One Grand Central Place, originally the Lincoln Building, is a 53-story, 673-foot (205 m) office building at 60 East 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded by Madison Avenue to the west, 41st Street to the south, 42nd Street to the north, and Park Avenue to the east. One Grand Central Place is adjacent to other skyscrapers such as the Chrysler Building, MetLife Building, and One Vanderbilt, and it also has a direct in-building access to Grand Central Terminal to the north.
History[]
Designed in neo-Gothic style by architect Kenneth Norton of James Edwin Ruthven Carpenter Jr., the skyscraper was completed in 1930 as the Lincoln Building. Among the building's features are the Gothic windows at the top. In June 2009, the Lincoln Building's name was changed to One Grand Central Place, and it underwent a $85 million renovation, which included new windows, renovated elevators, renovated air-conditioned public corridors and restrooms, and upgraded building-wide systems.
In March 2020, One Grand Central Place was at the center of New York's first reported person-to-person spread of SARS-CoV-2 during the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City.
Abraham Lincoln sculpture[]
In 1956, Lawrence Wien purchased Daniel Chester French's 3′ bronze model of Abraham Lincoln—a cast of one of the sketches used to create the statue for the Lincoln Memorial—from his daughter, Margaret French Cresson, for $3,000. The sculpture was put on display in the visitor's center, located in the lobby, in the same year. When the building was renamed One Grand Central Place in 2009, the model was removed and loaned to Chesterwood in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was put back on display on April 15, 2015.