Steinway Tower, a super-tall, super-skinny tower at 111 West 57th Street in New York City, is the most slender tower in the world, according to the developers.
The 1,428-foot tower is 24 times taller than it is wide.
According to New York's Skyscraper Museum, a tower's slenderness is based on the width of the base compared to the height of the building.
"A tower can be very tall, but not slender, and it can be slender without being very tall," reads the museum's website.
On a recent gloomy October morning, I took the train uptown to Steinway Tower.
The 91-story skyscraper is in an area called Billionaires' Row, home to some of the city's most expensive real estate. Billionaire buyers like Ken Griffin, Michael Dell, and Liu Yiqian have picked up multimillion-dollar condos in the glossy towers rising in the neighborhood.
111 West 57th Street sits atop the historic Steinway Hall, which was built by the piano company Steinway & Sons and opened in 1925.
While building the luxury skyscraper atop Steinway Hall, developers have also done a thorough restoration of the interior and exterior of the historic building.
The building is still a construction site, with scaffolding hiding most of the bottom of the tower from view.
The tower is expected to be completed sometime in 2020, but the developers held a special press event for a peek at the first finished condo in the building.
I stepped into the Steinway Hall rotunda, which was once part of the famed piano company's showroom. A pianist was playing pieces by composers like Chopin, Brahms, and Rachmaninoff — on a Steinway, of course — next to a glowing model of the building.
After some introductory remarks, coffee, and tiny quiches, we went up the elevators in small groups to the 43rd floor.
The first finished condo in Steinway Tower is a 4,500-square-foot, three-bedroom unit on the 43rd floor — about halfway up the building — with its own private elevator entrance.
While it's not currently for sale, a three-bedroom of the same size on the 44th floor is listed for $29.5 million.
The condo has about 4,500 square feet of living space. The open kitchen flows seamlessly into the living area.
Although I wasn't able to get a photo of the living area without people in it, this is what the view of Central Park would look like on a sunny day.
Thanks to its location almost directly at the center of the park's southern border, 111 West 57th Street has symmetrical views of NYC's most famous park.
The condo's great room is more than 50 feet long.
During my visit, the view looked more like this.
It was drizzly and foggy, and on the 43rd floor, we were basically in the clouds.
The dining area, which can comfortably fit 10 people, sits on the opposite end of the great room from the kitchen.
... and across from that is the marble-clad master bathroom, which features dual vanities and a walk-in rain shower.
The master bedroom sits in the southeast corner of the building.
When it's finished, Steinway Tower will offer residents amenities that include a 24-hour doorman and concierge, an 82-foot swimming pool, and an expansive shared outdoor terrace.
The architect of 111 West 57th Street describes it as the "quintessential" New York City building, but I'm not sure I agree with that characterization.
Gregg Pasquarelli, founder of SHoP Architects, which designed the building, said at the press preview that their goal was to create a building that was "uniquely New York and absolutely modern and forward-thinking, but has the DNA of the New York skyscraper embedded in it."
"It's the quintessential tower designed and built by New Yorkers," Pasquarelli said.
The tower's terracotta and bronze exterior does differentiate it from the sleek glassy surfaces of the other new skyscrapers on Billionaires' Row.
But while the skyscraper's facade and super-tall, super-skinny silhouette are certainly unusual, I can't say that my tour of its first condo felt too different from another Billionaires' Row apartment I've visited.
Earlier this year, I toured a full-floor residence at nearby 157 West 57th Street that was listed for $58.5 million and found that the standout feature was the view of the park. Steinway Tower has basically the same draw, only slightly more symmetrical — a fact the developers made sure to emphasize during the press event.
Pasquarelli says the building is "uniquely New York." As a New Yorker, I have to say I'd rather live closer to the ground in a diverse neighborhood than 1,000 feet high in the clouds in Midtown, surrounded by the absent millionaires and billionaires that make up so many of the buyers on Billionaires' Row.
