Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower Review

When it was added in 1909, the 700-foot tower resembling the campanile of St. Mark's in Venice made this 1893 building the world's tallest; it was surpassed in height a few years later (by the Woolworth Building)It was stripped of much of its classical details during renovations in the early 1960s, but it remains a prominent feature of the Midtown skyline today. The clock's four faces are each three stories high, and their minute hands weigh half a ton each. A bench across the street in Madison Square Park is the perfect place to appreciate this National Historic building with its lighted tower and quarter-hourly chimes.