BNY Mellon Center is a 55-story, 220.98Â m (725.0Â ft), skyscraper located at 500 Grant Street in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Announced on March 27, 1980, the tower was completed in June 1984. It is the second-tallest building in the city and was initially planned to be the world headquarters of the Dravo Corporation (now Carmeuse Corporation) by its majority owner at the time and current neighbor U.S. Steel. From its inception until 2007, the building housed the global headquarters of the Mellon Financial Corporation, until the company merged with Bank of New York. The resulting corporation, The Bank of New York Mellon, uses the building as one of its major offices. The building was named One Mellon Center until 2008, when it was renamed as part of a branding initiative by The Bank of New York Mellon.
Prominent features of the building include its eight-sided design, mansard roof and rooftop heliport. BNY Mellon Center is the 195th-tallest skyscraper in the world (see List of skyscrapers). It is the building with the highest taxable property value in Allegheny County, surpassing the larger U.S. Steel Tower. On clear days, it is possible to spot the building from as far as 50 miles away, usually from the top of Chestnut Ridge.
History
The 500 block of Grant Street was for decades the site of the Carlton Hotel, Plaza Building and the "Interlude Lounge" across the street from the Allegheny County Courthouse on the current complex's southern extreme. In the early 1980s, U.S. Steel, which has its global headquarters one block north at the U.S. Steel Tower bought the land Mellon Center was to be built on and planned a 54-floor skyscraper replacing the Carlton Hotel and Plaza Buildings. The naming rights originally went to the Pittsburgh manufacturing firm Dravo Corporation and was to serve as their leased headquarters space (while still owned by U.S. Steel). After the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s combined with the rapid deindustrialization of the 1980s, Dravo was bought out by a foreign conglomerate and its regional facilities were shuttered. U.S. Steel, having diversified into oil and other industries, sold the almost completed skyscraper on February 16, 1983 to a Connecticut Limited Partnership, the 500 Grant Street Partners, for what was then the second-largest real estate purchase in Western Pennsylvania history.
In March 2010, installation began on a new rooftop sign that would replace the old Mellon signage with the company's new triangular logo and the new brand name "BNY Mellon". The effort lasted until the end of 2010.
On Monday, March 29, 2010, at approximately 4:30Â p.m., a maintenance worker committed suicide by intentionally falling from the roof. The worker who died, from the North Side region of the city, was a 10-year employee of the building's maintenance contractor.
Popular culture
The skyscraper features prominently in the 1983 film Flashdance (while still under construction) and the 1998 Michael Keaton film Desperate Measures (serving as part of the "hospital"). It also makes cameos in Sudden Death, Striking Distance and the 2010 rap video Black and Yellow.
See also
- List of tallest buildings in Pittsburgh
- List of tallest buildings in the United States
References
Further reading
- Toker, Franklin (2007). Buildings of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh: Chicago: Society of Architectural Historians; Santa Fe: Center for American Places ; Charlottesville: In association with the University of Virginia Press. ISBN 0-8139-2650-5.Â
External links
- www.bnymellon.com
