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At a glance:

JPMorgan Chase unveils $3 billion, 60-story global headquarters.
The Norman Foster–designed tower replaces the Union Carbide Building.
Roughly 10,000 employees will work in the 2.5 million-square-foot building.
Gov. Kathy Hochul and CEO Jamie Dimon appeared at the ribbon-cutting event.

NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase unveiled its new 60-story headquarters to the public on Monday. It’s one of the first major office buildings to be constructed after the COVID-19 pandemic and one that will remake the New York City skyline for decades.

The bronze and steel 270 Park tower, which reportedly cost $3 billion, replaces the Union Carbide Building, which sat on the same city block between 47th and 48th streets and Park and Madison avenues for nearly 60 years until it was demolished from 2019 to 2021. JPMorgan Chase expects to house roughly 10,000 of its 24,000 New York-based employees in the new building; some started their first workday in the tower while the company held its ribbon-cutting ceremony.

“For 225 years, JPMorgan Chase has always been deeply rooted in New York City,” stated Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan Chase. “The opening of our new global headquarters is not only a significant investment in New York, but also testament to our commitment to our clients and employees worldwide.”

The completion of 270 Park is a major accomplishment for Dimon, who has been one of loudest advocates for workers to return to offices. The building was designed before the COVID-19 pandemic made remote work more common. JPMorgan Chase held meetings to consider halting work on the building to either redesign it or scale it back, but Dimon was insistent that work should continue as designed.

Both politicians and CEOs, particularly Wall Street CEOs, have been vocal about the need for companies to have offices. New York politicians must answer to owners of local businesses that have existed for decades and are frequented by workers for eating and drinking, grooming, and shopping.

“To have this investment at this extraordinary time is a testament to that New York audacity and ambition,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul, who attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony. It ended with Jay-Z and Alicia Keys performing “Empire State of Mind.”

At 1,388 feet, the new building designed by famed architect Norman Foster is taller than the Empire State Building’s roofline. 270 Park holds 2.5 million square feet and a block’s worth of public space. JPMorgan Chase also commissioned five new artworks for the building, adding to its already substantial art collection. The bank will house its trading operations in the building across eight floors. Several food and coffee vendors were contracted to create a city-within-a-building concept.

The building was a major architectural and engineering undertaking by Foster, the building’s lead architect, and Tishman Speyer, which handled engineering and construction. The old Union Carbide Building had to be systematically demolished, mostly during the pandemic. Construction was complicated by the site’s location above the rails of the Metro-North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road that run underneath Park Avenue into Grand Central Terminal.

For years, JPMorgan Chase has worked out of several buildings around Grand Central Terminal as a result of the bank’s growth and acquisitions over the years.

Corporate execs and investment bankers still use 383 Madison Avenue, the former headquarters of Bear Stearns, and 277 Park Avenue, which housed Chemical Bank, also a predecessor of the current JPMorgan Chase. The company started using the Union Carbide Building in the mid-1990s but always struggled to fit all its operations inside. The building was designed to house 3,000 employees when it was constructed in the 1960s, and JPMorgan Chase housed more than 6,000 there within a few short years of moving in.

With 270 Park finished, the bank says it will now start a renovation of 383 Madison Avenue. Dimon said the bank has purchased a few other adjacent properties near 270 Park to centralize its operations around its new headquarters for the long term.
The exterior of JPMorgan Chase’s new headquarters at 270 Park Avenue in New York is shown on Tuesday. (Ken Sweet/The Associated Press)