Avengers Mansion
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In the fictional Marvel Comics universe, Avengers Mansion has traditionally been the base of the Avengers. The enormous, city block-sized building, currently abandoned, is located at 890 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan, New York City.
When occupied, the mansion was originally the Stark family manor, until their only son, Tony Stark, inherited their fortune and soon took on the guise of Iron Man. He donated the mansion to the Avengers and had it financed through the charitable Maria Stark Foundation. It was primarily looked after by the Stark family butler, Edwin Jarvis, who not only took care of the mansion but also catered to the needs of the Avengers team. It served as a place to plan and strategize and a home for Avengers members when they needed it.
It had three above-ground floors and three basement floors. The first three floors were open to the public and had twelve rooms to house Avengers who wished to reside in the mansion, as well as Jarvis's quarters. A portion of the mansion's third floor served as a hangar for the Avengers' quinjets, their primary mode of transportation.
The three floors below ground were restricted to the public and had modified rooms for the Avengers' needs. Such rooms below ground were: Tony Stark's arsenal chamber, the Avengers gym, Hawkeye's test-shooting room, the training room (much like the X-Mansion's Danger Room), The cryogenic storage area, and the ultra-secure assembly room.
The Mansion was surrounded by a wall twelve feet high and one foot thick, as well as an array of high-tech security defenses. Nonetheless, those defenses were often breached by the supervillains faced by the Avengers.
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[edit] Destructions
The mansion has been destroyed twice. The first time was in Avengers: Under Siege when a huge grouping of Masters of Evil, led by Baron Helmut Zemo, attacked the Avengers and destroyed the Mansion and beat Hercules into a coma among other things before being repulsed.
In the immediate aftermath, the Avengers would relocate to a floating platform called Hydrobase, while the former Mansion site became known as "Avengers Park," and was unused, until Hydrobase too was destroyed. Thereafter the Avengers built a new headquarters on the site of the Mansion and resided there until it was destroyed by the Gatherers and Ute, a Watcher enslaved by Proctor brought an alternate reality version of the original Avengers Mansion to the site as he lay dying.
This replacement Mansion would survive various assaults until, in the "Avengers Disassembled" storyline, the Scarlet Witch was responsible for its destruction and in Avengers Finale (January 2005), Stark decided that with his dwindling assets, he could no longer afford to maintain the building and it was abandoned in its derelict state, left as a memorial to the Avengers who had died. The Avengers have relocated to Stark Tower, although it is unknown how permanent this move will be.
[edit] Creative origin
According to Stan Lee, who co-created the Avengers:
- There was a mansion called the Frick Museum that I used to walk past. I sort of modeled [Avengers Mansion] after that. Beautiful, big, so impressive [a] building, right on Fifth Avenue.
In real life, 890 Fifth Avenue is 1 East 70th Street, the location of the Frick Collection. The Frick's building is, indeed, a city block-sized former family home much like Avengers Mansion.
[edit] Notes
↑ "Marvel Super Heroes' Guide to New York City." Discovery Channel.
[edit] See also
| The Avengers | ||
|---|---|---|
| Teams |
The Avengers | New Avengers | Mighty Avengers | Young Avengers | Great Lakes Avengers | Agents of Atlas | West Coast Avengers | Force Works |
|
| Characters | ||
| Locations |
Avengers Mansion | Stark Tower |
|
| Animation | The Avengers: United They Stand | Ultimate Avengers | Ultimate Avengers 2 | |
| Other topics | ||
