Metropolitan Life Insurance Tower is an Office building of the town of New York to the the United States, located in the Borough of Manhattan. It was the most building of the world of 1909 to 1913 (exceeded then by the Woolworth Building).

Also called the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building , it is located at 1 Av Madison. It was built for the insurance company Metropolitan Life Company. The company wanted that the architects take as a starting point the bell-tower on the Place Saint-Marc with Venice.

Built in 1907, by the American architects Napoleon Brown the and wire, it makes 213 meters height and account 50 stages. This tower was added in 1909 on a building of 1893 and made of this building highest of world.

With the beginning of the year 1910, the gallery of observation was opened to the public at a cost of 50 hundreds.

The clocks (being on the four frontages) are larger than those of Big Ben. Each dial makes 8 meters in diameter. The weight of the needles gives an idea of the gigantism of the clocks: 500 kg for the needle of the minutes and 350 kg for that of the hours.

The tower was renovated in the years 2000, at a cost of 30 million dollars. There were added there a new automated lighting system, the now enlightened tower remaining every night (in recall of the currency of Life Insurance Company: “The light which never weakens”). The colors change according to the events.

One can see in the entry of the building of the tables of the illustrator N.C. Wyeth.

With the accesses

With the accesses of the tower, one finds:

• the Flatiron Building
• the Madison Square Garden
• Court of Appeal
• the New York Life Insurance Building

External bonds

• Photographs Metropolitan Life Insurance Company
• Photograph gallery

Internal bonds

• fifty higher buildings of New York
• Architecture in the United States