461 Fifth Avenue

461 Fifth Avenue at 40th street is a 28-story skyscraper located in the Grand Central Terminal area of the Midtown Manhattan section of New York City. The building was constructed in 1988 by the Mitsui Fudosan development group and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.HistoryIn the late nineteenth century, 461 Fifth Avenue was the residence of the Misses Furniss, who were known for hosting musicals and other social functions. They had acquired the address from a J. M. Bixby sometime after 1873.Sometime between 1911 and 1915, the private house was replaced with an eleven-story office building, which in 1945 was renovated to become a Lane Bryant store. By 1988 the Lane Bryant building was demolished.The current structure was built in 1988 by a Japanese-lead development group using a design by Raul de Armas of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Within a year of completion, the building had a 90% occupancy rate and had spurred a building boom in the Fifth Avenue area. By 1992 it was fully leased. The first floor shopping level was occupied by a Pier 1 Imports until 2007, when it was leased to BCBGMAXAZRIA.The building was sold to its current owner, SL Green Realty, in 2003 for $62.3 million.