[NYguy]

^ Excellent work.



A little more on the original design:

"The American Skyscraper"
Roberta Moudry

Met Life entered the 1920s with the pressing task of accommodating rapid growth, and industry-wide phenomenon that ceased only in the 1930s.

.....With the hubris that raised the 1909 campanile, the 12,000-employee company announced plans for the world's tallest building that would house up to 30,000 workers.

.....Unlike the campanile and office block the new tower, or North Building, was fashioned on no historical precedent; in the words of its architects, it was "a creation of this age and time" and "unhampered by archaeological precedent:"

Sleek and stunning, the 100-story building moved upward from its massive marble base containing a continuous pedestrian arcade in tiers of angled glass panels creating a telescoping structure of glass and steel........its bowed Madison and Fourth Avenue facades and recessed flanks created a distinctive figure-eight-shaped plan that became increasingly pronounced in the upper floors.

.....The North Building was completed in three phases. Unit One, built between 1930 and 1932, filled the eastern half of the site; Unit Two, situated in the northwestern quadrant of the block, was built between 1938 and 1941; and the southwestern quadrant, which comprised Unit Three, was completed in 1950, its construction delayed by World War II. Rising thirty-two stories, with four levels below grade, the finished building was clad entirely in limestone, a much-subdued version of the widely published marble, metal, and glass tower, a base without its tower.

This version of the tower had the major entrances in the center, rather than the eventual corners...







Anyway, this is probably the favorite of my small collection of models...