ARCHITECTURE: Hearst Tower Spy Shots

I THINK THAT LORD NORMAN FOSTER'S Hearst Tower on W. 57th Street in Manhattan is one of the more interesting works-in-progress in New York at the current time. It's distinctive tower portion rises from the striking 1927 facade where William Randolph Hearst had planned a skyscraper to rise. Alas, the Great Depression got in the way.

Well, anyhow, a source of The Gutter, Curbed's architecture blog, (identifying herself as a construction worker at the site), snapped photos from the yet-to-be-finished interior. Exciting stuff, if you get giddy over such stuff. There's also a grainy photo of the building's new atrium, something architecture critic Paul Goldberger described in the New Yorker in December as something New York has not seen since Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim. I'd like to see it in person.

(Note: Readers might note that with my uneasiness with facadism, my praise of the Hearst Tower might be hypocritical. But Foster's design, in my honest opinion, is architecturally worthy of the historic sacrifice. A boring square box like 2000 Penn in D.C. which uses the facade of my family's old rowhouse on Eye Street for marketing, not so much. Anyway, a skyscraper was supposed to be built there in the first place.)

>> "Hearst Tower Spy Shots!" [The Gutter via Curbed]
>> Hearst Tower (New York) [Wikipedia]
>> Hearst Tower [Hearst Corp.]

Photo of Hearst building from Curbed