The Metropolitan Life North Building

The world is expanding significantly, and so are the infrastructures of cities and countries. In the modern era, buildings are lingering in the clouds. Towns are becoming more crowded, and houses are shrinking to accommodate such a density of people but, some iconic places are still holding their roots tightly, like the Metropolitan life north building. Renowned for its incredible architecture, this building was constructed in the 1950s in the most popular area, 11-25 Madison Avenue, Manhattan, New York. The uniqueness of this artwork is hidden in history, originally this was a Madison square Presbyterian church that afterward converted into a thirty-story Metropolitan life building.

The north building was primarily designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett and Everett Waid which was supposed to be a hundred-story skyscraper but to the crash of the stock market in 1929 they reconsidered it. The building was formulated in three phases, Initially, the eastern bloc was under construction, which Corbett said, “it is a highly specialized building designed primarily as a machine to do as efficiently as possible the particular headquarters’ work of our largest insurance company”. In the second phase, four buildings were demolished in order to construct the northwest wing of the project that occupied 22 acres of land. Following the first phase, the second one also contained thirty-two stories, in which twenty-eight were above ground while four were in the basement. Even Though the building plan could Expand further, the architect refused to do so, and the third phase finished in 1950.

The building occupied an area of twenty-two million square feet, that was large enough to make room for Thirty thousand visitors regularly. Inside the building, there are thirty elevators and sixteen electric generators on the rooftop to maintain the power supply. Exteriorly the Metropolitan life building is applied with Alabama limestone and marble detailed artwork with steel frame on the inside. The entrance is from four side vaults composed of loggias each one of them being three-story high. The metropolitan life north building is structurally and mechanically equipped with the latest technology in every aspect either its ventilation or lightning, sound deadening, or intercommunication networking everything is up to mark.

After a few decades 1994-1997, the structure remained as Met Life’s records warehouse, interiorly updated by Haines Lundberg Wahler and the outside redesigned, all at the expense of $300 million. It is as of now possessed by The Sapir Organization and involved by Credit Suisse, with the Danny Meyer restaurant Eleven Madison Park consuming road level retail space on Madison Avenue. In 2007 National Register information System declared it as a historic place.

This building is now a sort of tourist attraction because of its rich archaic structure and spirituality as well as its beautiful infrastructure dazzles the eyes of its viewers. In 2011 its lobby was used in some scenes of the movie “the adjustment bureau”. Nowadays the metropolitan life north building is known as Eleven Madison but the strength of its history is undeniable and remarkable.