West 57th Street and Steinway Hall

Michael Stern’s 111 West 57th Street was built in the courtyard of the landmarked Steinway Hall, and the entries in this cluster describe the street that surrounds the pair. West 57th Street has changed its character several times in a century and a half, and each change left buildings behind.

Music came early. Andrew Carnegie conceived his concert hall in 1887, hired the architect and cellist William Burnet Tuthill, and opened his hall, its brick walls dressed in terra cotta, during May 1891 with Tchaikovsky conducting in his American debut; by the late 1950s it had fallen into disrepair and faced a set demolition date, and in 1960 New York City intervened to save it, as New York City Tourism’s history of the hall tells it.¹

Art followed. Between the world wars the city’s gallery trade gathered on 57th Street, and 6sqft’s history of those galleries describes old townhouses on the street being bought by dealers and in some cases rebuilt taller, beginning with the Durand Ruel gallery at 12 East 57th Street in 1913.²

Towers came last. In recent years a row of very thin residential skyscrapers has risen along the 57th Street corridor south of Central Park, and the Municipal Art Society runs guided walks that look at the zoning rules behind their proportions and at why the stretch acquired the nickname Billionaires’ Row.³

The cluster takes these layers one at a time. Steinway Hall is the subject of its own entry on the Warren and Wetmore building, and the entry on the Steinway showroom follows the piano trade that paid for it. Billionaires Row treats the newer towers and the debate over their shadows, and a corridor survey gathers the studios, galleries and concert halls. Three entries look at the site itself: the courtyard, the hall’s interior and its conservation, and building tall on a midblock lot.