Tall & Urban News

A new set of renderings has been released for Vornado Realty Trust‘s 7.4-million-square-foot (687,482-square-meter) Penn District redevelopment in Midtown. Created by DBOX, the images highlight Penn 15, a 1,270-foot (387-meter) supertall designed by Foster + Partners at 15 Penn Plaza. The overall plan aims to transform and revitalize the cityscape between Sixth and Seventh Avenues and West 32nd and West 34th Streets with a total of eight new skyscrapers surrounding the 109-year-old James A. Farley Building and Skidmore Owings & Merrill's newly opened Moynihan Train Hall, as well as One and Two Penn Plaza and Madison Square Garden.

A mix of office, hotel, retail, outdoor public space, and much needed upgrades to transportation services would span all of Penn District.

Diagrams show Penn 15’s 2.8 million square feet (260,128 square meters) spread over 61 stories and divided into several large sections of rentable space. The first two levels encompass 130,000 rentable square feet (12,077 square meters); floors five through 17 with 640,000 rentable square feet (59,457 square meters); floors 18 through 30 with 660,000 rentable square feet (61,316 square meters); floors 31 through 43 with 670,000 rentable square feet (61,316 square meters); floors 44 through 56 with 500,000 rentable square feet (46,451 square meters); and floors 57 through 61 with 200,000 rentable square feet (18,580 square meters).

Diagrams show how the architectural design came to be, with the core first being offset to the north side of the building’s footprint for higher flexibility in leasing office space and daylight exposure, followed by the grouping of every 12 floors into five distinct vertically stacked blocks, which are then staggered and laterally shifted to create numerous cantilevering landscaped outdoor terraces.

Two thin parallel vertical columns near the northern and southern ends of each elevation wrap over the top of the roof parapet, giving the impression of binding the rectangular blocks. Floor-to-ceiling glass makes up the majority of the façade, while the crown appears to be covered in metal grilles hiding extended mechanical units. A final set of outdoor terraces rests behind a tall multi-story wall of glass.

A construction timeline and completion date for the entire Penn District have not been finalized, though activity will likely not begin until sometime later this decade, with a completion date some time in the 2030s. Going in tandem with this huge undertaking would be the relocation of Madison Square Garden to its proposed new home closer to Herald Square. If fully realized, the master plan would dramatically alter the skyline between the iconic Empire State Building to the east and both Manhattan West and Hudson Yards to the west, forming a grand corridor of some of New York’s tallest structures.

For more on this story, go to YIMBY.