image via Engadget
One Times Square is a twenty-five story skyscraper located in the middle of Manhattan, just south of the actual Times Square. Originally built in 1904 as the New York Times headquarters, these days the building is raking in $23 million a year in revenue based on rent figures. Which is astonishing considering how many tenants the building has: zero.
Ok, well technically one. It's a Walgreens located on the ground floor, but aside from them, the building is entirely empty and vacant on the inside.
images via NewYorker
Unless ghosts and graffiti count.
All of the profit generated by the building is created from the enormous billboards that are attached to the facade of the building. No tenant has occupied anything above the ground floors since 1996, two years after the financial firm Lehman brothers bought the building for a bargain price of $27 million.
Recognizing its true value as a large advertising platform rather than a place of offices, they grafted large screens directly onto the face of the building in order to turn it from a place of business into the world's most watched billboard.
image via UntappedCities
The original facade is still visible when looked at from directly above.
When they sold the building in 1997, they sold it for a 300% profit off their purchasing price to another firm, Jamestown. So how much is the building worth now? Try $495 million dollars. The sudden spike is in large part due to the rising costs of the billboards, which now rent for between $1 million and $2.4 million every year.
So just remember on December 31st of every year, when you are watching the ball drop in New York City's Times Square signifying the new year, it's falling onto a building full of nothing but empty halls and abandoned office space.
image via SignIndustry
Making it just as full of character as the actual Times Square.
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