CitySpire Center
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| CitySpire Center | |
| Information | |
|---|---|
| Location | 150-156 West 56th Street |
| Status | Complete |
| Height | |
| Antenna/Spire | 814 ft (248 m) |
| Technical details | |
| Floor count | 72 |
| Companies | |
| Architect | Murphy/Jahn, Inc. Architects |
The CitySpire Center is the tallest mixed-use skyscraper in New York City, located on West 56th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues in Midtown Manhattan. Finished in 1987, it is 248 meters (814 ft) tall and has 75 floors, with a total of 359,000 square feet of area. The building is owned by Tishman Speyer Properties.
Designed by Helmut Jahn, it is the 9th tallest building in New York City and the 38th tallest in the United States. The bottom 23 floors of the tower are for commercial use and above it are luxury apartments which increase in size the higher up they are.
Soon after the building's completion, residents of nearby buildings complained of hearing a loud whistling noise which, it later turned out came, from the wind blowing through the decorative dome at the building's top. The city threatened daily fines for the noise which lasted for more than a year. Developers silenced the whistle by removing every other louver in the cooling tower, thereby widening the narrow channels through which the wind whistled.[1]
The Moorish-inspired dome, which is an homage to the nearby New York City Center on West 55th Street, is illuminated at night with a white light. The building has an unusual octagonal shape.
CitySpire Center is very close to two skyscrapers on 57th Street, Carnegie Hall Tower (which mimics the design of its famous namesake concert hall) and Metropolitan Tower. The juxtaposition of these three buildings, all of them designed and erected separately, is one of the most interesting and attractive groupings of postmodern skyscrapers in the city.
Some time around completion, it was revealed that the building exceeded its height limit by around 14 feet (4 meters). The developers compensated for this violation by agreeing to build dance studio space for the city's Department of Cultural Affairs on an adjacent site.
When completed, the CitySpire Center was the second tallest concrete tower in the world.
Despite its height, CitySpire Center is likely the least well-known of New York's tallest buildings. This is partly because of the sheer density and height of the buildings surrounding it, and its midtown inset location prevents it from being easily seen from outside the island of Manhattan.
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