Take a look inside Deutsche Bank's brand-new NYC office - trading floors with sweeping Central Park views and amenities like a pool table and a bar
Samantha Stokes,Crystal Cox
- Deutsche Bank opened its new NYC office in September and started calling people back to the office.
- The space has three trading floors with park views, each of which can hold more than 500 traders.
Deutsche Bank just opened a US headquarters next to New York City's Columbus Circle. That means staffers returning to the office - some for the first time since the pandemic started - are being welcomed back by a slew of new amenities, from a pool table to panoramic views of Central Park. Here's a sneak peek of Insider's exclusive tour of the space, formerly known as the Time Warner Center.
Deutsche Bank had been downtown at 60 Wall St. since 2001 after its previous office was damaged during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The bank announced plans to move uptown in May 2018.
The 1 million-square-foot space was under construction during much of the pandemic as most of the bank's NYC staff worked remotely.
The building, formerly known as the Time Warner Center, was renamed Deutsche Bank Center in May. Deutsche Bank's new offices were previously home to the cable network CNN, which relocated to Hudson Yards in 2019.
Deutsche Bank's office is now across from Columbus Circle in the same building as Jazz at Lincoln Center. The 10th-floor common area has floor-to-ceiling windows that offer a sweeping view of Central Park.
Deutsche Bank occupies 22 floors across Deutsche Bank Center's two towers. The building is also home to a mall, a Whole Foods, the Mandarin Oriental hotel, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and condominiums in both towers.
The first employees started coming to the office on September 27, and there are about 1,000 employees regularly commuting to work. By the middle of the first quarter of 2022, all 5,000 New York employees will relocate to Deutsche Bank Center.
Deutsche Bank has built three trading floors, two of which can each hold 540 traders, and one of which can house more than 500 traders. One of the trading floors was Anderson Cooper's television studio.
Deutsche Bank now has three trading floors spread across five stories. Two of Deutsche Bank's trading floors are two stories tall because they were once home to CNN's television studios for stars like Cooper.
The bank kept the layout — including the mezzanine that once housed CNN executive offices overlooking the studios — but otherwise retrofitted the space with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park. It's an upgrade from Deutsche Bank traders' previous digs in the basement of 60 Wall St.
Each trading desk has been outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment. And, yes, the plants are real.
Each trading desk has a 43-inch monitor and other high-end technology. Nearby are conference rooms, private offices, a coffee bar, a kitchen, grab-and-go snack areas, lactation rooms, and collaborative-work areas.
The trading floors are still under construction, so Deutsche Bank's traders continue to work out of 60 Wall St. The bank's investment-banking division, which includes the traders, was the only Deutsche Bank unit to return to the firm's old offices at the beginning of September.
There's not an official date for when the traders will move into the new office.
Offices on the trading floor are designed for both in-person and hybrid work.
Each trading-floor office has a desk, a computer, and a phone for solo work. But the spaces are modular and can be rearranged as conference rooms for small meetings.
The computer monitors swing back to provide remote employees a clear view of everyone in the office, and the layout of the room helps everyone attending in-person meetings see the remote employees on-screen.
The offices were designed with hybrid work — and meetings — in mind and are meant to be an equalizer for employees working from home.
Deutsche Bank's office was designed with a lot of common areas to promote collaborative work. There are also plenty of coffee and snack stations to help keep energy levels up.
In addition to this refill station on one of Deutsche Bank's trading floors, the ninth and 10th floors house the bank's main reception area, as well as many common spaces, including a staff lounge, a cafeteria, an IT hub, and a seminar room.
There's also a coffee bar right next to the elevator on the 10th floor where employees can grab a brew from Joe Coffee Co., a local roaster in New York, on their way into work each morning.
The space was designed by the architecture firm Gensler. The Deutsche Bank Center also features an on-site health center that handles COVID-19 testing and general health services, as well as a multifaith room.
In addition to more casual coworking spaces, the office includes some fancier meeting areas for client-facing events and award presentations.
Deutsche Bank designed its office to be a place staff enjoy coming to after a year and a half of remote work. As such, the space has plenty of casual meeting areas, workspaces, and common rooms meant to bring people together and out of their own offices.
There are also traditional conference rooms, a large seminar and event room, and more formal gathering areas to host clients and present firm awards.
A ninth-floor terrace creates additional workstations against the backdrop of Central Park. The black building in the background is the Trump International Hotel & Tower New York.
Gensler also worked with Deutsche Bank on the ninth-floor terrace, along with architects from NBW, which worked with the building's landlord. The terrace spans the building's two towers and can hold up to 600 people.
The abundant outdoor space allows staff to catch some rays while eating lunch or working with their laptops.
Deutsche Bank will rotate furniture like picnic tables, cushioned chairs, and tables as the seasons change. The terrace will stay open year-round so staff can work or take a break outside without leaving the building.
Right near the terrace insider is the staff lounge, which includes amenities like this bar.
The bank's staff lounge is designed for employees to enjoy themselves. It has round tables and chairs for informal meetings, as well as a bar and games.
Executives are encouraged to bring their meals to the staff lounge and mingle with junior bankers and other employees. Christiana Riley, the CEO of Deutsche Bank Americas, recently held a "coffee and croissants" chat in the space to get to know some employees in an informal setting.
In what appears to be a page taken from Silicon Valley's playbook, there's also a pool table and table-tennis setup overlooking the terrace and Central Park.
The pool table is new, but the table-tennis setup was popular at 60 Wall St. and moved uptown. Deutsche Bank's innovation-lab team, which works with fintechs to develop the bank's digital-banking strategy, has become known around the new office for taking advantage of the pool table during breaks.
In the cafeteria, staffers can pay for their meals on a touch screen after grabbing what they need from multiple food stations.
Deutsche Bank's cafeteria is set up like a market. Employees can grab food from multiple stations and then pay at one of the kiosks set up at the front of the room. There's a deli station to build sandwiches, a chef's table featuring a rotating hot dish, a pizza bar, and two grab-and-go stations with salads and other food.
In the corner of the cafeteria, a wood-fired pizza oven can dish out hot meals to hungry bankers quickly.
After picking up a meal, staffers can eat either in the big common room or at high-top tables around the cafeteria in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook Central Park and midtown Manhattan.
The bank worked with an in-house curator to display pieces of art from Deutsche Bank's collection throughout the office.
Deutsche Bank has one of the largest corporate art collections, and the firm's international art curator, Mary Findlay, worked with the architects to create spaces around the building that best fit each piece of art.
Many of the pieces in Deutsche Bank's collection are from up-and-coming artists like Idris Khan and Annie Morris, who got engaged in Columbus Circle and have art displayed in the lobby, which was designed by the architecture firm SOM in coordination with the building's landlord.
Instead of traditional placards, there are QR codes on the side of each art piece for viewers to scan with their smartphones and learn more about the collection.
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