2 Columbus Circle

2 Columbus Circle (formerly the Gallery of Modern Art and the New York Cultural Center) is a nine-story building on the south side of Columbus Circle in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building fills a small city block bounded by 58th Street, Columbus Circle, Broadway, and Eighth Avenue. It was originally designed by Edward Durell Stone in the modernist style for A&P heir Huntington Hartford. In the 2000s, Brad Cloepfil redesigned 2 Columbus Circle for the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), which has occupied the building since 2008.

The exterior walls are made of reinforced concrete, which double as load-bearing walls that support the concrete floor slabs inside. The original facade largely consisted of white Vermont marble slabs, with small windows only at the corner of the building, as well as loggias at the base and top of the building. The current facade consists of terracotta panels separated by deep grooves, as well as large glass panels at the top. The lower stories of the building contain museum space, while the upper stories contain offices. There were originally several mezzanine levels, though these were removed in the 2000s. The original structure and the redesigned building have been the subject of extensive architectural commentary.

Hartford announced plans for the Gallery of Modern Art on the south side of Columbus Circle in June 1956, although construction did not start until 1960 due to various delays. The museum opened on March 21, 1964, and suffered financially for several years. Fairleigh Dickinson University took over the museum in 1969, renaming it the New York Cultural Center, which operated until 1975. Gulf and Western Industries bought 2 Columbus Circle in 1976 and donated it to the New York City government, but the building remained vacant for four years due to various issues. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau occupied 2 Columbus Circle from 1980 to 1998, when the city government offered up the building for redevelopment. Following a controversy over the building's proposed renovation in the early 2000s, MAD renovated the building from 2005 to 2008.

2 Columbus Circle is on the southern side of Columbus Circle in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building's land lot is irregular and covers 4,624 sq ft (429.6 m²). The lot occupies an entire city block bounded by Broadway to the east, 58th Street to the south, Eighth Avenue to the west, and Columbus Circle to the north. The site measures 74 feet (23 m) on Columbus Circle, 76 feet (23 m) on Broadway, 97 feet (30 m) on 58th Street, and 41 feet (12 m) on Eighth Avenue. The northern portion of the block is curved due to the curvature of Columbus Circle. The building occupies its entire lot.

The building is near Central Park to the northeast; 240 Central Park South, the Gainsborough Studios, and 220 Central Park South to the east; 5 Columbus Circle and Central Park Tower to the southeast; Central Park Place to the southwest; Deutsche Bank Center (formerly Time Warner Center) to the west; and Trump International Hotel and Tower to the north. Entrances to the New York City Subway's 59th Street–Columbus Circle station, served by the 1​, A, ​B, ​C, and ​D trains, are to the west, east, and south of the building.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Central Park South was developed as Manhattan's "Gold Coast", with many prestigious hotels and apartment buildings being erected on its route. The seven-story Grand Circle Hotel, designed by William H. Cauvet, stood at this address from 1874. Later called the Boulevard Hotel, it functioned as an office building by the late 1950s, with a Chevrolet advertisement on its roof.

The building was designed by Edward Durell Stone for businessman Huntington Hartford, an heir to the A&P supermarket chain. It was originally a nine-story modernist structure. Its exterior wall is made of reinforced concrete, which was used because it was more flexible to construct than a traditional steel structure. The building uses Mo-Sai slabs, which are made of exposed aggregate concrete. The exterior walls double as load-bearing walls, which support the concrete floor slabs inside.

The facade was largely made of slabs of white Vermont marble, with gray and gold veins; these slabs were originally attached to the concrete wall. Most of the marble panels had no window openings, but there were small circular windows at the corners and top story. The windowless sections of the facade measured 2 inches (51 mm) thick, while the sections with windows were 3 inches (76 mm) thick. To create the window openings, circular marble pieces were carved out of the slabs; these were reused in the lobby and on the sidewalk. There were over 1,000 windows in the original design, each arranged in groups of four. Stone designed the windows to be as small as possible, and the Times and Herald Tribune likened the windows to portholes. Each window had a bronze frame with a hinge that could swing inward. According to Stone, the windows were intended to suggest the rusticated blocks of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church in Paris. In Stone's original plans for the building, the facade would have been covered with vines or plantings.