4 Times Square (also known as 151 West 42nd Street, One Five One, or the H&M Tower; formerly the Condé Nast Building) is a 48-story skyscraper at Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Located at 1472 Broadway, between 42nd and 43rd Streets, the building measures tall to its roof and tall to its antenna. The building was designed by Fox & Fowle and developed by the Durst Organization. 4 Times Square, and the Bank of America Tower to the east, occupy an entire city block.
Fox & Fowle planned a masonry facade facing south and east, as well as a glass facade facing west and north. The northwest corner of the building's base contains the eight-story cylindrical facade of Nasdaq MarketSite, which includes a large LED sign. The top of 4 Times Square includes an antenna mast and four large illuminated signs on each side which read ‘H&M’. The building contains of floor space, much of which was originally taken by publishing company Condé Nast and law firm Skadden Arps. The lowest three stories contain retail space while the fourth story has a food hall for tenants, originally designed by Frank Gehry for Condé Nast. 4 Times Square is an early example of green design in commercial skyscrapers in the United States.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, Park Tower Realty and the Prudential Insurance Company of America had planned to develop a tower for the site as part of a wide-ranging redevelopment of West 42nd Street. After long opposing a tower there, Douglas Durst proposed an office building on the site in late 1995. Condé Nast and Skadden Arps leased the majority of the building in 1996, and the structure was finished in 1999. After Condé Nast and Skadden Arps moved out of the building during the 2010s, a variety of office tenants have occupied 4 Times Square. Several modifications have been made to the building after it opened, including an expansion of the antenna mast atop the building in 2003, as well as a renovation in the late 2010s.
Site 4 Times Square is on the eastern side of Broadway, between 42nd Street and 43rd Street, at the southern end of Times Square in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. The land lot is trapezoidal and covers . The site has a frontage of on Broadway and a depth of .
4 Times Square, as well as the Bank of America Tower and Stephen Sondheim Theatre to the east, comprise the entire city block. Other nearby locations include the Town Hall theater and the Chatwal New York hotel to the northeast, 1500 Broadway to the north, 1501 Broadway to the northwest, One Times Square and 3 Times Square to the west, Times Square Tower and 5 Times Square to the southwest, and the Knickerbocker Hotel and Bush Tower to the south. An entrance to the New York City Subway's Times Square–42nd Street station, served by the , is across 42nd Street. There is also an entrance to the 42nd Street–Bryant Park/Fifth Avenue station, served by the , less than a block east.
3, 4, and 5 Times Square and the Times Square Tower comprise a grouping of office buildings that were developed at Times Square's southern end in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The northern portion of 4 Times Square's site had been occupied by George M. Cohan's Theatre and the Fitzgerald Building before 1938, then by the Big Apple Theatre and a Nathan's Famous. The southern portion of the site had contained the Longacre Building. The Nathan's space was originally a Toffenetti restaurant, which opened in 1940. Designed by Walker & Gillette, the Toffenetti restaurant had 1,000 seats; the Nathan's opened in the Toffenetti building in 1968.
Architecture The building was designed by Fox & Fowle and developed by the Durst Organization. WSP Cantor Seinuk was the structural engineer, while Tishman Construction was the main contractor. Other companies involved with the project included wind consultant CPP Wind Engineering and Air Quality Consultants, elevator contractor Otis Worldwide, mechanical engineer Cosentini Associates, photovoltaic contractor Kiss + Cathcart Architects, lighting contractor Fisher Marantz Renfro Stone, and cladding contractor Heitmann & Associates. The New York City Economic Development Corporation owns the structure.
4 Times Square has 48 usable floors above ground, as well as two basement floors. Including mechanical stories atop the building, 4 Times Square is 52 stories tall. The building measures to its architectural tip and to the top of the antenna mast. The main roof is only high.
4 Times Square is one of the first examples of green design in commercial skyscrapers in the United States. The design incorporates many environmentally efficient features. In particular, Fox & Fowle had been chosen for its experience designing ecologically sustainable buildings. One of the building's original major tenants, publisher Condé Nast, had committed to designing its space to environmentally efficient standards (the other major tenant, law firm Skadden Arps, did not make a similar commitment). The building's high energy usage limits the extent of the energy savings; Suzanne Stephens wrote for Architectural Record that the inclusion of such features was "a little like opening up a smoke-enders clinic on a tobacco farm".
Form The building is part of the 42nd Street Development Project and, thus, could bypass many city zoning rules such as those relating to floor area ratio (FAR). Bruce Fowle of Fox & Fowle estimated that the building had a FAR of 35, while The New York Times stated that the FAR was only 31. The massing of the building contains several setbacks, which were not mandated by zoning ordinances but were included to make the building's design fit in with its setting. The 43rd story contains a glass setback with a cavetto-shaped cornice. Stephens wrote that the building contained a combination of neo-Modernist and traditional design elements. While the building is divided into a base, shaft, and pinnacle similar to older skyscrapers, the design of the facade was more varied.
