200 West Street Building vs One Vanderbilt

Comparing the 200 West Street Building and the One Vanderbilt is interesting because they both rise in New York, NY, yet they were conceived by two different design teams, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, and were completed at different points in time. They were finished more than a decade apart.

This contrast within the same city allows us to see how different creative minds interpreted the evolving needs of New York across time.

Let's take a closer look!

The One Vanderbilt is clearly the larger tower of the two, both in terms of height and number of floors. It rises to 1401ft (427m) with 67 floors above ground, while the 200 West Street Building reaches 741ft (226m) with 45 floors above ground.

Of course, each project may have faced different briefs or regulatory constraints, which we don't really know about and could also explain the outcome.

Both the 200 West Street Building and the One Vanderbilt were designed in line with the aesthetic conventions of the Contemporary style.

At the time, this style was at the height of its popularity. So both Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates followed what was in many ways expected of them, producing designs that fit comfortably within contemporary architectural norms, rather than breaking with convention.

Both the 200 West Street Building and the One Vanderbilt were designed to serve as commercial towers, and that has remained their main use since their completion, serving similar roles in the urban fabric.

Both the 200 West Street Building and the One Vanderbilt rely on a Trussed Frame structural system.

A trussed-frame system adds diagonal bracing to a traditional frame, creating triangulated elements that improve resistance against wind and seismic forces.

They also employ the same type of facade, a Curtain Wall facade.

A curtain wall is a non-load-bearing facade hung from the structural frame. It is anchored to floor slabs and transfers only its own weight and wind loads, allowing for sleek, glassy exteriors.