The MetLife Building is designed in the brutalist style, And MetLife is a skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, and one of the most well-known, particularly for its giant MetLife sign. This building drew criticism when it was built, (then known as the Pan Am Building), as it was much taller than the adjacent Grand Central Terminal and Helmsley Building. It's street address is 200 Park Avenue. In 2017, the MetLife Building got it's letters changed to MetLife's New Logo.
On May 16, 1977 New York Airways Flight 971 preparing a land on the Pan Am Building, a landing gear failed on Sikorsky S-61L while taking passangers on the roof of Pan Am Building the helicopter fell at the side the rotor blades killed 4 passangers waiting to board, the broken blades fell down the ground killing one pedestrian and injuring another.
The building remains one of the city's most recognizable skyscrapers.
The building is one of the most indentified skyscrapers in New York. Designed in an International Style by Emery Roth & Sons with the collaboration of Walter Gropius and Pietro Belluschi, the Pan Am Building is totally office, with large plants, simple volumes and no ornamentation on the exterior and interior. It has been very popular among the tenants, in large part because of its location next to the Grand Central. It is considered that the design of the building was inspired by that of the Pirelli Tower in Milan, which has also been a model of the Alpha Tower in Birmingham (United Kingdom) and other similar buildings in Switzerland and Spain.
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- It is the real life location of Avengers Tower from The Marvel Cinematic Universe.