One Vanderbilt, Midtown East’s supertall office tower, is poised to rise

UPDATE 4/20/17: The 58-story One Vanderbilt will start going vertical in early May, developer SL Green has announced. The foundation for the supertall was poured in early February this year, and this next step will mark the latest major milestone in construction for the office building. Passersby will be able to start seeing the steel portions of the building go up sometime in July.

Published 2/8/17: Construction on One Vanderbilt, the 1,401-foot office tower that’ll soon loom over Midtown East, has been moving right along since the project’s groundbreaking last October. Several commercial buildings next to Grand Central Terminal were demolished in 2016, paving the way for the tower’s rise—and exposing the western edge of the glorious Beaux Arts train station in the process—and work has been humming along in the months since.

And now, a milestone has been reached at One Vandy, according to developer SL Green: over the weekend, the enormous foundation for the supertall structure was poured. To give a sense of what it takes to prepare for the city’s second-tallest office tower (it’ll be bested only by One World Trade Center), here are some stats: 8,500 tons of concrete were poured, using 420 trucks over 16 hour; the foundation is nearly 10 feet deep, and approximately 113,400 cubic feet was filled in.

This is just the beginning for the building: When it’s completed in 2020, it’ll span more than 1 million square feet over 58 stories, and will have a 30,000-square-foot amenity space for tenants. There will also be a public observation deck, perched a terrifying 1,020 feet above ground—making it one of the highest in the city.

On the street level, the building will add a public plaza and new connections to the subway and Metro-North, including a huge new entrance for the 4/5/6 lines.

SL Green also sent along some construction photos by Max Touhey, showing the foundation placement in-progress:

• All One Vanderbilt coverage [Curbed]