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The first thing you see as you step through the door of the old International Magazine Building is what's missing: the International Magazine Building.
Inside its landmark-protected Art Deco limestone shell, the guts of William Randolph Hearst's six-story publishing palace have been blown up and out, floors, walls and all. On a recent Thursday morning, daylight poured in through the old windows into a vast, building-sized negative space, which punches skyward past the old roof line, up to a glass ceiling 10 stories high.
When Hearst commissioned the old building from architect Joseph Urban in 1926, he meant for a skyscraper to rise above the six- story pedestal at 57th Street and Eighth Avenue. The Depression scuttled those vertical ambitions. But now, the mogul finally has his tower. On Feb. 11, the Hearst Corporation plans to celebrate the official topping-out of the 46th floor of its future headquarters, at a ceremony featuring Governor George Pataki, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, architect Lord Norman Foster, Hearst Magazines president Cathleen Black and Hearst C.E.O. Victor Ganzi.
And, in a gesture of William Randolph Hearst--ian scale and subtlety, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Lord Foster has transformed the old building into the new building's lobby. Steel columns with the girth of redwoods rise 70 feet through the towering atrium to the sky-lit ceiling. An escalator, still clad in protective plywood, ascends three stories from street level to the atrium where the city's fastest elevator cars will be installed, whisking Hearst staffers up through the glass-and-steel spire above. Below is a vertical 30-foot wall that will be covered with cascading water. On the north side, a 164-seat screening room will be installed. Two mezzanines flank the expanse, one will hold the 380-seat cafeteria, the other an exhibition space that will showcase displays of Hearst memorabilia and art.
"I think it's a great marrying of the tradition and history, which is what Hearst is all about," said Ms. Black in a phone conversation, "but then this fabulous 46-story steel-and-glass building, that's all about tomorrow."
The all-about-tomorrow spirit is the prevailing mood in Manhattan media real estate. The New York Times has broken ground on Eighth Avenue for its $850 million Renzo Piano tower, planning to leave its ink-stained Gothic past on 43rd Street....