Building of the Day: Hearst Headquarters

The Center for Architecture will host an Archtober Building of the Day preview across the five boroughs from May 14-18 celebrating New York City old and new. Today, tour the Hearst Headquarters by Foster + Partners.

Hearst Tower revives a dream from the 1920s, when publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst envisaged Columbus Circle as a new media quarter in Manhattan. Hearst commissioned a six-storey Art Deco block on Eighth Avenue, anticipating that it would eventually form the base for a tower, though no such scheme was ever advanced. Echoing an approach developed in the Reichstag and the Great Court at the British Museum, the challenge in designing such a tower at seventy years remove was to establish a creative dialogue between old and new. The new tower rises above the old building to a height of forty-four-storeys, linked on the outside by a skirt of glazing that encourages an impression of the tower floating weightlessly above the base. At the base of the tower, the main spatial event is a lobby that occupies the entire floor plate of the old building and rises up through six floors. Like a bustling town square, this dramatic space provides access to all parts of the building.

Architect: Foster + Partners

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