[NYguy]

From the City Review...
http://www.thecityreview.com/citicorp.html

A better look at the base and church...










Quote from the review...

The new St. Peter's church building is shaped abstractly like two hands held together in prayer, with large vertical windows offering passersby glimpses into its interior and the Erol Beker Chapel that contains a large sculptural wall by Louise Nevelson. The church was well known for its jazz programs under the Rev. Ralph E. Peterson, and those programs have continued after its rebuilding.

The gray granite-clad church structure's sharply angled form echoes the angularity of the Citicorp Center roofline. At first glance, the form and texture of the church appears a bit ungainly and perhaps it might have been more attractive if it had been clad in the same material as the tower, or even better, a chrome-colored surface. While it was understandable that the church wanted to have its own identity separate from the tower, it is a little lamentable that its unpolished granite facade was not polished or more similar, and better, than the tower's. As it is, the church's facade seems a little like a poor relation.Nonetheless, the contrapuntal concept is marvelous and works well.

The bank had hoped that it could convince the city to extend the special zoning district it had created for much of midtown Fifth Avenue to its new site so that it could build a bigger building by including apartments at the top. The angled roofline was originally conceived to be composed of setback penthouses facing south for maximum exposure. The city, however, did not go along with such suggestions, but the striking form took on a design force of its own. For a long time, however, the slant was planned to go down from the top to the west to relate to the angled top of the Chrysler Building as viewed from north on Lexington Avenue.

When the apartment component of the mixed-use project was dropped, however, the bank considered its present configuration, facing south, to maximize its potential for using solar collectors to help lower the building's energy costs. That technology, however, was not well enough advanced and the plan for the collectors was dropped, but the form was kept.