270 Park Avenue, JPMorgan Chase's Headquarters. photo by Reading Tom, CC BY 2.0
We’ve seen a lot of huge demolitions since Construction Junkie began in 2015, including an entire New York City block and a 27 story high rise in China that was never used, but we’ve never seen a demolition as massive as the one JPMorgan Chase announced they are going to start on their existing 52-story headquarters in Manhattan, New York City.
According to an “incomplete” list of tallest buildings ever voluntarily demolished on Wikipedia, the demolition of the JPMorgan Chase building at 270 Park Avenue will be the tallest building on the list once the work is complete. At 707 feet and 52 stories, it would surpass the current leader, the 612 foot tall, 47 story Singer Building, which was also in New York and demolished in 1968.
In the buildings place, JPMorgan plans to build a 70 story, 2.5 million square foot building that will house 15,000 of its workers, according to Quartz. The demolition is expected to begin in 2019 and will take about 5 years to complete.
JPMorgan expects that the new building construction will create over 8,000 construction related jobs throughout the length of the project. The project will also be designed to be LEED certified, but the company did not specify to what level. Quartz also mentioned that preservationists are looking to save the existing tower through an appeals process with the New York Landmarks Preservation Commission.
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