"The building, designed by Cross & Cross and completed in 1931, was known as the RCA Victor Building during its construction. The General Electric Building is sometimes known by its address to avoid confusion with 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which was once known as the GE Building.
570 Lexington Avenue contains a 50-floor, 640-foot-tall (200 m) stylized Gothic octagonal brick tower, with elaborate Art Deco decorations of lightning bolts showing the power of electricity. The tower is set back from the round-cornered base with elaborate masonry and architectural figural sculpture. The building was designed to blend with the low Byzantine dome of the adjacent St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on Park Avenue, with the same brick coloring and architectural terracotta decoration. The crown of the building, an example of Gothic tracery, is intended to represent electricity and radio waves. On the corner above the building's main entrance is a clock with the cursive GE logo and a pair of disembodied silver arms holding bolts of electricity.
Plans for the building were announced in 1929, and it was completed two years later. The project was originally commissioned for RCA, then a subsidiary of General Electric (GE). RCA moved to 30 Rockefeller Plaza midway through construction, and 570 Lexington Avenue was conveyed to GE as part of an agreement in which RCA and GE split their properties. GE had its headquarters at 570 Lexington Avenue between 1933 and 1974, and retained ownership until 1993, when the building was donated to Columbia University. The building was extensively renovated by Ernest de Castro of the WCA Design Group in the 1990s. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1985 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
Site
The General Electric Building occupies the southwestern corner of Lexington Avenue and 51st Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It sits on the northeastern portion of a city block bounded by Park Avenue to the west, 50th Street to the south, Lexington Avenue to the east, and 51st Street to the north. St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church is directly to the west on the same city block, and another office building is to the south. The General Electric Building is also near the Waldorf Astoria New York to the south, the DoubleTree Metropolitan Hotel and Beverly Hotel to the east, and 345 Park Avenue to the north. Entrances to the New York City Subway's Lexington Avenue/51st Street station, served by the 6, E, and ?M trains, are adjacent to the north side of the building.
The lots making up the General Electric Building's site were purchased by Frederick and Maximilian Schaefer starting in 1867, and were developed as the Schaefer Brewery in 1878. The Park Avenue railroad tracks, running in an open cut less than a block west of the site, were placed underground as part of the construction of Grand Central Terminal in the early 20th century. The opening of Grand Central Terminal in 1913 spurred development in the area bounded by Lexington Avenue, Madison Avenue, 51st Street, and 42nd Street. St. Bartholomew's Church bought the Schaefer site in 1914. The church's main building was erected on the block's northwestern corner in 1919, and St. Patrick's Cathedral developed Cathedral High School on the southeastern corner in 1924. After St. Bartholomew's built its chapter house and garden on the block's southwestern corner, the Schaefer site was the only one on the block that was not developed.
Architecture
The General Electric Building was designed by John Walter Cross of Cross & Cross in the Art Deco style with Gothic Revival ornamentation. This contrasted with the firm's earlier designs, which tended to be in the Gothic Revival, Georgian Revival, or Renaissance Revival styles. The Bartholomew Building Corporation originally developed 570 Lexington Avenue for RCA, though the building was renamed for General Electric (GE) midway through construction when RCA decided to instead occupy 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The steel was erected by the McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, while the concrete floor arches were contracted to Brennan & Sloan.
Art Deco facade
The building was designed to harmonize with neighboring structures, particularly St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church, as well as the since-demolished building of Cathedral High School to the south. There are 46 office floors in total, as well as four mechanical floors, although the 48th and 49th floors also once contained executive dining rooms. Sources disagree slightly on the building's precise height. Emporis gives a height of 640 feet (195 m), while the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat's Skyscraper Center cites the building as being 643 feet (196 m).
Form
The building's lowest stories contain elaborate masonry and architectural figural sculpture, with a round corner facing Lexington Avenue and 51st Street. Above a series of gradual setbacks, the building rises into an octagonal brick tower similar to Cross & Cross's earlier design for 20 Exchange Place. It is a stylized Gothic tower, with elaborate Art Deco decorations of lightning bolts showing the power of electricity. According to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, the base and tower form "one of the most expressive skyscrapers of its era".
The lowest twelve stories fill the entire lot area. Between the 13th and 25th stories, the building contains shallow setbacks on each elevation, which are used to emphasize the building's vertical lines. The Lexington Avenue and 51st Street elevations contain setbacks on the 13th, 16th, 19th, and 22nd floors, and the Lexington Avenue elevation also has a setback at the 25th floor. The centers of the Lexington Avenue and 51st Street elevations contain projecting pyramidal dormers that rise one to three additional stories above the previous setback. The building's tower rises 25 stories above these setbacks. The corners of the tower are chamfered to form an eight-sided floor plan, except on the building's northeast corner below the 35th floor, which is not chamfered.
Facade
The facade was designed to blend with the low Byzantine dome of St. Bartholomew's Church and shares the same brick color, with terracotta decorations chosen to coordinate. Brick in orange, tawny, and buff colors was used throughout the facade. The bricks, laid out randomly in American bond, create from a distance the impression of a rich bronze color.
The window sills, corbels, spandrels, and other elements on the facade are made of terracotta in similar shades. The terracotta details include reliefs that depict lightning. The lowest section of the ground-story facade is made of reddish granite, and some of the upper-story trimmings are made of reddish marble. The terracotta on the upper stories was sprayed with fourteen-carat gold. The detail of the facade wraps around to its rear elevations as well.
The facade contains few flat surfaces. The design is emphasized by rounded vertical piers, which separate the facade into bays, and recessed spandrels, which separate the windows between each floor. The piers rise above and between the openings of the first floor. The spandrels are mostly similar in design. On the building's primary elevations, the upper section of a typical spandrel contains a large chevron made of fluted bars, while the lower section contains two half-size chevrons with smaller fluting. Running vertically along the center of each spandrel is a lozenge-shaped bolt with aluminized finishing. The bolt probably represents the radio industry, though architectural historian Anthony W. Robins writes that the bolt has also been compared to sound waves on a RCA Victrola"
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