New York Hilton Hotel

Identification

Map

Structure in general

Usage

Facts

• The second and third floors of the base house the hotel ballrooms and promenades. The 2,200 guest rooms have ceilings 2,4 m high and, due to the zigzagged facades, outer walls forming a V-shaped protrusion. The two top floors house duplex apartments.
• Sculptural works within the building include Philip Pavia's sculpture group "Ides of March" in the Sixth Ave. driveway, James Metcalf's cast-iron sculpture in the lobby and Ibram Lassaw's hanging metal sculpture "Elysian Fields" in the promenade area.
• The 45-storey slab rises on the north side of a four-storey, masonry-clad base extending to the streets.
• The tower has main facades of blue-tinted glass with metal spandrels, and the vertical window shafts are projecting out from the wall in a series of facets zigzagging through the facade. The ends of the tower are clad in limestone.
• There is a driveway underneath the base on the Sixth Avenue side, leading to the hotel entrance. In the western portion of the building there is also a driveway to the hotel garage and its "motor lobby".
• The initial design by Morris Lapidus, Kornblath, Harle & Liebman was a 38-storey curving slab -- after they quit the commission they used a similar idea in the nearby Sheraton New York.