Random House Tower and Park Imperial (New York City, New York)

 office building, apartment building

684-foot, 52-story postmodern mixed-use building completed in 2003. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (the office portion) and Ishmael Levya Architects (the residential portion), the building has a 6-story base has a trapezoidal footprint, with the east side following the slant of Broadway. The steel-framed office portion and the concrete-framed residential portion do not entirely line up, and trusses were built on the 26th and 27th floors to transfer the load.

The office portion of the building, which goes up to the 27th floor is primarily occupied by the headquarters of Random House. The upper part of the building resembles a trio of overlapping books. Floors 28 to 52 house a 108-unit luxury apartment complex named The Park Imperial with its own separate entrance lobby at 230 West 56th Street. At the top of the building, there are two tuned mass dampers which have capacities of 265,000 and 379,000 liters of water. These sway dampers are the first of their type in use in New York. There are two underground floors that are used as a garage for 100 cars.

The north and south wings of the base are five stories, and clad in grey granite and black-tinted glass. Along Broadway, both wings have five bays (above metal-and-glass storefronts). The north elevation has 10 bays across the 3rd-5th floors, with the lower two floors interrupted at the west end by the residential entrance. It is framed in white metal edged in stainless-steel, and has a deeply-recessed area at the ground floor with two sets of glass doors; at the 2nd floor are green-tinted opaque glass panels framed by a bronze border. The south facade on 55th Street spans 16 bays. The storefronts at the east end are topped by metal louvers; to the west are wide, recessed bays with loading docks and service doors, and at the far west end is a entrance/exit to the underground parking garage. There are also metal louvers topping these bays. The 6-story middle section of the base on Broadway has a glass curtain wall divided into three sections by recessed, white metal piers. The main office entrance is in the center bay, with glass doors set in a glass wall framed by tan granite.


The upper floors, oriented on all four sides to follow the regular street grid, have continuations of the grey granite and glass cladding on the north and south ends, both four bays wide on the east and west elevations, and spanning 13 bays on the north and south facades. These end at the 25th floor, with a mechanical level at the 26th floor that has a band of metal vents topped by glass panels. At the southwest corner, the two end bays of the 23rd-24th floors are cut away.

In between the north and south wings, the taller middle portion is clad in a silver glass curtain wall, organized into three bays by metal piers. On the west elevation the three section are flush with the north and south wings, but on the east facade, the center one projects out and the south one projects farther out, following the line of the base. There are setbacks at each of the three sections above the 27th and 50th floors on the east facade, and above the 27th floor at the south two sections on the west facade. Above this setback the sections are staggered like on the east side, with the mechanical housings at the top rising slightly higher at each section toward the south.

Besides the lobby areas, the ground floor is occupied by Gastro Market, and a Capital One Bank branch