787 Seventh Avenue (Axa Equitable Center) is a 54-story skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was built in 1986. Below are facts about the building, including name, location, height, design, functions, tenants, etc..
Name
The official name of the building is 787 Seventh Avenue (or 787 7th Ave), named by its address.
The name AXA Equitable Center is also used as that the building houses the headquarters of AXA Financial, a French-based insurance and banking company and one of the major tenants of the building. Other alternative names of the building are AXA Center, Equitable Center, and AXA Equitable Tower.
Location
The main tower of 787 Seventh Avenue occupies a half block in Midtown Manhattan, which is bounded by Seventh Avenue to the east, West 52nd Street to the north, 6 1/2 Ave to the east, and West 51st Street to the south.
The building is situated in close proximity to the famous Rockefeller Center, which is only 550 feet east of it, and there is an underground passageway connecting 787 Seventh Avenue to the Concourse at Rockefeller Center, which is an extensive underground network of retailers and stores.
Another notable destination nearby the AXA Equitable Tower is Times Square, which also sits on Seventh Avenue and is only a little over 1000 feet to the south of the tower.
How to get there:
787 Seventh Avenue can be easily accessed by subway, the nearest station is 7 Avenue Station, which is only 600 feet away from the building and is on B, D, or E line, another nearby station is 50 Street Station, on 1, 2, A, C, or E line.
Height
787 Seventh Avenue is 752 ft (229 meters) tall by standard height, 51st tallest among all the complete and topped out buildings in New York City as of 2020.
The height is measured from the ground to the rooftop. If the elevation of the site of the building is counted, the height will be 805 ft (246 meters).
Design
787 Seventh Avenue was designed by American architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, who also designed two other skyscrapers in New York City, the 603ft-tall former IBM Building at 590 Madison Avenue and the 653ft-tall 599 Lexington Avenue.
The tower is designed in postmodern style, it has 51 above-ground floors and a total of 1,800,000 sqft of floor area.
The major material of the tower is steel, which forms the structural frame of the tower, and is cladded with granite in a two-tone pattern, with brown running vertically and white running horizontally.
The north and south facades of the building setback three times at the heights of 60 meters, 160 meters, and 212 meters.
The last setback is right above the level of the tower’s highest floor, on which sits the boardroom of AXA, two large arched windows framed with brown granite can be found on its east and west sides.
The main tower is connected to an 8-story smaller tower to its east side across 6 1/2 Ave, via a two-story bridging structure at 7th and 8th floors, forming an arcade on 6 1/2 Ave.
The arcade connects 51st and 52nd streets. In the middle of the arcade sits a glass pavilion, which leads to the concourse level that connects to Rockefeller Center.
There’s a sculpture of elephant near the northern end of the arcade, named “Young Elephant”, the sculpture was created by British sculptor Barry Flanagan.
Uses
The skyscraper mainly serves as an office building, while the ground floor is used as retail space.
Besides AXA Financial, the cornerstone tenants of the office space of the building include BNP Paribas, Stifel, New Mountain Capital, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, UBS, Sidley, and Citigroup, mainly are in the financial services and law industries.
The retail space houses a Starbucks, an Urbanspace restaurant, a Pret A Manger sandwich shop, and a seafood restaurant called Le Bernardin, allegedly one of the best restaurants in the city.
American commercial real estate services firm CBRE Group handles all the leasing efforts.
Owner
Before 2016, 787 Seventh Avenue had been owned by AXA Financial.
In January 2016, CalPERS purchased the building from AXA Financial for $1.9 billion, becoming the new owner of the building. It was one of the largest deals in New York history, many taller skyscrapers in the city cost just slightly over $1 billion.
The building is managed by the Los Angeles-based company CommonWealth Partners, with CBRE acting as leasing manager.
Event
On June 10, 2019, a helicopter crashed on the roof of 787 Seventh Avenue, the pilot (the only occupant) died in the crash, the helicopter was destroyed and sparked a fire on the roof, which was extinguished quickly. The office workers in the building were evacuated and no one was injured. The investigation concluded that the incident had no relationship with terrorism, the pilot was trying to make an emergency landing on the building but failed and crashed.