JP Morgan 522 5th Avenue

JP Morgan Investment Management has their world headquarters in this Fifth Avenue building that was originally built in the 1930s. A complete renovation of the building in the 1960s left it with an arcade on Fifth Avenue and a small lobby which was squeezed between the elevator core and the party wall of the building next door.

An invited design competition was sponsored by Morgan which included four New York architects. The winning scheme, designed by Jeff Sydness, included reducing the full arcade to a three-bay entrance portico and relocated the lobby to the center of the building, creating an elliptical space which respected existing structural columns and allowed for easy secured entrance into the elevator banks. The new symmetrical building entrance flows directly into the lobby. Jeff Sydness was the Design Principal with SHCA throughout most of the project, and was retained by JP Morgan during construction administration.