The Skyscraper Museum is devoted to the study of high-rise building, past, present, and future. The Museum explores tall buildings as objects of design, products of technology, sites of construction, investments in real estate, and places of work and residence. This site will look better in a browser that supports web standards, but it is accessible to any browser or Internet device.
TEN TALLEST RESIDENTIAL TOWERS
NEW YORK CITY RECORD HOLDERS
1927: Sherry-Netherland
Height: 560 ft / 171 m
Completion Date: 1927
Stories: 40
Completed in 1927, the Sherry-Netherland took the title from the Ritz Tower Hotel as the "the tallest apartment building in the world... [with] 125 apartments."(The New York Times) The 560 foot high, 40-story luxury tower featured full floor apartments above the 24th floor. As recounted in The New York Times on the opening day, the tower offered sweeping views, terraces, luxurious detail, two restaurants, and maid service without extra charge. An advertisement in the Times announcing the opening of the building read “it is more than a place to live; it is a way of living”. (The New York Times, 1923)
1931: Waldorf Astoria
Height: 625 ft / 190.5 m
Completion Date: 1931
Stories: 47
Upon its completion in 1931, the new Waldorf Astoria became both the tallest and the largest hotel in the world. At 625 feet, and with 1.68 million sq. ft. in floor area, the Waldorf occupied an entire city block between Lexington and Park Avenue and offered more than 2,000 rooms.
Designed by architect Lloyd Morgan of the firm Schultze and Weaver, the new Waldorf Astoria was a mountain of construction, with its limestone base matched above with gray bricks, custom-made for the hotel and named “Waldorf Gray.” The wide base was topped by two towers which were filled mostly with private residences. Ornamental spires with a streamlined classicism gave the hotel a modernist “Art Deco” character.
Dubbed “New York’s Unofficial Palace,” the Waldorf Astoria’s luxurious suites have been home to many high-profile residents, including William Randolph Hearst Jr. and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Every president since Herbert Hoover has stayed in the hotel’s Presidential Suite, and the Waldorf is the official residence of the United States’ UN Ambassador.
1982: Metropolitan Tower
Height: 716 ft / 218 m
Completion Date: 1982
Stories: 68
This pair of photographs of the Metropolitan Tower, a luxury condominium developed by Harry Macklowe in the late 1980s, seen both under construction and completed, clad in Darth-Vader black glass, illustrates two key characteristics of the period that continue today. First, reinforced concrete is the preferred material for residential buildings, in contrast to the use of steel in office towers. Second, 57th Street emerged as a prime location for international luxury.
The slenderness of the Metropolitan Tower comes from its triangular wedge shape that rises sheer and high, angling its hypotenuse at the view of Central Park. The building's entrance fronts on 57th Street, two doors east of Carnegie Hall and in the middle of a block of boutique shopping and posh hotels and restaurants. In today's new generation of ultra-luxury towers, 57th Street has a special attraction and has been dubbed by some wags "The Avenue of the Oligarchs."
See Metropolitan Tower in SKY HIGH1987: CitySpire
Height: 814 ft / 262 m
Completion Date: 1987
Stories: 75
Completed in 1987, at 810 feet, CitySpire surpassed its neighbor across West 56th Street -the Metropolitan Tower by nearly a hundred feet. The design by the Chicago architect Helmut Jahn, borrowed both the stylistic flourishes of the landmarked City Center Theater, also across the street, as well as purchased its available air rights. The mid-block tower features an octagonal core with two wings that rise up to the 61st floor. The lower 23 floors of City Spire house 310,000 sq. ft. of commercial and office space. Floors 24-75 340 comprise luxury condos.
CitySpire was the subject of a quarrel with community activists and the City when it was discovered that, due to changes during construction, the tower topped out about 11 feet taller than the approved plan. while some called for the dome to be demolished, developer Ian Bruce Eichner agreed to cut down parapets and to create a rehearsal space for non-profit dance groups connected with the City Center Theater: Mayor Koch called the deal "a creative resolution to a very difficult situation."
2001: Trump World Tower
Height: 861 ft / 262 m
Completion Date: 2001
Stories: 72
Completed in 2001, Trump World Tower signaled the start of a new “logic of luxury” that was elevated in the 21st century by New York’s latest crop of ulta-slender, ultra-luxury residential towers. Through amassing air rights from surrounding low-rise buildings and developing a slender building profile, Trump set a new precedent for residential high-rises.
See Trump World Tower in SKY HIGH2011: 8 Spruce
Height: 891 ft / 272 m
Completion Date: 2011
Stories: 76
Ten years later, 8 Spruce Street added a new criterion for New York’s most desirable luxury apartment towers: an iconic design from a world-renowned “starchitect.” Standing tall in Lower Manhattan, Eight Spruce Street established its prestige through its Frank Gehry-designed, curvaceous, stainless steel façade, as well as its incredible height, though unlike the other recent residential high-rises on this list, exclusively offers rental apartments. When it opened in 2011, Frank Gehry’s 8 Spruce Street took the crown as the city’s tallest residential building. The 76-story stainless steel tower came to redefine the skyline of Lower Manhattan, as nothing on this scale had been produced exclusively for residential use.
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