Random House Tower
in New York, United StatesCategory: Attraction
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Random House Tower, New York, NY 10019, USA Print route »
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The Random House Tower, also known as the Park Imperial Apartments, is a 52-story mixed-use tower in New York City, United States, that is used as the American headquarters of book publisher Penguin Random House and a luxury apartment complex. The PRH entrance is on Broadway and goes up to 27 floors, while the apartment complex entrance is on West 56th Street.Separate architects designed each of the sections. Skidmore, Owings & Merrill designed the office portion, which has a steel frame. Ismael Leyva Architects and Adam D. Tihany designed the residential portion, which has a concrete frame. The two sections do not entirely line up, and trusses were built on the 26th and 27th floor to transfer the load.
The apartments have three-meter ceilings, and there are five penthouses of up to 2,970 sq ft (276 m2) in size. Although the apartments start above the 27th floor of the office portion, the residential floors are numbered 48-70 for marketing purposes. Among the first tenants were P. Diddy and New York Yankees pitcher Randy Johnson.At the top of the building are two fluid tuned mass dampers - the first of their kind in the city - which are designed to damp building sway. Similar dampers are employed in the Citigroup Center building, although Citigroup's dampers are made of concrete. PRH's dampers have capacities of 265,000 and 379,000 liters of water.
The complex is on a trapezoidal block between 55th Street and 56th Street and follows the angle of Broadway. It has jagged setbacks, similar in shape to the towers of Rockefeller Center, to improve the views of Central Park.
Critics have noted that its three main towers give it the impression of being three books (although the architects referred to them as "three sliding crystals").PRH occupies 645,000 sq ft (59,900 m2), with the rest housing 130 apartments, as well as 32,000 sq ft (3,000 m2) of retail space.
In looking to expand its headquarters, Random House had originally planned to build a tower at 45th and Broadway across from its parent company Bertelsmann's headquarters at 1540 Broadway with a neon-lighted skyway across 45th Street connecting them.
