Upper West Side’s new tallest tower revealed by Extell and Snøhetta

Architecture firm Snøhetta has unveiled its design for a residential tower on West 66th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, which at 775-feet will best 200 Amsterdam Avenue to become the Upper West Side’s tallest building.

It’s hardly a surprise that the 127-condo tower is being developed by Extell, the firm behind so many of New York’s tallest neighborhood buildings like One Manhattan Square and Central Park Tower. A rep for Extell says the sale of the parcel to the development company closed last week, but has yet to hit public record. Wallpaper had the reveal on the project this morning.

The through-block site will take the residential address of 50 West 66th Street and will have a synagogue in its base that fronts along 65th Street. The site falls just outside of the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District and neighbors the First Battery Armory, an individual landmark. Plans for the development have yet to be filed with the city.

The building will include a series of setbacks and chamfered corners that will create a generously sized planted communal terrace on the 16th floor as well as private loggias overlooking Central Park and the surrounding neighborhood up the length of the building. A press release announcing the design calls the cutaways “evocative of the chiseled stone of Manhattan’s geologic legacy.”

The facade will be marked by limestone and burnished bronze below its 16th floor terrace, and will give way to a more glassy facade as it tapers upwards. The cutaways above the communal terrace will still be marked by burnished bronze, similar to Norman Foster’s 551 West 21st Street.

The design makes an attempt at being more contextual to its surroundings than other Extell projects, with its “natural palette of refined materials,” but will still quite literally stick out among its neighbors. Is 50 West 66th Street the “new friend in the New York City skyline” that Snøhetta says it is? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

• Chiseled features: Snøhetta unveils new tower in Manhattan [Wallpaper]
• Snøhetta designs residential building in Manhattan [Snøhetta]