In 1980, Donald Trump made his first foray in Manhattan real estate, turning the stolid 26-story Commodore Hotel on Manhattan’s East 42nd Street into the ugly, glass-encased Grand Hyatt. That same year, architect T.J. Gottesdiener went to work at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Forty years later, the hotel has outlived its usefulness, and Gottesdiener, now a consulting partner at SOM, has designed a two-million-square-foot mixed use tower to replace it. The 1,653-foot-high building will be half again as tall as the Chrysler Building, immediately across Lexington Avenue, making the art deco masterpiece invisible from the west. But Jon McMillan, the director of planning for TF Cornerstone, co-developer of the building, argues that the Chrysler Building is already obscured by One Vanderbilt, the brand new 1,401-foot-high KPF tower just west of Grand Central Terminal, and that his much taller building, on the east side of the terminal, will at least provide a neutral backdrop for William Van Alen’s classic spire. (Renderings showing the relationship of the new building to its 1930 neighbor have not yet been released, though McMillan says “they’re coming.”) Meanwhile, views of Chrysler from the northeast will be erased by Foster + Partner’s new tower at 270 Park Avenue, expected to top out at more than 1,400 feet. McMillan says he believes the three supertalls will have a “lovely relationship” and that “a new Manhattan skyline is emerging."
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