As 55 Hudson Yards nears its apex, an update on the megaproject

Construction at Hudson Yards pushes onwards, over four years after the site’s groundbreaking. New photos of the megaproject by NYConstructionPhoto show that work is progressing steadily even through these languid days of summer.

At 55 Hudson Yards, the 780-foot office building designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox in collaboration with Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, glass cladding is rising into place.

The building’s exterior is inspired by early modernism, and if you squint hard enough it’s easy to recognize a likeness in period architecture icon the Seagram Building. And 55 Hudson Yards will be a Seagram of sorts, but for a new era. Today developer Related Companies announced that law firm Cooley LLP has signed on for 130,000 square feet over five floors towards the top of the 51-story building.

The building is still making its ascent, but is poised to top out any day now and open in 2018.

Meanwhile, 30 Hudson Yards continues to rise to its 1,296-foot apex. As of now, the Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed building is still shorter than its neighbor at 55 Hudson Yards. The office building will eventually become the New York home base of companies like CNN, HBO, Time Warner, and two of the biggest developers of the neighborhood: Related and Oxford Properties Group. Construction is expected to wrap up on 30 Hudson Yards in 2019.

Thomas Heatherwick’s $200 million public square is poised to open in 2018, but there’s a ways yet to go on the area’s crowning installation, Vessel. The so-called Eiffel Tower of New York City officially broke ground on April 18, and has made some leeway since. Several of the public sculptures 150 staircases have been put into place. When it’s complete, Vessel will be a 150-foot climbable, incredibly polarizing piece of public art.

• The Definitive Guide to the Hudson Yards Development Boom [Curbed]
• All Hudson Yards coverage [Curbed]