Renovation work is moving along on 383 Madison Avenue, a 47-story office skyscraper in Midtown East, Manhattan. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill along with Foster + Partners and Gensler, the project involves the replacement of the 755-foot-tall structure’s façade and reconfiguration of its 1.2 million square feet of office space to serve JPMorgan Chase’s investment banking division. The property is located between Madison and Vanderbilt Avenues and East 46th and East 47th Streets, directly south of the JPMorgan Tower at 270 Park Avenue.
A significant amount of the original cladding has been removed from the tower since our last update, when only the top of the podium had begun to be stripped. Crews are quickly replacing these sections with the new reflective glass curtain wall, as seen on the north and northwest elevations of the skyscraper just below the crown.
383 Madison Avenue. Photo by Michael Young.
383 Madison Avenue. Photo by Michael Young.
383 Madison Avenue. Photo by Michael Young.
383 Madison Avenue. Photo by Michael Young.
Foster + Partners is also redesigning the building’s interiors, which will include a modernized food hall and remodeled lobby. The latter will require city approval due to the presence of a privately owned public space (POPS) for the entrance to Grand Central Madison.
The street-level entrance to Grand Central Madison at the base of the building is temporarily closed off, but commuters can still access the southern corner of Madison Avenue and East 47th Street at the eastern corner of the intersection dircetly next to the public plaza space in front of 270 Park Avenue.
The tower was originally designed by David Childs of SOM and was known as the Bear Stearns Building from its completion in 2001 until the company’s collapse during the 2008 recession. JPMorgan Chase acquired the building in the wake of the investment firm’s demise.
383 Madison Avenue’s transformation is slated for completion in the winter of 2027, as noted on the info board.
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Huge visual downgrade.
totally agree – this was a pointless exercise in facadeism
Tweedledee and Tweedledum..congratulations.
I hate this. It’s wrong for so many reasons.
Dimon clearly has money to burn and Foster is on his knees taking it.
Double their real estate taxes . They laundered hundreds of billions and hardly got penalized.
I often wonder why relatively new buildings have their facades changed. Are the originals leaking, or have poor insulating properties? I do not feel the change here adds anything visually.
Dimon has been given trillions,tis a same people have to wake up before everyone is homeless and little lord Fontleroy in his ivy tower laughing all the way to hell!!!
The original looked like it belonged in Manhattan. The new one looks like like it belongs by the regional mall.
Then they’re going to cover the Empire State Building with glass too??? 😡 Seriously, architects, let’s calm down about the glass
But “glass goes with everything.”
yall have brains the size of a grape if you think the architect wanted this. Clients push for glass, not architects
The apoplectic comments are hilarious. The old facade was attractive enough, but read 1990s and obviously visually clashed with 270 Park and thus the cohesive campus Dimon is planning to achieve. Aesthetically upgrading or modifying a facade to suit the times is ages old. Just look at any old turn of the 19th century scene and you’ll see how commonplace it was to architecturally alter and/or expand relatively new buildings, so there’s nothing particularly unique about this reskin other than it’s in modern times where that sort of thing is much rarer. This will look fantastic when done.
I’m guessing that this renovation is more about the interior than the exterior. They’re creating wall-to-wall windows to create a more spacious, “in-the-sky” feel.
I could give you a long list of buildings that were visually ruined by altering and expanding at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Not that this was any great work of art, but more glass towers? And, anyway, I love seeing visually clashing buildings in Manhattan. I doubt that this will look fantastic, but let’s wait and see.
Next is to recovering empire state building with glass 😡
That’s a landmark, would be considerably more difficult to do.
Are we really comparing this with the empire state bldg?
Think of all the humanitarian good that could have been done with the money used for this completely unnecessary change. Just awful vanity and ego at work here.
None of that money would’ve done any humanitarian good if not spent here….
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the original design. How much is this façade demolition and reconstruction going to cost??
I’m still amazed that banks need all this office space to process CHECKING ACCOUNTS
and CREDIT CARDS?!!
Aren’t you embarrassed to make such a silly comment?
Actually I wasn’t embarrassed…
I just don’t understand why it takes TENS of THOUSANDS of employees filling
TWO TOWERS to keep a bank in operation, but I guess since you seem to know
about everything there is to know about construction, you do!
Do you know how banks actually work? I think not.
The original was much nicer.
Agreed.
“banking investment division”?? Really?
NYC never learns. On the rare occasions that actual architecture gets built, after a few short decades the need to improve it by ruining it apparently becomes overwhelming. (And then a few decades after that, if we’re lucky, developers spend another fortune on restoration to its original look.)
For anyone who has worked at 383, there’s little worth preserving. The interiors had little natural light on the lower full-footprint floors–and not much more on higher ones with their awkward, chopped layouts. The interior design was more reminiscent of 1961, not 1991 when it opened. The exterior didn’t age well. It was never an architectural gem. The American Institute of Architects called it the #10 Ugliest Building in NY in 2010.
Came here to say this but you said it better and had a cool fun fact
Amen to this, that building in its original form was never worker friendly, and those of us who will move back there look forward to more natural light and a healthier work environment. I for one cheer the recladding that’s being done.
I doubt that anyone here who has referred to the building as attractive or beautiful has ever actually seen it beyond these photos–except for maybe the lobby/public space, which was well done.
Completely unnecessary–tax them more.
OMG, NO! That was a beautiful façade, and now they’re…darkening it to resemble Brooklyn Tower?
A building absolutely nobody in the city cared about until 5 mins ago btw. So classic, thought this was a yimby group?
The first floor lobby was very swank and cavernous … seemed pretty state-of-the-art. I suppose they’ll remake it even grander to welcome all the superior people who work there.
Re: the cladding … was is said what it will be?
I think you have to admit this is an improvement. But, we will have to see once it is completed….
You have to admit, it is obscene how much money this bank is spending on renovation and construction over these last few years
Seems to tell you something about the ridiculous interest rates and fees we have been soaked for by ALL the banks, not only Chase!
They seem to have money to burn!
Covering the ESB in glass doesn’t matter. You can’t see it anyway