1285 Sixth Avenue building was known as Equitable Center East. The two structures were initially known collectively as the "Equitable Center". Atrium and lobby Leading from Seventh Avenue is a five-story atrium, which serves as the main lobby. The atrium is an cube. Its large size is in part due to a commercial holdout who did not leave the site until construction had already started. At the center of the atrium, Burton designed Atrium Furnishment, which consists of a marble semicircular banquette and a circular marble fountain with trees. Though the atrium in general has a white marble floor, Atrium Furnishment is surrounded by red granite pavers, which were intended to provide a contrast between the circular artwork and the cubical atrium. A bronze band surrounds the artwork as well. On the eastern wall of the atrium, facing the main archway on Seventh Avenue, is a Lichtenstein artwork, Mural with Blue Brushstroke, which measures . Lichtenstein had painted the mural on-site in 1986. A pair of parallel passageways leads east from the atrium to the galleria, each originally decorated with a separate artwork. Thomas Hart Benton's America Today murals, commissioned in 1931, were originally installed in the northern passageway, around the elevator core. The Benton murals were originally installed in the New School For Social Research, and Equitable had acquired the Benton murals in 1984 for a reported $3.1 million. The murals were relocated to 1290 Sixth Avenue in the mid-1990s. The southern passageway of the lobby has a niche, which contains Paul Manship's sculpture Day. Manship had crafted Day in 1938 as part of a set of four bronze works called The Moods of Time. Retail and restaurants A branch of the Whitney Museum of American Art occupied space in two storefront galleries from 1986 to 1992. There was a north gallery for permanent works and a south gallery for temporary exhibitions. The Equitable Tower location, the largest of the Whitney's four branches at the time, occupied in each gallery. As part of the arrangement, Equitable gave money to the Whitney and paid the branch's operating expenses for six years. After the Whitney branch closed, its space became the Equitable Gallery. Another tenant was the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which operated two stores with souvenirs from the city's museums. The Urbanspace food hall has also operated at ground level since 2020. From the building's opening in early