Overview

About Cityspire, 150 West 56th Street

One of the city's most controversial buildings, CitySpire became the city's tallest mixed-use building when it opened in 1988.

It was designed by Helmut Jahn of Murphy/Jahn, the Chicago-based architect and its slender pinnacle is reminiscent of one of that city's older skyscrapers. Jahn is best known for his high-tech designs, but this was one of his forays into Post-Modernism, at least in its domed top, a reference to the great dome roof of the City Center for The Performing Arts on 55th Street whose air rights were used in the project. (The City Center building was built in 1924 as the Ancient and Accepted Order of the Mystic Shrine and was designed by Harry P. Knowles and Clinton & Russell.)

Jahn is a master architect who invariably experiments with building elements and colors.

Here, he has mixed angles with purple façade elements in a dizzyingly thin slab tower. The tower's broad-shouldered form is quite powerful, but much of its élan is lost because of its mid-block site directly across from two slightly smaller, but more prominent towers, Carnegie Hall Tower and the Metropolitan Tower, both through-block buildings with major entrances on 57th Street.

The trio is midtown's most staggering and awesome grouping of skyscrapers and one wonders what in the world planners were doing at the time. Not only are the three towers drastically different from one another, but also they jostle with one another to the detriment of all. Most of the important Central Park views to the north in CitySpire are obstructed significantly by the two other towers.

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