The design of the 55-story Four Seasons Hotel at this most important site at 57 East 57th Street, between Madison and Park Avenues, has responded to the New York tradition of having a strong masonry building with punched windows. Utilizing this tradition helps the limestone tower fit into the overall architectural fabric of New York City, as well as the Hotel’s immediate built environment which includes the Fuller Building and the Ritz Tower. Collaborating with I.M.Pei on the design of the 55-story Four Seasons Hotel, yielded an unparalleled learning experience as well as the tallest hotel in New York.

The skyscraper is set back from East 57th Street and the architectural form slopes gently down to the 90 foot street wall, creating an inviting scale for the hotel entrance on East 57th Street. The cascading steps are located at points in the Tower where a change is made in the Hotel Program. These setbacks are designed to have lighting integrated at each of the corners which give the Hotel a very festive character at night. The Hotel’s contextual detailing provides the building with a sense of scale that is found in the great architectural skyscrapers of New York.

The arrivals rotunda, clad in limestone similar to the exterior façade, is conceived along East 57th Street as a spatial cube, grand in scale with terrace levels separating the lobby lounges from the through block promenade. This through block promenade is a sequence of spaces that move from East 57th Street through to East 58th Street and provide New Yorkers with a new opportunity to move through the hotel without being a hotel guest.

The 367-room hotel has a variety of guestrooms from the one-bedroom suites to the most luxurious accommodations, which is the 4,000-square-foot, two bedroom Presidential Suite, which occupies the entire top floor of the hotel. This Presidential Suite has 14 foot coffered ceilings, a formal dining room for entertaining and bathrooms with saunas and steam rooms.