I guess I am in both camps. I actually like the building a lot, just not where it was plopped.
Now that I think about, it’s around the same height of its tombstone looking brother near Penn Station - 1 Penn Plaza. I wouldn’t mind it this tower sat there instead.
I think Metlife is a nice building. It is very different from any other building. It has a peculiar shape, being long in one direction and slim at the same time. It’s not a marvel of architecture, but it’s something different that only exists in New York.
MetLife is a modernist redesign of 30 Rockefeller Center and part of an ongoing study of the slab as skyscraper form that continued with 1 Penn Plaza and now likely Chase’s 270 Park Ave.
James Ruderman Engineers designed the structure of both MetLife and 1 Penn as well as pseudo-slabs like the W.R. Grace and GM buildings.
Speaking of Marvel, they replace Metlife Building with Avengers/Stark Tower. Off topic but you learn something new everyday
To me, the MetLife building is like pug dogs and hairless cats: so ugly it becomes cool. It’s not mundanely ugly like the Verizon building on Pearl street. You see the Verizon building, think “Wow, that’s an ugly building”, and then you forget about it. MetLife, on the other hand, sticks with you. It’s provocatively ugly. There’s nothing quite like seeing that 800 foot slab looming over Park Avenue.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3VZLPIllG4/?igshid=ozmc0fefmqk9
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3UjORthiO0/?igshid=1x0pgllduj3jf
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3R6TfbirSD/?igshid=10cf6vvuo37xo
I don’t know how you do it. But you always find the BEST pictures 
You just gotta scatter all over Instagram, you should hit some hashtags or specific locations and you can find images that seem “lost”
When I was a teenager, I bought the coffee table book “Skyscrapers” by Judith Dupre, the version at the time (1996/7) was this one:
And I remember the picture of the Metlife/Pan Am Bldg was pretty darn awesome, can’t find it online! But almost 60 years on, opinions of the building have not budged!
To be honest, if the Metlife Building wasn’t built we probably wouldn’t even have One Vanderbilt. MetLife Building took a daring step for it’s time
Yea, but just like the Star Wars Prequels, they weren’t admired at first. Now it has way more attention
Some more from the other day and today:
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3UaPEblg4j/?igshid=bea94ee2q5ky
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3WvvV5px_O/?igshid=wn70skt94vwl
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3QY5XbFBOG/?igshid=2xnodk6hzp36
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3XEMspA5DO/?igshid=1esfbin980k0s
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3aV_Tan7k_/?igshid=1cdyixgysqrpf
Holy crap!! I love this guys shots
https://www.instagram.com/p/B3chXBNH-dX/?igshid=hqm746mtx54z
