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This is shaping up to be a big year for the supertall skyscrapers sprouting up throughout Midtown Manhattan. Jean Nouvel’s MoMA tower is just about complete; One Vanderbilt has topped out; and SHoP’s skinny West 57th Street skyscraper is also close to hitting its apex.
But the tallest of Manhattan’s new crop of skyscrapers, Extell’s Central Park Tower, now hovers above them all. The building has officially reached its 1,550-foot pinnacle, which the developer celebrated during a ceremony held on the building’s 107th floor—that’s 1,100 feet above ground, for those keeping track—on Tuesday morning.
“It’s been a long, long road to get here,” Extell’s president, Gary Barnett, said during the event. The building has been in the works for more than a decade, when Extell began buying up the properties (including several historic buildings along West 57th Street) that would eventually fall so Central Park Tower could rise. Extell initially filed plans for the tower back in 2012, but construction didn’t begin in earnest until 2015, when the building began rising above ground. Four years and 1,550 feet later, it’s reached its pinnacle.
The building was designed by Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, the firm behind some of the world’s tallest skyscrapers—including Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, which will be the first megatall tower when it’s completed—and is a somewhat complicated arrangement of parts. There’s a seven-story Nordstrom store at ground level, a cantilever that hovers over the landmarked Art Students League of New York building, and the enormous tower rising from that. But once you get to the top (or close to it, anyway), you only really notice one thing: the views.
At 1,550 feet, it’s the tallest residential building in the city, and were it not for One World Trade Center’s spire—which adds a low-rise structure’s worth of height to that skyscraper—it would be the tallest tower, period. And even on Billionaires’ Row, which is home to several other sky-high residential buildings, the tower is an anomaly; Extell’s own One57, the building that arguably kicked off the supertall, super-luxury craze, appears positively minuscule next to Central Park Tower.
Barnett is hoping that will be a selling point for the skyscraper, which dropped its first public listings earlier this year, and is one of several ultra-luxury buildings that may suffer due to a glut of high-priced developments on the market. “You can see everywhere in all directions,” Barnett said. “Nobody’s blocking our views.” (And you’ll pay dearly for the privilege; a five-bedroom on the 112th floor is currently asking $63 million.)
Check those views out for yourself:
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