CitySpire
CitySpire is a mixed-use skyscraper at 150 West 56th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Completed in 1990 and designed by Murphy/Jahn Architects, the building measures tall with 75 stories. CitySpire was developed by Ian Bruce Eichner on a site adjacent to the New York City Center theater. When completed, CitySpire was the second-tallest concrete tower in the United States after the Sears Tower.
The skyscraper has an octagonal plan with a dome inspired by that of the New York City Center. The facade is made of stone with glass windows, and it contains setbacks at the 46th and 62nd floors. The building has entrances at 56th and 55th Streets, connected by a passageway that forms part of 6½ Avenue. The lowest 22 floors of the tower are for commercial use. Above are luxury apartments, which are larger on higher floors.
Eichner proposed CitySpire in 1984, acquiring unused air rights above City Center and making improvements to the theater to almost double the tower's area. After several agencies approved the project, City Center began construction in 1985 and was topped out by June 1987. A controversy ensued when the building exceeded its approved height by ; Eichner agreed to add dance-studio space to compensate for the height overrun, but he ultimately never built the space. Soon after CitySpire's opening in 1989, the building went into foreclosure, and there were complaints of a whistling noise from the roof for two years.
Site
CitySpire is at 150 West 56th Street, between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue three blocks south of Central Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building's land lot covers and has a frontage of along 56th Street. While the site is deep, extending south to 55th Street, only a small section of the lot has frontage on 55th Street.The building is directly west of the New York City Center and 125 West 55th Street; the former is a New York City designated landmark at 135 West 55th Street. Immediately to the north are Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Hall Tower, Russian Tea Room, and Metropolitan Tower from west to east. Other nearby buildings include 140 West 57th Street, 130 West 57th Street, and the Parker New York hotel to the northeast, as well as the 55th Street Playhouse to the southwest and 1345 Avenue of the Americas to the southeast.
The neighborhood was part of a former artistic hub around a two-block section of West 57th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. The hub had been developed during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following the opening of Carnegie Hall. Several buildings in the area were constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street, the Rodin Studios, and the Osborne Apartments, as well as the demolished Sherwood Studios and Rembrandt. In addition, the area contained the headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Lotos Club, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. By the 21st century, the artistic hub had largely been replaced with Billionaires' Row, a series of luxury skyscrapers around the southern end of Central Park. Just prior to CitySpire's construction, the site was occupied by six vacant lots at 132–158 West 56th Street and one on 137 West 55th Street. These lots were acquired in the 1970s by Richard M. Chapman, who razed the buildings there.
Architecture
CitySpire was designed by Murphy/Jahn and developed by Ian Bruce Eichner. It was constructed by Tishman Realty & Construction, with Robert Rosenwasser Associates as structural engineer. CitySpire is tall with 75 above-ground levels and two basement stories; the concrete frame reaches a height of. When completed, CitySpire was the second-tallest concrete tower in the United States after the Sears Tower in Chicago.Form and facade
CitySpire was designed from the beginning as an octagonal tower with wings on the east and west. CitySpire has three setbacks on the east and west they are placed at the 23rd, 46th, and 62nd floors. Most of the building is no more than wide. Because the building is so narrow, the upper stories sometimes sway during heavy storms.As proposed, the main shaft of the tower was to be clad in stone, while the wings were to be made of glass. The facade is made of Sardinian "luna pearl" that is cut into slabs, measuring about. Each slab is attached to the aluminum curtain wall frame on all sides, supported only by the curtain wall. The stone panels are entirely prefabricated and are insulated with fiberglass panels measuring thick, along with neoprene gaskets and silicone caulk. The setbacks at the 46th and 62nd floors were designed with parapets of steel and concrete, which were reduced in size as part of a 1988 lawsuit settlement concerning the building's height. Eichner disliked the parapets; he suggested that residents on the 46th floor "can look out at it and know they're looking at a wall instead of Central Park so that Helmut Jahn can rest easy knowing that his 'artistic integrity' is intact."
The roof has a copper-faced dome which, as originally proposed, was supposed to be tall. When it was ultimately installed in 1988, the dome contained eight steel ribs, each measuring long and weighing. Each rib consisted of three sections. The dome itself contains louvers and was designed with a green surface. When the dome was constructed, wind created a loud whistling sound when passing through the louvers; this was remedied in 1992 with the removal of alternating panels. Paul Sachner of Architectural Record initially likened the dome to that of the Nebraska State Capitol, while Paul Goldberger of The New York Times said the dome was meant to relate to City Center.
