CBS Building
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The CBS Building in New York City, also known as Black Rock, is the 38-story headquarters of the CBS Corporation. The building, opened in 1965, was designed by Eero Saarinen. It is located at 51 West 52nd Street, at the corner of 52nd and Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas). The 38 story building is 490 feet tall and measures approximately 872,000 rentable square feet.
[edit] Background
The building is known as Black Rock for the dark granite cladding. Unlike some major skyscrapers built in that section of midtown Manhattan during the 1950s and 60s, the pillars are more dominant than the glass windows between them. The building was the result of intricate planning between Saarinen and CBS's then-president, Frank Stanton.
CBS moved to Black Rock from its longtime corporate headquarters, 485 Madison Avenue at 52nd Street. Prior to Black Rock’s completion, CBS moved its radio network studios from Madison Avenue to the CBS Broadcast Center on 57th Street starting in 1964. The TV news studios, based mostly at the Graybar Building at Grand Central Terminal, also moved to the Broadcast Center around that period of time, starting with the CBS Evening News studio-newsroom in 1963.
In addition to Black Rock, some of CBS’s back-office operations are based at the Viacom building, One Astor Plaza, at 1515 Broadway (in Times Square). Viacom owned CBS from 1999 until the end of 2005, when it was spun off into a separate corporation. Both companies are still controlled by National Amusements.
Black Rock was the longtime home of CBS's flagship radio station, WCBS (AM), until 2000, when WCBS joined the network at the Broadcast Center.
[edit] Broadcast Row
Black Rock is part of a virtual Broadcast Row on Sixth Avenue. The NBC headquarters, the GE Building in Rockefeller Center, is located south of Black Rock, on Sixth Avenue at 50th Street. South of CBS and NBC, Fox News Channel has its headquarters and streetside studios in the former Celanese building at 1211 Sixth Avenue, in the west extension of Rockefeller Center.
During the 1960s and 70s, ABC's headquarters was at 1330 Sixth Avenue, north of CBS. In the mid-1980s, ABC moved to West 66th Street just west of Central Park, in the neighborhood where the network already has many TV and radio studios.
The local cable channel SportsNet New York has its own streetside studios on the first floor of the Time & Life Building in Rockefeller Center west, on Sixth Avenue at 51st Street, just across from CBS. The studio was previously occupied by Time and Life magazines' sister Time Warner division CNN, and CNN's breakfast show American Morning. The program has since moved north to CNN's New York bureau at Columbus Circle.
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