57th StreetNew York40.7645° N
VERTICALE
Ninety-six storeys on a plot the size of a tennis court. The last twenty-eight floors are residences — and three remain, on 61, 74 and 89. They are not sold by the room. They are sold by the metre of altitude.
1,428 FT· SLENDERNESS 1 : 19· DAMPER 800 T· L 61 / 74 / 89
The tower
Built to hold still
VERTICALE is 1,428 feet of white high-strength concrete and low-iron glass, nineteen times taller than it is wide. The engineering brief was a single sentence: at the top, a glass of water should not know it lives in the sky. Everything below answers to that line — the core, the damper, the two floors we left open so the wind could pass through the building instead of around it.
- Structure
- 12,000-psi concrete shear core, outrigger walls at 30 and 58
- Slenderness
- 1 : 19 — among the most slender occupied towers built
- Damper
- 800-tonne tuned mass pendulum, level 92, stroke ± 1.4 m
- Wind floors
- Levels 66–67 are open to the sky. The tower exhales
- Lifts
- Two private cars at 8 m/s. Lobby to 89 in 57 seconds
- Glass
- Triple-laminated low-iron units, 11′6″ clear, replaceable from inside
Residence · L 61 · +909 FT
Sixty‑one — the gallery floor
The full plate, planned around one long room: a north gallery sixty-two feet end to end, with hanging wall on both sides and the light that painters argue about. From 61 the city is still legible — you can read the Bergdorf clock, count the cabs turning onto Sixth. It is the last floor that feels of the street rather than above it.
- 4,265 sq ft interior
- Exposures N · E · S · W
- Ceilings 11′6″ clear
- Private lift lobby
- Price on application
Residence · L 74 · +1,103 FT
Seventy‑four — the still point
Seven floors above the open wind levels, 74 is where the accelerometers go quiet: in the monitored record it is the calmest occupied floor in the tower. The plan turns its best corner — southwest — into a study with two walls of glass, and at the equinoxes the sunset arrives due west and crosses the whole apartment in forty minutes, room by room.
- 4,265 sq ft interior
- Exposures N · E · S · W
- Ceilings 11′6″ clear
- Calmest monitored floor
- Price on application
Residence · L 89–90 · +1,326 FT
Eighty‑nine — above the weather
A duplex under the damper: living floor on 89, sleeping floor on 90, joined by a hung stair through a twenty-three-foot void. On roughly forty-one mornings a year the stratocumulus deck settles below the 87th floor, and breakfast is served above an unbroken field of cloud. The horizon here sits half a degree lower than it does on the street — the sun sets two minutes later for you than for everyone else.
- 6,930 sq ft over two floors
- Living room 23′0″ clear
- 41 mornings above cloud, on average
- Sunset +2 minutes vs street
- Price on application
The light · computed at L 74
A calendar of last light
Where the sunset lands, month by month. Times are corrected for altitude: at +1,103 feet the horizon dips 0.53° below level, and the sun stays with you a little longer than it stays with the street.
| Month | Sunset at 74 | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| January | 4:50 pm | South bedrooms, then the long hall |
| February | 5:26 pm | Primary suite; grazes the study wall |
| March | 7:00 pm | Due west at the equinox — the study takes it full |
| April | 7:34 pm | Study, then dining, forty minutes apart |
| May | 8:05 pm | Down the axis of 57th Street on the 29th |
| June | 8:28 pm | Northwest — living room and kitchen |
| July | 8:27 pm | Street-axis again on the 12th; then living |
| August | 7:56 pm | West windows, the whole run of them |
| September | 7:06 pm | Due west — the study, precisely |
| October | 6:14 pm | Study corner, then the south bedrooms |
| November | 4:41 pm | South bedrooms; low, amber, brief |
| December | 4:33 pm | Southernmost glass only — winter keeps to one room |
On 29 May and 12 July the setting sun aligns with the Manhattan street grid and looks straight down 57th Street into the apartment. Times are for the 15th of each month and include the +2-minute altitude correction.
Engineering note
On sway
Every tall building moves. The only honest questions are how much, and whether you will notice. VERTICALE was tunnel-tested at 1:500 against a 700-year design wind. In the ten-year storm, peak acceleration at level 89 is 3.1 milli-g — below the 5 milli-g threshold at which most people first perceive motion, and roughly what you feel in a parked railway carriage when another train passes.
The 800-tonne pendulum on 92 does its work in silence, and the open levels at 66–67 bleed the vortices that make slender towers sing. Once or twice a year, in a named storm, a chandelier may agree with the wind for a few minutes. That is not a fault. That is the building working.
- Design wind
- 700-year return, tunnel-tested at 1:500
- Peak acceleration
- 3.1 milli-g at L 89, ten-year storm
- Perception threshold
- ≈ 5 milli-g, seated occupant
- Damper authority
- − 42 % acceleration, engaged always
Price on application
Enquiries
Prices are given on application — not to be coy, but because each residence is offered with its own works allowance and its own closing calendar, and a number without those attached would mislead you. Write once. A person, not a system, replies within one business day. No brochures follow. No one calls twice.
- Viewings are weekday mornings, when the light is east.
- Proof of funds is asked for after the first viewing, never before.
- Your architect and engineer are welcome on the second visit.
- The monitored sway record — all nine years of it — is available in the data room.