When artist Maya Lin set out to bring the language of Manhattan’s bedrock to the surface of Midtown, she turned to Quarra Stone to make it real.
A Parallel Nature, Lin’s monumental new stone installation, now defines the Madison Avenue façade of JPMorgan Chase’s new 270 Park Avenue tower — one of the most prominent corporate headquarters to rise in New York in a generation. The work takes the form of two towering walls, each rising 59 feet, composed of 239 individual granite components quarried in Vermont. Together they evoke the raw geological strata beneath the city’s streets, brought to the surface in the heart of Midtown Manhattan.
Quarra Stone was responsible for the full fabrication of the installation — from quarry selection in Vermont through complex component engineering, precision fabrication, and installation coordination. The 239 pieces, each unique, were engineered as a puzzle-like assembly, demanding an exacting level of craft to ensure that the natural geology of the stone read as a cohesive, living composition at architectural scale.
The project represents one of the most technically demanding public art façades Quarra Stone has undertaken — and one of the most visible. A Parallel Nature was featured in The New York Times in an article by Jane L. Levere, published May 10, 2026.
For Quarra Stone, the collaboration reflects the company’s longstanding position at the intersection of art, architecture, and natural stone — where the demands of a world-class artist meet the precision of industrial fabrication, and where both have to be true at once.
