From Midtown’s crowded sidewalks, 270 Park Avenue almost seems to float above the street. Massive steel columns frame Park Avenue below before the tower lifts sharply upward—60 stories of glass and bronze rising nearly a quarter mile into the sky. At night, a dramatic crown of illuminated structural beams glows at the top of the building, creating a lantern-like effect that has quickly become the tower’s most recognizable feature.

At 1,388 feet tall—the sixth-tallest building in New York City—the new global headquarters of JPMorganChase began welcoming employees in October 2025. The roughly $3 billion project spans 2.5 million square feet and was designed to house about 10,000 employees in what the bank calls a next-generation workplace.

Inside, the scale is just as dramatic: vast trading floors, multiple cafés and dining spaces, wellness facilities, and expansive office floors designed to maximize natural light. But long before bankers and analysts moved in, dozens of contractors and hundreds of skilled carpenters were already inside the structure, bringing it to life.

At the peak of construction, nearly 1,000 union carpenters were working on the project at once—framing walls, installing ceilings, laying flooring systems, and shaping the intricate millwork that gives the tower its signature look.

For them, this wasn’t just another job site.

“Building New York City means leaving behind a legacy,” said David Caraballoso, president of the New York City District Council of Carpenters. “You get to leave an impression on the skyline that will be here long after we’re gone.”

The ambition behind 270 Park Avenue reflects a larger shift underway across New York’s office market.

In the years after the pandemic, many companies discovered that bringing workers back to the office required more than simply reopening old buildings. If people were going to commute again, the workplace itself had to be somewhere they wanted to be.

That demand has accelerated the rise of Class A office buildings—spaces with better design, natural light, modern amenities, and carefully crafted interiors. Projects like 270 Park Avenue are built with that goal in mind.

“Lately, clients are being far more specific about what they want,” said David T. Meberg, President and CEO of Consolidated Flooring, who worked on 270 Park Avenue. “On this project, everything down to the wood selection had to meet exact visual standards.”

The tower is New York City’s largest all-electric skyscraper, designed to operate at net-zero operational emissions and powered by renewable hydroelectric energy.

It replaces JPMorgan’s previous headquarters on the same site and was designed to be what architects bill as a “workplace of the future,” combining sustainability, technology, and amenities intended to support collaboration and employee well-being.

But the look and feel of a building like this doesn’t come from architecture alone. It depends on the skilled contractors and tradespeople who turn design plans into real spaces.

On a project like 270 Park Avenue, every detail requires close attention and care. “Elements like the wood flooring installation required a tremendous amount of precision,” Meberg said. “Everything had to be laid out over long distances so it would land perfectly at each transition point.”

On large commercial developments, as much as 70 percent of the visible interior work involves carpentry trades—everything from walls and ceilings to flooring, millwork, and finishing details.

At 270 Park Avenue, that necessitated carpenters across multiple specialties. Many of the materials used in modern office towers require certified installers and precise workmanship. Millworkers shape materials down to fractions of an inch. Flooring and ceiling systems demand specialized training.

For construction managers, the project began long before interior work started. “This is an incredibly complex build,” said John Kovacs, COO of New York Region at AECOM Tishman. “You’re talking about a supertall, steel-heavy structure being built over active train tracks, in one of the busiest parts of Manhattan.”

Even getting materials to the site required extraordinary coordination. “We were bringing in trucks that were essentially the length of a city block, just to transport steel and major components,” Kovacs said. “There’s no room for error on a job like this.”

That level of complexity requires tight coordination. “All of the trades have to be working together at a very high level,” Kovacs said. “That’s what allows a project like this to come together successfully.” 

Those combined skills are what give a building its sense of quality.

“When you walk through 270 Park, you can see the level of craftsmanship that went into it,” Caraballoso said.

As New York adapts to a changing workplace landscape, projects like 270 Park Avenue signal where the city is headed.

Companies are investing in a new generation of offices designed to be healthier, greener, and more appealing places to work.

Large-scale commercial towers—particularly Class A office buildings—often rely on union contractors and trades because of the extensive coordination, specialized skills, and safety requirements.

“All of our installers are trained and certified through union programs, and that training is ongoing,” Meberg said. “When a client hires a union contractor, they know exactly what level of skill they’re getting.” 

Earlier this year, state officials announced another massive corporate project: American Express will build a new global headquarters at 2 World Trade Center, a roughly 2-million-square-foot tower spanning 55 floors in Lower Manhattan.

The project—expected to break ground soon and complete the final office tower at the World Trade Center campus—will create thousands of union construction jobs while signaling continued corporate investment in New York City’s future.

For contractors, the impact of 270 Park extends beyond a single building. “This project helped kickstart the market again,” Meberg said. “It brought momentum back to commercial construction in New York.”

From street level, 270 Park Avenue is another sleek addition to the city skyline. Inside, its walls, floors, and ceilings are the fingerprints of dozens of contractors and hundreds of union carpenters who helped bring it to life.

“The bank with the biggest market cap in the world, JPMorganChase, made a choice to have union carpenters and contractors build its global headquarters and the client is pleased with the results,” said Paul Fernandes, executive director of the Carpenter Contractor Alliance of Metropolitan New York. “That’s a better stamp of approval for what union carpenters and contractors bring to projects than anything else we could say.”