Carnegie Hall Tower
152 West 57th Street | also 155 West 56th Street | Midtown | built 1988
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1963
The Rembrandt apartment house beside Carnegie Hall is demolished, leaving a city-owned parking lot
The Rembrandt Apartments stood on the site of today's Carnegie Hall Tower; it was one of several buildings near Carnegie Hall put up as homes for artists and musicians. After it came down in 1963 the lot became a parking lot owned by the city. The Carnegie Hall Corporation, which leased the hall from the city, leased the lot as well.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1983
Three developers compete for the empty Rembrandt lot beside Carnegie Hall, and Macklowe walks away
The Rembrandt Apartments, built in 1881, were torn down in 1963, and the lot next to Carnegie Hall stayed a city-owned parking lot. In 1983 the finalists to build there were Kaufman Realty with César Pelli, Rockrose with Charles Moore, and Harry Macklowe with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Macklowe wanted to link the lot to land he held on the other side of the Russian Tea Room, but its owners kept refusing to sell, so he withdrew and built Metropolitan Tower instead.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1987
Isaac Stern, James Wolfensohn and Mayor Koch attend the groundbreaking for Pelli's tower
Rockrose won the site in May 1985 with Pelli as its architect. The Landmarks Preservation Commission cleared the project in October 1986; the Board of Estimate signed off in September 1987. Those at the November 20, 1987 groundbreaking included Carnegie Hall president Isaac Stern, its chairman James Wolfensohn, Rockrose head Henry Elghanayan and Mayor Ed Koch. The cornerstone went in on May 13, 1988, ninety-eight years to the day after the hall's own.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1988
Carnegie Hall Tower's cornerstone is laid on the 98th anniversary of the hall's own
On May 13, 1988, the cornerstone of the tower was laid, on the 98th anniversary of the day the cornerstone of Carnegie Hall itself was laid. The foundations were finished that month. The neighboring Russian Tea Room, however, would not sell its building or its air rights.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1990
Pelli's 757-foot tower, only 50 feet wide on 57th Street, rises in brick that echoes the concert hall
The 60-story tower fills a lot with just 50 feet of frontage, which made it one of the most slender skyscrapers anywhere when it was finished. Pelli picked brick in eleven colors to answer the reddish-brown brick of Carnegie Hall, and kept the base low, close to the hall's own height. Engineer Jacob Grossman chose a cast-in-place concrete core of two joined tubes, since concrete controlled the sway of so narrow a frame better than steel would.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1991
Carnegie Hall's new backstage space in the tower opens with a Tchaikovsky exhibit
The tower opened in September 1990 into a weak office market, and Rockrose courted small firms with spaces as modest as 2,000 square feet. Part of the building was set aside for Carnegie Hall, and that expansion opened in April 1991 with an exhibit of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky memorabilia. It brought the venue its first freight elevator; until then, pianos had been hauled up the stairs by hand.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1994
The American Institute of Architects honors the tower, which is grouped with two neighbors as the Tuning Fork Trio
The tower's design won an AIA Honor Award in 1994, and César Pelli received the institute's Gold Medal the next year. Paul Goldberger of the Times, writing while it was still being planned, praised it as respectful, responsible urbanism but thought its height far out of scale with the landmark hall beside it. Because of their shapes and closeness, CitySpire, Carnegie Hall Tower and Metropolitan Tower came to be nicknamed the Tuning Fork Trio.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2001
Bill Clinton plans his post-presidential office on the 56th floor, then picks Harlem after a cost uproar
As his term ended, Bill Clinton intended to put his office on the tower's 56th floor. The space was priced at an estimated $98 per square foot, and the controversy over that cost led him to rent in Harlem instead. Rents kept climbing: by 2007 the 40th and 41st floors were marketed at $175 per square foot a year, against an $85 average for premium Midtown offices.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2017
The tower's owners refinance with a $325 million, 15-year MetLife loan
In 2017 TF Cornerstone, led by Tom and Fred Elghanayan, refinanced the 60-story tower at 152 West 57th Street with a $325 million, 15-year loan from Metropolitan Life, reported at a rate under 4 percent. The earlier debt included a $135 million loan at 6.25 percent. The broker, Singer & Bassuk, said it was the firm's fifth financing for the property since 1988.
Source: commercialsearch.com
Further reading
- Carnegie Hall TowerWikipedia
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