Finance History | MetLife — The Campanile at 1 Madison Avenue
· 1909-1
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Finance History | MetLife — The Campanile at 1 Madison Avenue
kevin
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company opened under that name on 24 March 1868.
Its predecessor, National Union Life and Limb, had been formed in 1863 to write war-risk policies for Civil War soldiers and sailors.
By 1893 the company occupied an eleven-storey marble block on Madison Square.
In 1907 president John R. Hegeman told Napoleon LeBrun and Sons to raise a campanile on the corner of Madison Avenue and 24th Street.
The model was the bell tower of St Mark's in Venice. The finished tower reached 700 feet.
From 1909 until the Woolworth Building opened in 1913 it was the tallest building in the world.
Four clock faces, each more than 26 feet across, still look over Madison Square. A lantern at the crown was advertised as the light that never failed.
The company later moved its main offices to 200 Park Avenue. The tower was stripped of much of its ornament in a 1960s recladding, then restored in part when it became a hotel.
The pin is the campanile. That is the building MetLife put up when it wanted the skyline to carry the firm's name.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, CC BY-SA 3.0
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