This past September saw concrete reach the rooftop of Extell‘s record-setting Central Park Tower at 217 West 57th Street, and shortly thereafter One Vanderbilt‘s spire quickly come together at the top of SL Green‘s new commercial jewel. October has also commenced with a bang, and last week, workers installed the first steel for the crowning level of SHoP Architects‘ 111 West 57th Street, reaching the parapet 1,428 feet above the streets below. That makes the building the second-tallest in New York City by its parapet, ranking below the 1,550-foot Central Park Tower, and above the 1,396-foot 432 Park Avenue. Work has indeed reached the last section of the crown, but is important to note that the supertall has not officially topped out yet.
111 West 57th Street in the center of Billionaires’ Row.
The upper portion of 111 West 57th Street.
111 West 57th Street’s terracotta façade glows in the golden hour lighting.
JDS Development, Property Markets Group, and Spruce Capital Partners are behind the residential supertall, which is also the most slender building on planet Earth at a height-to-width ratio of 24:1. There will be 46 condominiums within, with sales led by Douglas Elliman.
Work on the crown sped along after the concrete formwork topped out this past May, however, the final level of steel has taken almost a month to complete. Most of the framework was finished by the end of August, but evidently the final touches took a few weeks to finish, and a few pieces of steel are still awaiting installation.
111 West 57th Street as of early October.
ShoP’s design features a shimmering façade of terra cotta and bronze on the east and west sides of the tower, with the northern and southern faces dominated by glass and bronze. The result is an extremely slim silhouette that is substantially more slender than even 432 Park Avenue. However, the rise of the neighboring supertalls along 57th Street and across the rest of Midtown has tempered 111 West 57th Street’s relative significance on the skyline, and NIMBYs can hardly continue complaining that 1,300-foot-plus supertalls are sore thumbs when their envelopes are now normalized in many Manhattan neighborhoods.
Nonetheless, what makes 111 West 57th Street stand out, aside from the dramatically slim profile, is the almost perfectly centered alignment with Central Park. The symmetrical views looking north with the Upper West Side and Upper East Side on each end of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows will create a stunning visual frame from the residential units.
The position of the tower makes for a symmetrical vantage point of Central Park. Rendering by SHoP Architects
111 West 57th Street is expected to be fully compete sometime next year.
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The star of the show..
Hopefully this will be the last of the billionaire skypricks. Greed is our original sin and is destroying the only home we have.
Greed, ignorance, and laziness. The Oligarchs are not the only ones destroying the only home we have through flashy real estate development: what’s YOUR carbon footprint (or do you even know)?
“what’s YOUR carbon footprint”
Who cares, since CO2 has no impact on the climate.
Ah good all this site’s comment sections were missing is a climate change denier.
This building is so narrow,that the freight ekevator is the bottom half of the passenger elevator in the same shaft..clever.
Would you rather 46 mansions over an area the length of 57th St?
It is so awesome that New York City keeps adding super talls and that they are slowly getting taller. I hope that Central Park Tower loses it’s US roof height record soon and that soon after that whatever beats it loses it’s US roof height record. I hope that within a decade our highest roof is 1800 feet and the decade after we get a mega tall or two.
Most of the greed is from entiteled welfare queens who are draining people bank accounts demanding more money to sit on there ass doing nothing…
And how many of these buildings are empty? AND love that the homeless shelter will be built around the corner.
I have followed 111 West 57th Street with considerable interest for several years now, and there seems to be almost zero reporting on the technical innovations involved in such a slender building.
Are we to assume this incredible building is designed with off-the-shelf technology?
It is only fitting that all these super tall buildings as a group resemble the towers of an oil refinery when viewed from a distance.
Mark, that IS fitting, and you should read Rachel Maddow’s new book entitled “Blowout”,
for a further narrative along those very lines.
However to me these arrogant scars on our skyline look more like super-tall tombstones –
tombstones marking a dying culture , a dying culture of shamefully misplaced priorities,
a society of gross inequality, and jungle-like exploitation.
Enlightened archeologists of far future eons will no doubt stumble upon these ocean-covered ruins.
And they will put them into the very same category as the architectural remnants of ancient & barbaric Mayan sacrificial rituals.
For we worship our God Mammon, and likewise sacrifice our citizens to its insatiable demands.
Like the Mayans, in our own cruel & savage ways we as a society, we as an economy, also tear out hearts, spirits & souls
– and the possibilities of truly fulfilling & secure lives for an overwhelming majority of the population.
This while the ultra-rich gloat and feast on the spoils,
as they gleefully trickle-down-piss on the rest us from their palatial penthouses.
For now….
Please, spare us the climatopocalypse talk. I taught biology and earth science for three decades, and have seen climate doom scenarios swing from impending ice ages to Venusian hell to the hysterical rantings of our present doomsayers. Earth was much warmer and much colder in the past, and will continue that way, with wild oscillations, no matter what we do.
These buildings could generate much of their own power with clever use of compact wind turbines On their parapets and solar glass facades. Not windmills with blades but sleeved turbines that are oriented to the prevailing winds at 1,000+AGL.
Wow. The people here commenting fill all the slots marked for crazies. 30 years teaching high school science somehow makes him a climate expert. You know he also loves fox news and djt which is where he gets his climate facts. The earth has gone through warmer and cooler periods. Most that happened over very long periods of time and all because of co2 levels. Now that we’ve been dumping millions of years of stored co2 back into the atmosphere how can any political hack possibly think there won’t be any repercussions?
Wow, I can’t believe how fast 111 W.57th was built. Not!!! What a shame. The unions would have done that job in 2-2 1/2 years.
All these negative comments. I can’t afford to live there but it doesn’t mean I begrudge anyone who has the means and the desire. The supertalls are stunning art, as is the Barclay Center and they enrich the city just as the beloved Chrysler Building has for generations.