interchangable.

I think it's a great building. I worked a block from it when I was living in NYC. The interior has a rather interesting style, kind of 60s airport concorse meets art deco. I would walk through it a lot to get into Grand Central, or just to go through it, it cuts off 44th and 45th Streets and you either have to go around or through it.

The fact that it cuts the blocks off though and my relationship to the areas around me confirm my distain for the superblock. I worked on Madison, and the other side of the MetLife on Lexington was really only 2 blocks away, but that superblock meant that I would rarely venture over there. I would walk blocks in the other direction when there were things just on the other side of the superblock that I could have obtained. The superblock served as a mental block though, the other side of MetLife was a different world.

[tocoto]

I think it looked better with the Pan Am sign.

[Cotuit]

I think it looked better with the Pan Am sign.

I wish MetLife would put Snoopy up there.

It was amazing watching the building being washed last year. It was a completely different colour when they were done. I used to watch them washing it while I was outside my office smoking.