Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Building, Madison Avenue

Joseph Fairchild Knapp, Metropolitan Life's president, hired architect Napoleon LeBrun (1821-1901) to design a seven-story Italian Renaissance office building on 23rd Street between Madison Avenue and Fourth Avenue. Work commenced in May 1890 with the demolition of five brownstone mansions at 23rd Street and Madison Avenue. After Knapp died in 1891, the building was expanded to 11 stories. The company occupied the second through fifth floors for its own use in 1893. Later expanded to the sixth and ninth stories, while filling the ground-story storefront spaces. The 11-story building was completed in stages through 1905.

Here the text published in the King's Handbook of New York City, 1892, about the company and its building on Madison Avenue:

«The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, the leading industrial life-insurance company in America, issues life-insurance policies on the ordinary plans, with special advantages that have always been praised ; but its originality is in its Industrial system. This is utility itself ; family insurance, accessible to everybody ; indemnity for loss of life of all persons, of both sexes, of all ages, from two years to seventy years ; endowment policies that the least disposed to thrift may buy ; the practical application of a poetic dream of insurance, that is, for those who being the least able to pay for it are most in need of it. There are other industrial companies, but the Metropolitan eclipses them all. It has assets exceeding $15,000,000, a net capital and surplus over all liabilities, actual and contingent, including the reinsurance fund and special reserve, amounting to $3,090,869. It has insured 2,503,000 persons, a larger number than the total number insured by all the other life-insurance companies (excepting industrial) of the United States combined. Its agents make a weekly call for premiums, the average amount of which is ten cents on every policy-holder. Its death-claims, which are paid immediately after notice of death is received, are 150 a day in number, and $10 a minute every minute of the year in amount. The list of persons in its service contains 7,000 names. And these figures are increasing. They gained over 1890 in 1891, in premium receipts, $1,439,446; in interest, $128,503 ; in total income, $1,559,878; in assets, $2,845,775. The management is intelligent, careful, economical, devoted to the interests of the policyholders. The officers are : John R. Hegeman, President ; Haley Fiske, Vice-President ; George H. Gaston, Second Vice-President and Secretary ; J. J. Thompson, Cashier and Assistant Secretary ; James M. Craig, Actuary ; Hon. Stewart L. Woodford, Counsel; and Thomas H. Willard, M. D., Chief Medical Examiner. The company was organized in 1866, and has occupied since 1876 its own large white-marble building in Park Place, at the southwest corner of Church Street. It will soon remove to a marble business palace. Its cost is nearly $3,000,000; and its height is ten stories. Situated on Madison Square, at the northeast corner of 23d Street and Madison Avenue, it has 125 feet of width on the avenue and 145 on the street. Its style is Early Italian Renaissance, in purely white marble, beautifully carved. The main entrance is on Madison Avenue, by a corridor 18 feet in width, and lined with marbles beautifully decorated, to an interior court 40 feet square, covered by a stained glass dome, paved in mosaic, 75 feet in height, lined with delicately decorated marble and onyx ; having in its centre a grand bronze stairway leading to the second story. The Board room, 28 feet in height, and the rooms of the officers are trimmed in wood-work of San-Domingo mahogany. The main office is 30 feet in height, and surrounded at the mezzanine floor with a tall and graceful gallery. All the offices are lit by windows facing on the street, the square or the court. There are four elevators. All the machinery, heating apparatus and dynamos are in duplicate. The architects are Napoleon LeBrun & Sons, and the builder is Jeremiah T. Smith. The building is a contribution to the architecture of the century for which the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company has the gratitude of all art-lovers. It covers one of the most conspicuous sites in the city, and its height makes it clearly visible across the whole of Madison Square, while its grandeur makes it a superb ornament to the lovely park which it faces. In course of time, many notable buildings are likely to border Madison Square, but it is not likely that any of them will surpass the Metropolitan. The peculiar province of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, providing insurance as it does mainly for the working or poorer classes of people, makes it an exceptionally praiseworthy institution ; while its solidity and magnitude places it as unexceptionally trustworthy. Its system of small weekly payments gives the opportunity to every man, however moderate his income, to provide for his family in the event of his death.