425 Park Avenue developers honored with The Skyscraper Museum's 2023 Making New York History Award

The Skyscraper Museum’s 2023 Making New York History Award was recently presented to David Levinson, CEO and Chairman of L&L Holding Company, in recognition of their effort to realize the Foster + Partners-designed 425 Park Avenue, the first new full-block office development in Midtown’s Park District in 50 years. 

During a special ceremony held in the building’s cathedral-like 26th-floor Diagrid Club event space, a triple-height venue that includes one of two restaurants, a Yayoi Kusama commission, and curated meditation spaces from the David Lynch Foundation, Levinson told the audience the following: 

“To develop and build a tower as bold and ambitious as 425 Park Avenue requires the ingenuity and immense talent of countless individuals. I am honored to receive this award, which I share with the incredible team we have assembled at L&L Holding, along with all of the amazing architects, engineers, contractors and other professionals who helped turn our collective vision for 425 Park — and for TSX Broadway, Terminal Warehouse, 390 Madison and many others — into reality. I thank Carol Willis and the entire board of the Skyscraper Museum for their enduring support of great architecture and New York City.”

The museum’s founder, Carol Willis, then described Levinson as “an urban alchemist whose diverse urban reinventions, 425 Park Avenue, TSX Broadway, and Terminal Warehouse, renew our city for the 21st century.” 

(Willis was herself also the recipient of the 2023 Lynn S. Beedle Lifetime Achievement Award earlier this year by The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.)

Inaugurated in October of 2022, 425 Park Avenue is one of a new generation of office towers that aims to balance employees’ wellness with flexible layouts and highly sustainable outcomes, pushing the typology into the century’s third decade as a kind of standard-bearer for the newfound revolution in post-pandemic workplace design.

Norman Foster had said at the time of its opening: “425 Park Avenue celebrates its historic context and the restrained elegance of its landmark neighbours, while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of workplace design and reflecting the contemporary spirit of the city.”

The design was one of a record-breaking field of CTBUH 2023 Award of Excellence winners. Kohn Pedersen Fox president and museum board chair, James von Klemperer, and past chair of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, Meenakshi Srinivasan, were also at the ceremony.