Building officials in New York City have approved a plan to demolish a 707 ft tall building that is home to JPMorgan Chase.

Howard I. Shapiro & Associates will handle the demolition work to make room for the bank's new 70-story, 1,400 ft tall headquarters.

The JPMorgan Chase headquarters building at 270 Park Avenue is slated for demolition. Source: official-ly cool / CC BY-SA 3.0Located at 270 Park Avenue, a few blocks north of Grand Central Station, the 2.4 million square foot building was designed by Natalie de Blois for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) architects. For years, the building ranked as one of the tallest designed by a woman.

Some of her most notable works include the Pepsi Building and the landmark Lever House in New York City, the Equitable Building in Chicago, portions of the Ford World Headquarters in Michigan and the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company headquarters.

Built over railroad tracks leading out of Grand Central Terminal, the building to be demolished was unlike its neighbors on Park Avenue when it opened. Not only was it set back in a plaza, but it also stood out for its innovative structural engineering design, which responded to the constraints of the site.

According to SOM, the tower could have no basement under most of its bulk, and its column-footings had to be poured between active rail tracks. To counteract train vibrations — more than 500 trains passed by each day — all of its columns were set on vibration pads.

The tower's outer skin consisted of around 11 acres of glass, stainless steel mullions and black sandwich panels. Inside, the ceiling system integrated lighting, air-conditioning and connections for movable partitions, a cutting-edge feature at the time.

Union Carbide was the building's lead tenant when it opened in 1960. Eventually, some 4,000 Carbide employees worked there. In 1978, the structure was sold to Manufacturers Hanover Trust for $110 million. A string of mergers led to JPMorgan Chase's occupancy as lead tenant.

Evening view of the Park Avenue elevation. Source: official-ly cool / CC BY-SA 3.0In February 2018, the bank announced plans to tear down the building, making it the tallest voluntarily demolished building in the world. It would rank as the third-tallest ever to be destroyed, after the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, which fell after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Demolition is expected to begin in early 2019 and will take around a year to complete. The new building is slated to open in 2024. The new tower will accommodate 15,000 employees. The current building houses 6,000 employees in a space with capacity for roughly 3,500.

Tishman Construction Corp. will be project construction manager on the new tower. In October 2018, British architectural firm Foster + Partners was tapped to design the new building.