111 West 57th Street (Steinway Tower)

111 West 57th Street is the skinniest skyscraper on earth, and the engineering is the whole story. The SHoP Architects-designed condominium tower rises 435 meters (1,428 feet) over Midtown on a base barely 60 feet wide, a slenderness ratio of 24 to 1. For every 24 feet of height, the building is one foot wide. That proportion makes it the second-tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere and a structural problem that took years to solve.

Project Scope

The project stitches old and new. It preserves and restores the landmarked Steinway Hall, the 1925 Warren and Wetmore building that gives the tower its nickname, and grafts a feather-thin residential shaft onto the lot behind it. WSP engineered the structure to stand up to wind that would set a tower this slender swaying, using a high-strength concrete core and a tuned mass damper near the top to settle the motion. The east and west facades step back as the tower climbs, a terracotta-and-bronze skin that tapers the silhouette. Interiors are by Studio Sofield, and JDS Development Group and Property Markets Group developed the roughly $2 billion project, with JDS self-performing construction. Work ran from 2014 to completion around 2021 and 2022.

Why It Matters

The tower pushed the limits of how thin a habitable building can go, and the industry took notes. Its damper system, facade engineering, and core design became reference points for the next round of pencil-thin residential towers, in New York and beyond. It also crystallized the Billionaires’ Row typology, ultra-luxury supertalls selling air, light, and Central Park views by the floor.

That model has critics, and the economics of single-unit-per-floor supertalls remain debated. But as a feat of structural engineering it stands with neighbors like Central Park Tower, and as the slenderness record-holder it sits alone. Few buildings make a discipline rethink what’s buildable. This one did.

Project Team & Details