Antenna mast If the building's antenna mast is included, the structure's total height is . The original antenna mast measured and was built primarily for Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia, Inc.) as a backup transmitter site. After the broadcast equipment atop the World Trade Center's towers was destroyed during the September 11 attacks in 2001, the main transmitters for radio stations WKTU, WNYC-FM, and WPAT-FM and the backup transmitter for WSKQ-FM were transferred to 4 Times Square. In 2003, the original installation was replaced with a mast. This allowed WKTU, WNYC-FM, and WPAT-FM to build main transmitters at the Empire State Building without disrupting existing FM tenants there. The topmost antenna, designed for Univision's WFUT-TV, was removed in 2015 and replaced with a very high frequency (VHF) antenna for television station WJLP, bringing the mast to tall.
The mast includes five antennas. The topmost one is used by WJLP. The second-highest tier contains two antennas for ultra high frequency (UHF) broadcasts; the antenna serving UHF channels 40–60 is above that serving channels 24–45. Below that are two antennas for VHF broadcasts: one for low-VHF broadcasts and the other for FM radio stations. The antenna systems and mast were constructed by Andrew Corporation, Dielectric Communications, Shively Labs, and Electronics Research Inc. , the mast at 4 Times Square is used as a primary site by FM radio stations WBGO, WKCR, WNYE, and WBAI. In addition, the mast has been used as a backup site for FM stations such as WKTU, WNYC, WPAT, WSKQ, WHTZ, WAXQ, WWPR, WLTW, and WCAA.
Facade
Fox & Fowle planned a masonry facade, largely oriented south toward 42nd Street and east toward Bryant Park, as well as a glass facade, largely facing west toward Broadway and north toward 43rd Street. The arrangement was meant to fit in with the livelier character of Broadway and the more restrained character of 42nd Street and Bryant Park. This led multiple media sources to compare the facade to the two-faced god Janus. In general, the lower stories have low-reflective glass to increase transparency, while the upper stories have highly reflective glass that deflects heat.
The masonry facade wraps around much of the north, east, and south elevations. In a 1996 press release, Fox & Fowle described the character of the masonry facade as presenting "a more composed personality appropriate to the context of Midtown Manhattan". The offices are accessed from an entrance on 42nd Street, which is named One Five One after its street address of 151 West 42nd Street. The main entrance has a recessed glass wall and originally had an angled glass canopy, which complemented the curving ceiling of the lobby. The entrance originally contained glass doors and was flanked by stone blocks. The masonry facade has windows measuring , larger than in typical office buildings. The large windows were meant to reduce the amount of electricity required for illuminating the offices.
The glass facade, which wraps around the west elevation and part of the south elevation, is designed to blend in with the surrounding signage. The glass facade contains green panels and is divided by vertical steel mullions. The west elevation on Broadway was designed with video screens, which cover and are mandated by the zoning law. There are ten signs, which could be rented to advertisers; when the building was constructed, the signs were projected to earn $7 million per year. The signs were included as part of Robert A. M. Stern's 42nd Street Now! master plan, which required a variety of lighting and signage for facades along Times Square.
The 37th through 43rd stories of the south and east elevations have photovoltaic (PV) panels. These were installed in place of some of the spandrels that separate windows on different floors. There are 208 panels covering , half a percent of the facade's total area. While the panels can generate enough power for five or six houses, they only supply one-half of a percent of the total power needs of 4 Times Square. The PV modules are placed on a thin glass pane that is then laminated on both sides. The PV panels were included because they were inconspicuous and only cost more than conventional spandrels. Originally, the architects had planned for of PV panels. Before deciding to use PV panels, Fox & Fowle had considered installing solar panels on the roof, as well as wind turbines. Douglas Durst of the Durst Organization said the panels were intended to indicate the building's energy-saving features, as the PV panels could be upgraded when the technology was more advanced.
Nasdaq MarketSite
The eight-story cylindrical facade of 4 Times Square's northwest corner, on Broadway and 43rd Street, contains Nasdaq MarketSite. The facade was part of the building's original design and was included before Nasdaq had leased the space. At street level is a three-story glass facade, which contains a view of the studio inside. Above the studio, the facade consists of a giant LED display, variously cited as measuring or . The display was the world's largest at the time of its completion. The display is allowed because 4 Times Square is exempt from the zoning rules regarding signs.
The LED sign over the studio cost $37 million. The display can show information at a computer display standard of 1280x1824, and it has over 18 million LEDs. The display is made of about 8,200 or 8,400 panels, manufactured by Saco Smart Vision. It is thick and is interrupted by thirty square windows. The windows are arranged into five rows, which illuminate a portion of Condé Nast's space. There is a catwalk and a ventilation space behind the display, creating a gap of about between the sign and the actual facade. At 4 Times Square's opening, Nasdaq leased the sign space from Durst for $2 million a year.
Top-story signs