New York City’s skyline is home to some of the world’s most iconic buildings, from the Empire State Building to the Chrysler Building to One World Trade Centre.
But the latest addition has taken a slightly different look. Soaring above Central Park in Midtown Manhattan stands Steinway Tower, officially known as 111 West 57th Street. The sky-high building isn’t just another luxury high rise, it’s a feat of engineering as it becomes thinner and thinner as it starts to touch the clouds, so much so that it’s known as the world’s thinnest skyscraper.
The base of the tower stands at a very modest 57 feet wide and rises 1,428 feet among its 91 floors, making it the second-tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere. But its extreme thinness comes with some interesting quirks that are not for the faint-hearted. Anyone taking up one of the flats on the upper floor can expect a very subtle but still scary sway. Due to the building’s flexible structure, it is designed to withstand the most powerful winds that could whip through the city and is perfectly safe, even though those winds could cause it to move by up to a few feet in either direction.
The rise of these “super-skinnies” has been made possible by new technology, making concrete stronger and more flexible. They also have something called a “tuned mass damper” , a sort of 800-tonne giant ball that sits on hydraulics to counteract the sway from the wind keeping the building grounded and sturdy.
But despite its skinny size, the building is still home to 46 full-floor and duplex apartments as well as an 82-foot swimming pool looking out through floor-to-ceiling windows onto central New York.
Steinway Tower is also home to a modern version of the iconic King Cole cocktail bar, filled with silver and gold murals.
Unsurprisingly, the tower cost a pretty penny to build, setting the developers back an eye-watering $2 billion, although they could be about to recoup a big chunk of that in one go, as the quadplex penthouse suite has gone for sale for $110 million.
One of the world’s tallest flats, it spans a whopping 11,480 square feet, with more than 600 square feet of outdoor terraces to enjoy the view in. Unsurprisingly, it is currently marked as New York City’s most expensive publicly listed home.
Designed by the New York architecture firms SHoP and Studio Sofield, the building was finished in 2022, but the top penthouse has only now gone on the market. It’s in an area of New York City known as Billionaires’ Row.
Up with luxury brokers Sotheby’s, Nikkie Field, a listing broker at the agents, told The Times: “We wanted to wait and hold the release of the quadplex until we had strong sales that would support the sale of this unit. We now have those strong sales, and this merits a mega-buyer in New York.”
Having previously helped Amazon founder and the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, find a Fifth Avenue flat she revealed she is looking for her “Jeff Bezos 2.0” to help fill one of the world’s most luxurious flats.
