500 Park Tower, Office tower in Midtown Manhattan, United States.
500 Park Tower is a 40-story building in Midtown Manhattan with office spaces occupying the first 11 floors and 56 residential units stacked above them. The postmodern design merges commercial and residential functions within a single structure.
The 11-story Pepsi-Cola Building, designed by Gordon Bunshaft and Natalie de Blois of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, was built from 1958 to 1960 as the company's headquarters. Pepsi-Cola occupied it until 1967, followed by Olivetti until 1978; the Amsterdam and Rotterdam Bank moved in around 1982, when the 40-story 500 Park Tower by James Stewart Polshek & Partners was built beside it. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the original building a landmark in 1995.
The original 1958–1960 Pepsi-Cola Building was designed by Natalie de Blois, who conceived it as a glass box while Gordon Bunshaft arranged the structural columns. Its lobby first served as an exhibition space. The building has carried several names over time, including the Olivetti Building and the ABN-Amro Bank Building, reflecting its successive corporate occupants.
The granite plaza reaches the curb on both Park Avenue and 59th Street, sitting at sidewalk level on Park Avenue but four steps higher at the western end on 59th Street, so it reads as a podium. The plaza pavement dates from the 1980s tower construction, and a stainless steel cube stands at its eastern end.
The plaza's granite pavement, laid when the tower was built in the 1980s, runs from the sidewalk up to the building, and a stainless steel cube stands at its eastern end. The original 1960 block sits behind this raised base, which is four steps higher at the 59th Street end.
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