Bank of America Tower Open for Business

Last week I found myself over at Bryant Park on the bottom lip of Midtown Manhattan and so decided to check out the brand new (it officially opened last Thursday) Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park.

The building, New York City's second tallest, has been hailed as a jolly green giant, with recyclable and sustainable everything, and is, I admit, a rather imposing and impressive structure when standing at its entrance on the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue and looking up into the heavens-leading metal and glass (as you can sort of see from my very amateurish cell phone at left).

Aside from its height and asymmetrical structural design, what I noticed right away was the Bank of America name on the tower—a major contrast to the no-named recently-opened Goldman Sachs headquarters in Lower Manhattan at 200 West Street.

At a glance it might seem as if the BofA C-suite feels more comfortable with and wants to take a higher public profile than their counterparts over at Goldman, but slapping the old business name on the shingle simply underscores that BofA is very much in the business of dealing with the everyday Joe consumer banking client, whereas Lloyd and gang simply do not do business with (or much less care about) the likes of every Thomas, Richard and Harold who might be passing the tower on their way to the park for lunch, or to secure a spot to watch one of Bryant Park's summer evening movies (speaking of which, if you can only make three films in the park's series this summer, they should be "The French Connection," "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" and, perhaps the scariest New York-centric film of all time, "Rosemary's Baby.")

Remember: get there early, while blanket-space supplies lasts.