111 West 57th Street - SHoP Architects

New York approves bean-pole slim addition by SHoP

410 metres tall but only 13 metres wide - New York's new addition will offer sweeping views over Central Park

Sitting in midtown on 57th Street, the Steinway Building is something of a landmark. It was built in 1925 by prolific New Yorkers Warren & Wetmore. The team at SHoP Architects must have had all this in mind, when they were thinking about what to put next to the Steinway Building.

The Lower Manhattan architects were brought in to fit some fancy residential accommodation between Warren & Wetmore’s offering and a red-brick period piece. The site is a mere 13m wide, but that hasn’t put SHoP off reaching for the stars.

111 West 57th Street will be a more than 410m high, with retail space followed by luxury condos. On the outside, two sides will be clad in terracotta, while the north façade is more of a glass wall for sweeping views over Central Park, a block or so away.

 

111 West 57th Street ground view - SHoP Architects
111 West 57th Street ground view - SHoP Architects

At its base the tower is nestled into a courtyard wrapped by the existing landmarked Steinway Building.  Set back from the street, the tower maintains visibility to the Steinway Building’s front façade and preserves the Rotunda space of Steinway’s main showroom.

“The design aims to bring back the quality, materiality and proportions of historic NYC towers,” say the architects, “while taking advantage of the latest technology to push the limits of engineering and fabrication.”

It certainly stands out a long way above and beyond many of its neighbours, but as the team at SHoP remind us, “we are neither ivory-tower elitists nor superficial stylists.”

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