The DuMont Building (also known as 515

Madison Avenue Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square (at 23rd Street) to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Str ...

) is a 532-foot (162 m) high, 42-story building located at 53rd Street and Madison Avenue in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

.Du Mont Building

Emporis Emporis GmbH was a real estate data mining company that was headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. The company collected data and photographs of buildings worldwide, which were published in an online database from 2000 to September 2022. On 12 Sept ...

. Accessed September 27, 2008. The building was built in

art deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...

and

neo-gothic Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

style by John H. Carpenter and designed by his brother, architect J.E.R. Carpenter who also designed Lincoln Tower as well as nearly 125 buildings along

Fifth Avenue Fifth Avenue is a major and prominent thoroughfare in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It stretches north from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to West 143rd Street in Harlem. It is one of the most expensive shopping ...

and

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Av ...

Broadcasting antenna

One of the building's most distinctive features is a broadcasting antenna that traces back to the building's role in the first television broadcasts of Allen B. DuMont’s experimental television station W2XWV in 1938. The station became commercially licensed as WABD—named for DuMont's initials—in 1944, WNEW-TV in 1958, and is now

WNYW WNYW (channel 5) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the Fox network. It is owned and operated by the network's Fox Television Stations division alongside Secaucus, New Jersey–licensed MyNetworkTV flagsh ...

. The station was one of the few television channels that continued to broadcast through

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. After the war, the network and WABD moved to bigger studios - first at the John Wanamaker's store at Ninth Street and

Broadway Broadway may refer to: Theatre * Broadway Theatre (disambiguation) * Broadway theatre, theatrical productions in professional theatres near Broadway, Manhattan, New York City, U.S. ** Broadway (Manhattan), the street **Broadway Theatre (53rd Stree ...

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

,Bergmann, Ted and Skutch, Ira (2002) ''The DuMont Television Network: What Happened?'' 21-22. Scarecrow Press: Lanham, Maryland. . then the

Adelphi Theatre The Adelphi Theatre is a West End theatre, located on the Strand in the City of Westminster, central London. The present building is the fourth on the site. The theatre has specialised in comedy and musical theatre, and today it is a receivin ...

, the Ambassador Theatre, and in 1954 to the Central Turn-Verein Opera House at 205 East 67th, which was renamed The DuMont Tele-Centre and today is the Fox Television Center, home of WABD's descendant,

. In June 1951, the WABD antenna was moved to the top of the

Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from " Empire State", the nickname of the ...

, consolidating all New York television stations at one location. In 1958,

WKCR-FM WKCR-FM (89.9 FM broadcasting, FM) is a Radio broadcasting, radio station licensed to New York City, New York, New York, United States. The station is owned by Columbia University and serves the New York metropolitan area. Founded in 1941, the s ...

, the radio station of

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, began transmitting from the former WABD antenna on the roof of the building, remaining there until 1977, when it became the first radio (or television) station to transmit from the antenna atop the World Trade Center, the move necessitated by the construction of other surrounding skyscrapers which started interfering with the station's signal. As of 2021, the antenna still stands atop the building.

Other events

In 1947, the building was the site of a protest by 700 picketers demanding that the United States end diplomatic relations with

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...

as a protest against the government of

Francisco Franco Francisco Franco Bahamonde (; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general who led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 193 ...

at the site of the Spanish consulate, located in the building. In 1962, the building was sold to Newmark & Co. which still owns and manages it.Staff
"515 Madison Leasehold Sold"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', July 20, 1962.

References

{{Midtown North, Manhattan DuMont Television Network Skyscraper office buildings in Manhattan Office buildings completed in 1931 Art Deco architecture in Manhattan Midtown Manhattan Madison Avenue