One Vanderbilt has reached a significant milestone in Midtown East. Construction has begun on the setbacks that will form the signature crown and hold the architectural spire for the supertall office building. White steel beams that make up the sloped top of the setback are visible on the western elevation, while the core walls are also rising and can be seen from a distance. Kohn Pedersen Fox is the architect and SL Green is the developer of the future 77-story tower, which will stand 1,401 feet when finished and yield nearly 1.75 million square feet of commercial space.
The photos below show the extent of the rising skyscraper from multiple vantage points across and beyond Manhattan.
The Chrysler Building and One Vanderbilt. Photo by Michael Young
The curtain wall visible from Bryant Park. Photo by Michael Young
The western corner of One Vanderbilt. Photo by Michael Young
The top of the western elevation with the first setback reached. Photo by Michael Young
Construction on the final floors should be quicker due to the gradually reduced size of the floor plates. One Vanderbilt will enjoy being the tallest structure in the neighborhood, but will only hold this distinction for a short amount of time.
The Midtown East rezoning is paving the way for a number of other even loftier supertalls to sprout in the next several years. These include Foster + Partners proposal for the redevelopment of 270 Park Avenue, the recently released renderings for Vornado‘s office tower at 350 Park Avenue and finally what will could soon become the tallest skyscraper in New York City by roof height, Five East 51st Street, aka Tower Fifth.
One Vanderbilt could possibly top off this summer, and is expected to be completed next year.
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Until this building is finished, I will refrain from judging the design. A very fat building like this with a “signature” top that tries to be a more slender and graceful finale is a tricky thing to accomplish. It’s still a shame to have lost the old brick building next to Grand Central which gave the area historical context despite the gold glass Trump atrocity on the opposite side.
Its really too bad the building lost the extra 100 feet. The optimal thing would have been a total height of about 1700 feet – this would have allowed a much more graceful transition to its’ pinnacle.
Pardon me for using your space:
Any tower that overshadows the God-forsaken MetLife building is an architectural achievement.
(Thanks to Michael Young)
Don’t forget the park Hyatt tower next door!
What a monstrosity this is, plopped down in already one of the most densely congested areas of the City.
We are building a modern day Babylon ….higher and higher, bigger and bigger, denser and denser,
…with ever less air, less sunlight, less space, and more congestion.
Beehive behemoths & anthill Calcuttas rise all around us and engulf us
…wiith no regard for maintaining a livable human-scaled City in which to live and work and play.
Until we eventually self-destruct – like a pack of lemmings blindly rushing toward that inevitable cliff edge…..
Manhattan is the only part of the country that has this density – you are welcome to enjoy the other millions of km of space.
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love this reply!
This sounds like you copied and pasted a circa 1925 newspaper op ed.
Your concerns are unwarranted.
Exactly, he is copied from circa 1925 newspaper, about density in NYC, Calcutta in Surrounding, this mention better modern day China, than NYC, there are building a taller and taller, without mentioned for surrounding, with planned city of million people where barely 70,000 are living at the end. Like this city with copy of Eifel Tower, 1,3 million people planned, only 120,000 population in reality lives there, no jobs, no interest to buying properties 1000 miles away from Ports and Marine Terminals.
China is fake iceberg of Crushing Debt what’s looming over their Titanic made in China…
Stan Chaz is a communist minded troll.
Just what drugs ARE you on exactly?
There is greed. There is congestion. There is unwarranted destruction of the beautiful, like the Bancroft Building, and the perfectly adequate, like the upcoming demolition of the recently renovated LEED Platinum Union Carbide Building when there are plenty of unremarkable, pedestrian pre-war office buildings in Midtown East just begging for replacement with the likes of the JPMorgan Chase tower.
Nonetheless, this density has great value and is very efficient compared to the carbon-emitting sprawl that dominates most of urban America. It encourages the use of public transportation, not private cars, with some but not enough financial benefit of the rezoning’s skyscrapers going to improving transit.
I agree with Jack Doe…NYC is a Metropolis, and has density…if you don’t like skyscrapers (like it or not they all defy human scale) then move to the vastness of the of say Nebraska…or move to LA where everything sprawls forever…