Turner Construction no relation Central Park Place
Site
The Hearst Tower is on the border of the Hell's Kitchen and Midtown Manhattan neighborhoods of New York City, two blocks south of Columbus Circle. It is bounded by 56th Street to the south, Eighth Avenue to the east, and 57th Street to the north. The building faces Central Park Place to the north, 3 Columbus Circle to the northeast, and Random House Tower to the east. It is also one block south of Time Warner Center and 2 Columbus Circle. The base of the Hearst Tower carries the alternate addresses 951–969 Eighth Avenue, 301–313 West 56th Street, and 302–312 West 57th Street. The site is a nearly square lot covering 40,166 square feet (3,731.5 m2), and measuring 200.00 by 200.83 feet (60.96 by 61.21 m).  Entrances to the New York City Subway's 59th Street–Columbus Circle station, served by the 1​, A, ​B, ​C, and ​D trains, are within the base of the tower.The Hearst Tower is near an artistic hub that developed around a two-block section of West 57th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, following the opening of Carnegie Hall at Seventh Avenue in 1891. The area contained several headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Lotos Club, and the ASCE Society House. Although the original Hearst Magazine Building was just outside the artistic hub, its proximity to these institutions was one factor in the selection of its location.Architecture
The original six-story structure, known as the Hearst Magazine Building or the International Magazine Building, was designed by architect Joseph Urban and architecture firm George B. Post & Sons. Completed in 1928 and intended as the base of a future tower, the Hearst Magazine Building was designed in an early form of the Art Deco style. Henry Kreis designed six sculptural groups at the third story. The Hearst Magazine Building is the only survivor of an unbuilt entertainment complex that its developer, Hearst Communications founder William Randolph Hearst, had envisioned for Columbus Circle in the early 20th century. The tower, designed by Norman Foster, was completed in 2006, almost eight decades after the base was built. The Hearst Corporation and Tishman Speyer developed the tower, while WSP Global was the structural engineer and Turner Construction was the main contractor.The two sections of the Hearst Tower are a combined 597 feet (182 m) tall, with forty-six stories above ground. The base occupies nearly the whole lot and originally contained floors arranged in a "U" shape, flanking a courtyard to the west. Along much of the base, the third through sixth stories are slightly set back from the lowest two floors. The original building's roof was 70 feet (21 m) above ground. The tower stories are more deeply set back from the lowest six floors on the north, east, and south sides. The tower contains a smaller footprint of 160 by 120 feet (49 by 37 m), the longer dimension extending from east to west. The setbacks above the sixth floor contain a skylight 40 feet (12 m) wide.The Hearst Tower has 856,000 square feet (79,500 m2) of office space. According to the New York City Department of City Planning, the building has a gross floor area of 703,796 square feet (65,384.8 m2). The tower received a zoning bonus that enabled its maximum floor area to be expanded by six floors or 120,000 square feet (11,000 m2), a twenty percent increase from the previous maximum allowed floor area of 600,000 square feet (56,000 m2). In exchange, the Hearst Corporation agreed to improve access to the subway station directly underneath, adding three elevators and reconfiguring the subway station's circulation areas. Without the zoning amendment, the Hearst Corporation might have had to pay up to $10 million for additional air rights, as the company had already utilized all the unused air rights above the Hearst Magazine Building.In conjunction with the canceled opera house, Hearst had originally planned to construct a two-story office and retail building with a 2,500-seat theater, designed by Michael Bernstein. This was subsequently changed to a six-story office and theater building, to be designed by Thomas W. Lamb. Hearst's magazines were slated to be published three blocks west, on a block bounded by 11th and 12th Avenues between 54th and 55th Streets. By August 1926, the 11th Avenue site was abandoned, and Hearst had replaced Lamb, hiring Urban to design a magazine headquarters on the Eighth Avenue site. Because the proposed magazine headquarters was to be a skyscraper, Hearst also hired George B. Post & Sons, who had experience erecting skyscrapers.Excavation of the Hearst Magazine Building had started by June 1927. At the time, the section of Eighth Avenue between 42nd and 59th Streets was seeing rapid development, with surrounding realty values having increased 200 percent since the beginning of the decade. This was, in part, due to the development of the Independent Subway System's Eighth Avenue Line and zoning regulations that allowed for the development of skyscrapers on that part of Eighth Avenue. By January 1928, the Hearst Magazine Building was nearly completed. The Hearst Magazine Building ultimately cost $2 million (equivalent to $25.2 million in 2021).