The Hearst Tower building is quite unique: its six-story stone base is topped by a dramatic glass-and-steel skyscraper. Behind that unusual combination lies a fascinating story.
It begins in the 1920s, when newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst commissioned Austrian-born architect Joseph Urban, in association with George B. Post & Sons, to design headquarters for his growing media empire. Completed in 1928, the six-story building was intended to serve as the base of a much taller skyscraper.
However, the plans were halted by the Great Depression.
The tower was never built, leaving Urban’s elaborate six-story base standing by itself for nearly eight decades. The building became what the Landmarks Preservation Commission aptly called an “expectant” base—a skyscraper waiting for its tower.
That tower finally arrived in the 21st century.
A Skyscraper Nearly 80 Years in the Making
Construction on a new tower designed by British architect Norman Foster and Foster + Partners began in 2004. Rather than demolishing Urban’s historic building, Foster created a 46-story glass-and-steel tower to rise directly from it.
The result is one of New York’s most dramatic examples of old and new architecture working together. Instead of conforming to the style of Urban’s original richly decorated limestone façade, Foster created a sleek, geometric structure of glass and steel. The contrast was a deliberate choice.
Completed in 2006, Hearst Tower was the first skyscraper to break ground in New York City after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and its construction was widely viewed as a statement of the city’s resilience.
The completed tower quickly attracted international attention, winning the 2006 Emporis Skyscraper Award, which recognized it as the world’s best skyscraper completed that year.
The Diagrid
One of the most immediately recognizable features of Hearst Tower is its unusual triangular pattern.
Instead of using a conventional grid of vertical columns and horizontal beams, Foster’s engineers created a diagrid—a structural framework of diagonal steel members forming a repeating pattern of triangles across the façade.
This system isn’t just decorative. It is structural: the diagrid uses approximately 20 percent less steel than a conventional skyscraper frame, while giving the tower its distinctive diamond-shaped appearance. Approximately 85 percent of the steel used in the tower was recycled.
A pioneer of green skyscraper design
Hearst Tower was designed with environmental considerations built in from the beginning. It became one of New York’s pioneering examples of green skyscraper design and was the first office tower in the city to receive LEED Gold certification.
Its most interesting environmental systems are hidden from view.
The floor of the dramatic atrium is paved with heat-conductive limestone. Beneath it, polyethylene tubing carries circulating water, providing heating in winter and cooling in summer.
The building also collects rainwater from its roof. A 14,000-gallon tank in the basement stores the water for use in the cooling system, irrigation, and the building’s spectacular water feature. This system reduces the amount of stormwater entering New York City’s sewer system.
Overall, the tower was designed to use roughly 26 percent less energy than a conventional code-compliant office building.
Icefall
The place where the environmental technology becomes visible is the building’s spectacular atrium.
At its center is Icefall, a dramatic two-story waterfall composed of thousands of glass panels. Water cascades down the glass wall, creating a shimmering curtain behind the escalators. But Icefall isn’t merely decoration. The water feature is part of the building’s environmental system, helping to cool and humidify the atrium. And some of the water circulating through the system comes from the rainwater collected on the roof.
It’s a wonderful example of Foster’s approach to architecture: technology isn’t necessarily something to hide. At Hearst Tower, engineering becomes part of the visual experience.
William Randolph Hearst’s Media Empire
The building’s story is inseparable from the man whose name it carries.
William Randolph Hearst began building his media empire in San Francisco before expanding into New York and acquiring the New York Morning Journal. He became one of America’s most powerful newspaper publishers, eventually creating a vast publishing empire that included newspapers, magazines, and other media.
Hearst and his great rival Joseph Pulitzer became closely associated with the sensational style of newspaper reporting that came to be known as yellow journalism.
Today, Hearst’s media holdings, headquartered on Eighth Avenue, include many familiar publications such as Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping, as well as the San Francisco Chronicle.
The Architecture of the Original Base
The Urban’s building ended up waiting almost eighty years for its skyscraper tower.
Before looking up at Foster’s tower, it’s worth taking a close look at the six-story building below it.
Urban’s design is more complicated than just “Art Deco.” The Landmarks Preservation Commission describes the building as a stylistic synthesis of Art Deco ornament, Secessionist influence, Baroque theatricality, and classical allusions.
That combination makes perfect sense for Joseph Urban. Born in Vienna, Urban had a background in both architecture and theater design, which is evident in the building’s dramatic quality.
The façade is enriched with elaborate ornament and a remarkable sculptural program by Henry Kreis. The sculptures are simplified, powerful figures integrated into the architecture. These allegorical figures represent Comedy and Tragedy, Music and Art, Sport and Industry, and Printing and the Sciences.
Urban was creating a monument to Hearst’s growing media empire and to the cultural ambitions of the publisher who commissioned it.
A Dialogue Across Time
What makes Hearst Tower so fascinating is a conversation between two very different eras of New York architecture.
Joseph Urban’s six-story base reflects the exuberant architecture of the 1920s, combining Art Deco ornament with European Secessionist influences, Baroque theatricality, and classical references.
Norman Foster used an entirely different vocabulary: glass, steel, geometry, advanced engineering, and environmental technology.
Foster did not try to make the new tower disappear into Urban’s design—or pretend that the two buildings belonged to the same era. Instead, he emphasized the contrast. The new tower rises above the old one, clearly announcing that it belongs to another century. The transparent connection between the two creates the impression that the tower is almost floating above its historic base.
Built nearly eight decades apart, the two parts of Hearst Tower tell a remarkably complete story of New York architecture: the grand ambitions of the Jazz Age, the economic catastrophe of the Depression, the preservation of historic architecture, the technological possibilities of the 21st century, and a city’s determination to keep building toward the future.
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