60 Wall Street Traded Its Postmodern Atrium for a 100-Foot Green Wall

Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo finished 60 Wall Street in 1989 as the headquarters of J.P. Morgan & Co. Deutsche Bank occupied it, then left in 2021. The $250 million repositioning that followed demolished the building’s most argued-about feature.

Project Scope

The work concentrates on the base and the privately owned public space at its centre, a postmodern atrium of columns, palm trees and mirrored pergolas that preservationists fought to keep. New Yorkers staged a mock funeral procession for it. Kohn Pedersen Fox’s replacement opens the podium facade with triple-height windows, drops a large skylight over a new full-block public atrium, adds two lobbies and a grand staircase running from the atrium to the Pine Street subway entrance, and installs a 100-foot interior green wall along the full length of the block, which the owner bills as the largest of its kind in North America. New restaurant and cafe space and expanded atrium seating come with it. Front Inc. consulted on the facade and Habitat Horticulture on the living wall. The tower above the podium, 55 storeys and about 1.6 million square feet, is untouched.

Why It Matters

This is what a Class A office repositioning looks like when the tower itself is fine and the problem is the ground floor. The economics turn on whether a better public room and a direct subway connection can re-let 1.6 million square feet in a Financial District that lost its anchor tenant, and that’s being tested in public. The preservation fight is the other half. A 1989 building is old enough to be argued over and young enough to have no protection, and the atrium’s demolition is now a reference point for every postmodern interior in Manhattan that someone wants to reprogram. No reopening date has been published.

Project Team & Details