JPMorgan Chase unveils new 60-story headquarters, reshaping New York City's skyline

NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase unveiled its new 60-story headquarters to the public on Monday, one of the first major office buildings to be constructed after the COVID-19 pandemic and one that will remake the New York City skyline for decades.

The bronze and steel tower at 270 Park, which reportedly cost $3 billion, replaced the Union Carbide Building, which sat on a full city block between 47th and 48th Street and Park Avenue and Madison Avenue for nearly 60 years. JPMorgan expects to house roughly 10,000 of its 24,000 New York-based employees in the new building, with some employees starting their first workday at the tower at the same time as the company holds its ribbon cutting ceremony.

“For 225 years, JPMorgan Chase has always been deeply rooted in New York City. The opening of our new global headquarters is not only a significant investment in New York, but also testament to our commitment to our clients and employees worldwide,” said Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan, in a statement.

The completion of the new 270 Park is a major accomplishment for Dimon, who has been one of loudest voices calling for employees to report to an office for work. The building was designed before the COVID-19 pandemic made remote work more common. The bank held meetings to consider halting work on the building to either redesign it or scale it back, but Dimon was insistent that work should continue as designed.

Both politicians and CEOs, particularly Wall Street CEOs, have been vocal about the need for companies to have offices. New York politicians must answer to local businesses that have existed for decades and are used by workers to eat, groom, shop and drink at.

“To have this investment at this extraordinary time is a testament to that New York audacity and ambition,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul, who attended as part of the ribbon cutting ceremony. The ceremony ended with the playing of “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keyes.

At 1,388 feet, the new building designed by famed architect Norman Foster, is taller than the Empire State Building’s roofline and is now the fourth-largest building in Manhattan. The building contains 2.5 million square feet and a block’s worth of public space. The bank also commissioned five new artworks for the building, adding to the bank’s already substantial art collection. The bank will house its trading operations in the building across eight floors, and has contracted out several food and coffee vendors to create a city-within-a-building concept.

The building was a major engineering and architectural undertaking by Foster, the building’s lead architect and Tishman Speyer, who handled construction and engineering. The old Union Carbide building had to be systematically demolished over a period of two years, most of that demolition happening during the pandemic. Construction was complicated by the fact the site sits above the rails of the Metro North Railroad and the Long Island Railroad that run underneath Park Avenue into Grand Central Terminal.

For years, JPMorgan has worked out of several buildings around Grand Central Terminal, a result of the bank’s growth and acquisitions over the years.

Corporate execs and investment bankers still use 383 Madison Ave, the former headquarters of Bear Stearns, and 277 Park, which housed Chemical Bank, also a predecessor of the current JPMorgan Chase. Parts of JPMorgan started using the Union Carbide Building in the mid-1990s, but the bank always struggled to fit all its operations in the building. The building was designed to house 3,000 employees when it was built in the 1960s, and JPMorgan housed more than 6,000 there within a few short years of moving in.

With 270 Park finished, the bank says it will now start a renovation of 383 Madison. Dimon said the bank has purchased a few other adjacent properties near 270 Park to centralize its operations around its new headquarters for the long term.

The exterior of JPMorgan Chase's new headquarters at 270 Park Avenue in New York is shown on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Ken Sweet)

The exterior of JPMorgan Chase's new headquarters at 270 Park Avenue in New York is shown on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Ken Sweet)

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, fourth from left, prepares to cut the ribbon on a new JPMorgan Chase building during a ceremony in New York, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. Also holding the ribbon, from left to right: Jerry Speyer, Rob Speyer, NY Governor Kathy Hochul, Dimon, Norman Foster, Deepak Chopra and David Arena. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon speaks during a ribbon cutting ceremony in New York, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

JPMorgan Chase employees and supporters listen to speeches in the lobby of the new building during a ribbon cutting ceremony in New York, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, fourth from left, cuts the ribbon on a new JPMorgan Chase building during a ceremony in New York, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. Also holding the ribbon, from left to right: Jerry Speyer, Rob Speyer, NY Governor Kathy Hochul, Dimon, Norman Foster, Deepak Chopra and David Arena. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

FILE - Chase Bank ATMs are shown, Thursday, March 25, 2021, in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House has issued a warning to Democrats over their planned probes into the Trump administration, going as far as claiming that such investigations — a standard oversight function of Congress — may amount to “blatant criminality.”

