Random House Tower

230 West 56th Street | also 1731 Broadway, 1745 Broadway | Midtown | built 2002

Open on the map6 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1999

    Random House's Broadway skyway plan falls through, so it joins Stephen Ross's tower at 55th Street

    With its lease at 201 East 50th Street ending, Random House planned in 1998 to build near parent company Bertelsmann's headquarters at 1540 Broadway, linked by a neon-lit skyway over 45th Street. The property owner withdrew, so in 1999 the publisher chose Stephen M. Ross's project at Broadway and 55th Street, already under construction. New architects then reworked the design.

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 2003

    The 52-story tower combines SOM-designed offices with a luxury apartment section above

    Offices fill the second through 26th stories, with apartments from the 27th to the 51st. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the steel-framed office section, and Ismael Leyva Architects and Adam Tihany did the concrete-framed residential section. Because the two parts do not line up, trusses on the 26th and 27th floors carry the load. Critics said its three main towers resemble three books, though the architects called them sliding crystals.

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 2003

    The Park Imperial apartments draw early residents including P. Diddy and Randy Johnson

    The residential part of the tower, called the Park Imperial, holds 130 apartments with ten-foot ceilings and five penthouses of up to 2,970 square feet. The floors are numbered 48 to 70 for marketing, though the building has only 52 stories. P. Diddy and Yankees pitcher Randy Johnson were among the first tenants.

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 2003

    Two tuned mass dampers in the 50th-floor mechanical room reduce the tower's sway

    The building has two fluid tuned mass dampers, housed in the 50th-floor mechanical room, to damp sway from wind. Each tank is enclosed by 16-inch concrete walls and measures 20 feet wide, 70 feet long and 12 feet tall. One is oriented west to east and the other north to south.

    Source: Wikipedia

  5. 2016

    Penguin Random House extends its lease to 2033 and makes the tower its global headquarters

    Random House has leased the offices since the tower opened. After the 2013 merger forming Penguin Random House, the parent company worked at first from SoHo. In 2016, two years before the lease was set to end, it extended it through 2033, and the tower became its global headquarters, covering about 603,650 square feet and roughly 2,400 employees.

    Source: Wikipedia

  6. 2019

    January

    Penguin's staff moves uptown to join Random House at 1745 Broadway

    Penguin and Random House, which merged in 2013, finished bringing their New York staffs together at 1745 Broadway in January 2019. Penguin employees relocated uptown to join colleagues already in the tower, and repurposed furniture made up 39 percent of the furnishings on the renovated floors. More than 2,000 people now work in the consolidated office.

    Source: authornews.penguinrandomhouse.com

Further reading

Nearby

All 178 buildings with stories in Midtown