Equitable Center West / AXA Equitable Center — 787 Seventh Avenue
Joseph's 1983 date matches the year Equitable formally approved its new Seventh Avenue tower.
7th Avenue facade of Axa Equitable Center in Manhattan, New York, seen in August 2021. Photographed in 2021; a current view, not a construction-period photograph.
Current view · 2021 · Photo: Epicgenius · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source
Why this project matters
- Project identity
- Verified
- Kelly connection
- Family source
- Masonry scope
- Strong
Rita’s list
Transcription: Equitable Tower West — 1983
Recorded by Rita Bartscherer · Bartscherer family record
KM-168
2 of two
“Equitable Tower West — 1983”
Equitable Center West opened in 1986 after a difficult, space-constrained Midtown construction campaign.
Equitable Center West began with a 1983 board approval and site assembly, before Edward Larrabee Barnes's tower opened later in the decade. Turner managed construction, and the building used roughly 300,000 square feet of stone while creating a public galleria filled with art. It also became home to Le Bernardin. Rita's early date catches the project when demolition, planning and procurement were already real work—even though the finished tower was still years away.
Research pass v1.1 — Verified. | v3.6.12 photo selected and staged: KM-168_Travelers_Financial_Center_1987_PA.jpg
What Kelly did here
Family source
Strong
Likely CMU/block shafts, service cores, fire-rated partitions and masonry backup. The exterior's extensive stone cladding should be treated as a separate specialty-stone/cladding package unless period subcontract records show Kelly involvement.
This scope is recorded as strong, not documented. It is a disciplined reading of the building and the trade practice of the period, not a contract-level record of Kelly’s work.
The construction team
- 01Architect
Edward Larrabee Barnes Associates
- 02GC / construction manager
Turner Construction Company
What happened to it
Still standing
Sources
4 citedOpen →
- 01
- 02commonwealth-partners.com
787 seventh avenue
- 03commons.wikimedia.org
File:Axa Equitable Center Aug 2021 24.jpg
- 04usmodernist.org
PA 1987 03
- Epicgenius · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · 2021-08-26
7th Avenue facade of Axa Equitable Center in Manhattan, New York, seen in August 2021. Photographed in 2021; a current view, not a construction-period photograph.
Know something about this project?
Share a correction, memory, photograph, source or connection to this project. Every submission is reviewed before anything is published.
Elsewhere in the archive
IBM Building — 590 Madison Avenue
Family list: “IBM Office Building”
Manhattan, New York
Travelers Financial Center
Family list: “Travelers Financial Center, Hempstead”
Hempstead, New York
The Galleria at White Plains
Family list: “Galleria - White Plains”
White Plains, New York