Hearst Tower (New York City, New York)

 office building, skyscraper, interesting place, 2006_construction, historic remains, Modern (architecture)

597-foot, 46-story modernist/structural-expressionist office building completed in 2006. Designed by Foster + Partners for the Hearst Corporation, it consists of a new tower of glass and metal erected atop an existing 6-story base from 1928. The 70-foot tall base building was commissioned by the company's founder, William Randolph Hearst and designed by Joseph Urban with George B. Post & Sons as associate architects. It was intended as the base for a proposed skyscraper, but the construction of the tower was postponed due to the Great Depression.

The tower's uncommon triangular framing pattern, also known as a diagrid, is a structural system consisting of diagonal beams. It required 10,480 tons of structural steel, reportedly about 20% less than a conventional steel frame. Hearst Tower was the first skyscraper to break ground in New York City after September 11, 2001. Hearst Tower is also the first "green" high rise office building in New York City, with a number of environmental considerations built into the plan. The floor of the atrium is paved with heat conductive limestone. Polyethylene tubing is embedded under the floor and filled with circulating water for cooling in the summer and heating in the winter. Rain collected on the roof is stored in a tank in the basement for use in the cooling system, to irrigate plants and for the water sculpture in the main lobby. The building was constructed using 80% recycled steel. Overall, the building has been designed to use 26% less energy than the minimum requirements for the city of New York, and earned a gold designation from the United States Green Building Council’s LEED certification program. Furnishings were sourced from Steelcase and Knoll International.

The atrium features escalators which run through a 3-story water sculpture titled "Icefall", a wide waterfall built with thousands of glass panels, which cools and humidifies the lobby air. The water element is complemented by a 70-foot tall fresco painting entitled "Riverlines" by artist Richard Long.

It is the world headquarters of the Hearst Corporation, bringing together for the first time their numerous publications and communications companies under one roof, including, among others, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, and Seventeen.

The Art-Moderne base, originally the Hearst Publications Building, is clad in pre-cast stone. It has chamfered north-and southwest corners, each with paired sculptural figures and ornamental columns. The building rises in three stages: a 2-story base with commercial ground floor and 2nd-floor offices, surmounted by three additional floors of offices and terminating attic. The major Eighth Avenue facade is symmetrically arranged on either side of its entrance, a large arch with oversized, projecting and beveled keystone (but otherwise flush voussoirs) flanked on either side by smaller square-headed doors. The arch provides a recessed outer vestibule, its walls and barrel vault relieved by embossed octagonal coffers arranged in a projecting grid of half-round section above an unpolished grey granite base. At the far (western) end of the vestibule a large cusped bronze arch frames the building's four bronze-framed glass doors. The vestibule's right/northern wall is pierced by a subway entrance. The left/southern wall holds a small shopfront with recessed entrance. The vestibule's coffered barrel vault is pierced on the left and right by four recessed bronze-framed, single pane casement windows.

On either side of the triumphal arch-like entrance pylons rise flush from the sidewalk, serving as 3rd-story pedestals for paired sculptural figures dorsally engaged to tall fluted columns. "Comedy and Tragedy'' are installed on the left; "Music and Art" on the right. The columns are engaged to the building by a vertical series of shallow, stepped, and angled setbacks. The columns rise above the 6th-floor attic where, freestanding, they are crowned by quadrapod-supported urns relieved by a horizontal zigzag band.

Between the pylon-columns is a 3-window bay at the upper four floors of the base. At 3rd-floor level, the keystone of the arched entrance overlaps a projecting and slightly bowed balcony, along the lower edge of which runs an extended chevron molding. Below the 3rd-, 4th-, and 5th-floor windows are fluted stone spandrels which visually tie the central bay to the ornamental columns that flank it. A severe cornice separates the 5th floor from the attic level.

On either side of the central bay, the Eighth Avenue facade is symmetrical: a 2-story base with modern ground-floor storefronts/display windows and seven slightly recessed 1-over-1 windows on the 2nd floor. The lower two floors are separated from the upper floors by a balcony whose lower notched edge has recessed overlapping chevrons. In each case the continuous balcony extends from the central bay paylon to the building's chamfered north-and southeast corners. The 3rd-5th floors, set back behind the balcony, have seven 1-over-3 windows recessed behind prominent unornamented pilaster strips. A severe frieze and cornice separate the top floor.

The building's two chamfered corners differ only in their sculpture: "Sport and Industry" are installed on 56th Street; "Printing and the Sciences" on 57th, with modern storefronts on the ground floor, and three windows on the 2nd floor, in a narrow-broad-narrow arrangement. Above, the building rises to form a pedestal for the paired sculptural figures and fluted column behind. Behind the column the building cuts back with stepped and angled verticals to an acute angle. The 5th-floor cornice breaks on either side of the column, emphasizing the corner's multiple planes in its own faceting.

The 57th Street facade repeats that of Eighth Avenue, differing only in two respects. Instead of an arched building entrance, the original doorway has been altered for use as a storefront, flanked on the left and right by display-windows. "Comedy and Tragedy'' and "Music and Art" are installed on the 3rd-floor pedestals (on the left and right respectively), just as they are on Eighth Avenue. The 57th Street facade also differs in its inclusion of an additional 2-window bay which forms the building's western termination. This bay rises sheer from the sidewalk and does not set back at 3rd-floor level. It does not include a full 3rd-floor balcony, but only continues its lower notched and chevron lower edge as a decorative molding.

The 56th Street facade differs significantly from the building's two other exposed elevations. Like them, it rises on a 2-story base with modern ground floor shopfronts/display windows. The three bays next to the westernmost bay, however, are used as loading docks with roll-down metal gates. The facade is divided into two unequal masses. At the east, it continues the standard building treatment with a 3rd-floor balcony behind which the structure sets back. Unlike the similar 7-window bays on Eighth Avenue and 57th Street, this bay has eight windows in its 2nd-6th floors. The larger building mass to the west does not set back at 3rd-floor level, but rises sheer from the sidewalk. It does not have a balcony but, like the far western bay on 57th Street, merely continues the balcony's notched and chevron lower edge as an ornamental molding at the 3rd-floor level. This portion of the building is divided into six bays. On the 2nd through 5th floors each bay contains paired windows framed by pilaster strips which are more shallow than those elsewhere on the building.

The modern tower rising above the base building is clad in blue glass and white steel framing elements. Each of the 4-story triangles on the facade is 54 feet tall. At the corners, the triangles alternate angling inward and outward. The ground floor is occupied by FedEx Office, Hearstlive (a multimedia installation), and Sur la Table kitchen supply store.


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