Architecture In A New Light

Built in 1986, New York’s 599 Lexington Avenue has been widely regarded as one of the famed architect Edward Larrabee Barnes’s greatest skyscrapers.

- Dora Vanette

One of its corners is sliced away on a diagonal, revealing a soaring entrance lobby, separated from a public plaza by a 50-foot high glass wall. The interior is largely unadorned, save for bands of green marble that serve to offset the vertical thrust of the space and a striking Frank Stella bas-relief, commissioned specifically for the building in 1985.

Although the owners, Boston Properties, are highly dedicated to preserving the space, they found the lobby was beginning to look dated, so they turned to Bruce Fowle, founding principal of FXFOWLE Architects and Barnes’s longtime friend and collaborator, for a solution.