Structural features
The superstructure is made of concrete. Because of CitySpire's mixed-use spaces, it contains nine different structural systems, since a unified grid of columns was infeasible for apartment layouts. Further, because Eichner wanted to maximize views of the surrounding city, the wind-resisting sections of the superstructure had to be placed in the interior.The lower stories, used as offices, were largely designed as a grid of concrete columns, allowing for flexible office layouts. While the lower stories are largely composed of grids of columns, there are also sections of rectangular concrete panels, which are staggered across several levels to create a diagonal wind brace. The upper stories are designed as a "shear wall/open tube" structural system, in which shear walls extend from the elevator core at the center of the tower, connecting to the outer columns.
Interior
CitySpire has a floor area of around, and ten elevators rise the height of the building. Before CitySpire was developed, the site was zoned to only allow a building of around 34 stories without any modifications. Given the size of the lot, this would have provided up to of space. Eichner obtained unused air rights above City Center, which only occupied a small amount of the maximum space allowed for its lot; this allowed a 60-story tower. On top of this, Eichner was allowed to increase the building's floor area ratio by 20 percent in exchange for renovating City Center. This amounted to of extra space. These bonuses allowed CitySpire to be more than twice as large as it ordinarily would have been.The interior floor-numbering system skips floors 13 and 25, so there are physically only 73 stories, though the top story is numbered 75. The lowest 22 or 23 floors of the building are for commercial use. There are luxury apartments on the remaining floors, as well as a mechanical story. The building was designed with elaborate details. The attention to detail extended to the elevator buttons, which Jahn redesigned with three buttons to a row when Eichner found two buttons per row to be unpleasing.
Base
A pedestrian arcade between 56th and 55th Streets is included in CitySpire's base as part of its construction. The arcade is one of nine passageways that form 6½ Avenue, a set of full-block passageways from 51st to 57th Street between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. It was built as a "through-block connection" under the Special Midtown District, created in 1982. The connection itself was not opened until 1997, several years after the building opened; the delay was largely due to the building's foreclosure and other disputes in the early 1990s. The arcade, designed by Brennan Beer Gorman, consists of marble and granite walls as well as a ceiling. The passageway is decorated in an Art Deco-inspired style, with theater posters on the walls. The space has recessed lights on the ceiling and lights on the walls, but there is no seating since the passageway was designed merely for pedestrian movement.The office and residential lobbies are separate from each other. The residential lobby at 150 West 56th Street has a domed ceiling as well as wooden paneling. The office portion of CitySpire has the address 156 West 56th Street. There is also a bar called Carnegie Club. The bar, on the ground floor, has a ceiling high with an overhanging mezzanine. A garage and cafe was also included in the base. The building was planned with of office space. Each of the office stories typically measures, with polygonal cutouts at each corner.
Tower
The building was proposed with 355 luxury residential condominiums, but it was completed with 339 or 340 condos. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, there are 340 condominiums in the entire building, of which 337 are residential units. About 100 of the apartments were built with one bedroom, with the rest having multiple bedrooms. Many of the residential units are separated from each other by the building's shear walls. Due to the setbacks on the exterior, floors 47 through 61 typically measure, while floors 63 through 69 are an octagon measuring 80 feet across.The apartments at CitySpire vary in size and arrangement, though many of the units contain terraces. For instance, one studio apartment has a living room, kitchen, and terrace. Some of the one-bedroom units also have living and dining rooms with angled walls. In some of the two-bedroom units, there is a foyer with a living/dining room, kitchens, and bedrooms leading off it. There are also duplex units with kitchens, living rooms, and dining rooms on the lower tier, as well as bedrooms on the upper tiers. One of the larger duplexes, on floors 65/66, has four bedrooms; a living/dining area with a library and breakfast area; a family room; and a terrace measuring. On upper floors, the units tend to be larger, reaching below the penthouse.
Eichner originally intended to occupy a penthouse apartment atop CitySpire, but he ended up never living in the unit. The penthouse was instead purchased in 1993 by real estate developer Steven Klar for about $4.5 million as a "raw space"; it covers floors 72 through 75, though floor 72 is a guest suite. Klar had hired Juan Pablo Molyneux to redesign the penthouse over two and a half years. The penthouse, covering, has six bedrooms and nine bathrooms, as well as three terraces. The master bedroom takes up an entire story, while the master bathroom has green marble cladding as well as bronze and mahogany fixtures. The penthouse also has a classical-columned foyer, a large dining room with a chandelier, a wine closet with space for 1,000 bottles, and a private elevator. Molyneux personally disliked the design, calling it a "horror", though this was apparently because Molyneux actually never saw the design in person, having been dismissed before the design was completed.
When CitySpire was built, it was advertised with amenities such as the SpireCard, a charge account to which each resident could request a luxury service for a fee. It was also advertised with a media room containing a large-screen TV; a lounge with bar; and a business center with stock quote and telex machines. The modern amenities include a party and conference rooms, play area, and fitness center with pool.