| 399 Park Avenue | |
|---|---|
 399 Park Avenue from the ground;601 Lexington Avenue is at right. | |
 Interactive map of 399 Park Avenue | |
| General information | |
| Status | Completed |
| Type | Office |
| Coordinates | 40°45′33″N73°58′18″W / 40.759184°N 73.971763°W /40.759184; -73.971763 |
| Completed | 1961 |
| Owner | Boston Properties |
| Height | |
| Roof | 524 ft (159.7 m) |
| Top floor | 470 ft (143 m) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 41 |
| Floor area | 1,700,000 square feet (160,000 m2) |
| Design and construction | |
| Architects | Carson & Lundin;Kahn & Jacobs |
| Developer | First National Bank |
399 Park Avenue is a 41-story office building that occupies the entire block betweenPark Avenue andLexington Avenue and53rd Street and54th Street inMidtown Manhattan,New York City. The building was the world headquarters ofCitigroup from 1961, when it moved from55 Wall Street, until 2015, when the company moved to388 Greenwich Street.[1]
The building lot was assembled byVincent Astor who initially planned to build a 46-storyAstor Plaza on the site. Astor had problems completing the assembly of the lots of mostly residential buildings as a pharmacy held out. In 1974, the company opened theCitigroup Center annex across Lexington to the east. In 1987, Citigroup sold one third of its interest in the building along with two-thirds of its interest in Citigroup Center toDai-Ichi Mutual Life Insurance Company for $670 million. At the time, Citigroup said it was moving many of its offices toOne Court Square inLong Island City, Queens. Citigroup moved out of the top two thirds of the building but kept the lower floors.[2] Citigroup later bought back its interest in the building.
In 2002, Boston Properties bought the building for $1.06 billion beating out other bidders includingBrookfield Properties,Equity Office Properties,Vornado Realty Trust,RFR Holdings, and the Paramount Group.[3] Boston Properties paid over $630 per square foot, which was the highest price ever paid for an office building at the time. Boston also bought the nearbyCitigroup Center. Citigroup then leased its headquarters from Boston Properties through 2017. After theSeptember 11 attacks damaged much of their headquarters atBrookfield Place,Lehman Brothers leased 400,000 square feet (37,000 m2) in the building untiltheir 2008 bankruptcy.[4] Other former tenants included law firms Caplin & Drysdale, which moved to 600 Lexington Avenue andWilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, which moved to7 World Trade Center.[5][6]
In December 2013, Citigroup announced it would relocate its global headquarters to388 and 390 Greenwich Street in Tribeca, a complex it had purchased fromSL Green Realty in 2016.
