375 Pearl Street

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Information
375 Pearl Street

Location	375 Pearl Street, New York City
Coordinates	40°42′39″N 74°00′04″W / 40.710813, -74.001181
Status	Complete
Constructed	1975
Roof	540 feet (160 m)^[1]
Floor count	32
Floor area	1.098 million square feet
Companies
Architect	Rose Beaton and Rose^[2]
Owner	Taconic Partners

The building towers over the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge

375 Pearl (also known as the Verizon Building and One Brooklyn Bridge Plaza) is a 32-story telephone switching building at the Manhattan end of the Brooklyn Bridge.

The building, which appears windowless but has several three-foot wide slits (some with glass) running up the building, is the tallest building next to the Brooklyn Bridge and is featured in most photos of the bridge from the Brooklyn side. Verizon operations include a small DMS-100 switching system and a Switching Control Center System.

When it opened in 1975 for New York Telephone Company, New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger decried it as the “most disturbing” of the phone company’s new switching centers because it “overwhelms the Brooklyn Bridge towers, thrusts a residential neighborhood into shadow and sets a tone of utter banality.”^[3]

The building played an important part in recovering service to the Police Department in the attacks of September 11, 2001. In September 2007 it was announced that Taconic Partners bought the building from Verizon. Verizon will lease back floors 8 through 10.^[4]

Taconic bought the 1.098 million square foot building for $172.05 Million which amounted to $185 a foot when property was selling in Manhattan for $500 a foot. Other appeals of the building are its 16 to 17-foot (5.2 m) ceilings and 39,000-square-foot (3,600 m²) floor plans as well as the naming rights. The Verizon logo currently tops the building.

Taconic has announced plans to dramatically change in the facade in which a curtain wall designed by Cook & Fox is to be built. The Times in reporting the news said:

Paul E. Pariser, co-chief executive of Taconic, said a reporter had told him: “ ‘Mr. Pariser, you have a challenge cut out for you — turning a G.E. dishwasher into an office building.’ I like that challenge.”