White House counsel Will Scharf issued the warning in a letter dated Monday to Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

Garcia most likely would chair the powerful panel in the new Democratic-controlled Congress that is seated in January. Garcia warned Trump officials to “lawyer up” as his party was on the way to stunning victories in last week's midterm election.

In response, Scharf wrote that “threats to executive branch officials designed to deter them from public service, or process designed merely to abuse or instill fear in the recipient may cross the line into blatant criminality." The letter’s existence was first reported by Punchbowl News.

It's just the latest shot across the bow as the White House prepares to square off against newly empowered Democrats in the House and Senate next year, a showdown with major implications for congressional authority and the balance of power between the branches of government.

Outside the Capitol on Wednesday, Garcia told reporters that “Donald Trump is clearly hiding something” and that Democrats “are not going to be threatened or intimidated.”

“The truth is that he needs to understand that Congress is a coequal branch of government,” Garcia said.

He doubled down on his “lawyer up” post after the election, saying the White House was “thin-skinned” and couldn't “take any sort of heat.”

“If you have abused the American public, you should lawyer up," Garcia said. “If you're a corporate CEO and you're ripping off the American people, you should lawyer up.”

Democrats are preparing a vast oversight agenda to look at how Trump and his family have become wealthier since he returned to office. The Republican president and his White House have long denied any wrongdoing.

Garcia also wants to look at the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. Other targets include Trump’s White House ballroom and other construction projects, as well as the Trump family’s role in mineral deals and Trump’s crypto dealings with special envoy Steve Witkoff.

Kentucky Republican James Comer, the current chair of the Oversight Committee who conducted a wide-ranging investigation of former President Joe Biden and his family, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he had not yet read the letter from the White House, but stressed that the panel is "very independent.”

“Regardless of who is in the White House, there's always going to be a strong desire for the Oversight Committee to be a check and balance on the executive branch, regardless of the political scenario," Comer said.

He said he thought Garcia's “lawyer up” comments were in “bad taste” but Democrats "won the election and it's going to be his committee. So if he gets out of line, I would assume that his members will try to rein him in.”

Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a CNN interview that aired Sunday that “there could be” a crime to investigate if rhetoric from Democrats turned threatening. He appeared to strike a more conciliatory tone during an appearance in Missouri this week, saying “Congress has oversight authority. It always has, it always will. The Department of Justice, the federal government, works with Congress to address questions they have — whether it’s through subpoenas or letters — so we’re not going to stop working with Congress.”

“Nothing I’ve said this weekend, or in the past, should suggest otherwise,” he added.

Still, Justice Department officials elsewhere were pushing back. Aaron Reitz, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Texas, wrote to Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal on Wednesday, telling him to preserve all records relevant to his investigations.

Blumenthal is poised to chair a powerful Senate investigative committee in January. Reitz called Blumenthal’s efforts an “intent to deprive citizens of their core constitutional rights,” pointing to his October letter to people who donated to the new White House ballroom.

In response, Blumenthal said he “will not be intimidated.”

“The Trump administration is so afraid of transparency and oversight that they are weaponizing the Department of Justice to baselessly target Congress in direct violation of the Constitution," he said in a statement.

Outgoing Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a Trump critic, said he hopes Democrats don't squander their new powers on “stupid things.”

“I hope they have real hearings about real things, not another Russia-gate,” he said, referring to a previous congressional inquiry into ties between Trump's first presidential campaign in 2016 and Russia. Trump repeatedly denounced that investigation as a “hoax.”

“I think there is some real corruption there around the fringes,” Massie said about Trump and some of those around the president. Massie lost his primary election to a Trump-backed GOP challenger.

Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Calif., who is expected to be the next House Ethics Committee chairman, said he would not back down from any investigations because of warnings from the White House.

“If they're trying to intimidate, at least for me, it’s not going to get me,” said DeSaulnier, who was a Republican before he switched to the Democratic Party in 2000. “I don’t work for a mafia, a mob organization.”

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker and AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.

FILE - Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, speaks to reporters at the Capitol in Washington on Sept. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks outside of the Capitol about articles of impeachment he introduced against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

The U.S. Capitol is photographed Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump speaks in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

New members of the 120th Congress gather for the first day of new member orientation at the Capitol, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)

Attorney General Todd Blanche stand in the door of Air Force One was Marine One lands with President Donald Trump aboard, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Friday, Oct. 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen))

President Donald Trump, followed by Dana White, UFC president and CEO, arrives to speak in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)