Five Things You Didn't Know About the Prudential Tower

Photo by Pierre LaScott, via Flickr.

Insuring the City debuts this month about the building everyone loves to hate. Here, author Elihu Rubin shares five factoids we didn’t know.

1. Developers believed a building located outside downtown would project power and reliability — the right image for an insurance company.

2. The marathon’s finish line was moved two blocks — from in front of the Public Library to the Pru’s plaza — upon the tower’s completion in 1965. (It was shifted back 20 years later.)

3. The Pru and the Pike are inseparable, because developers required a road leading directly to their building, but refused to wait for the state to build a freeway.

4. The structure is sited on a former sprawling rail yard owned by New York Central Railroad (the Pike follows the old right of way).

5. A provision of the building’s 1998 sale keeps “Prudential” atop the tower forever.

Insuring the City, Yale University Press, $45.