Keio Plaza Hotel Tokyo

Completed in 1971 with 47 stories and a height of 178 m, the Keio Plaza Hotel was the first skyscraper finished under the Shinjuku Subcenter Plan and held the title of the world's tallest hotel at the time of its opening.

Use

Office tower

Area

Shinjuku City

Completed

1971

Floors

47 above ground, 3 below

Height

178 m

Developer

Keio Corporation

Architect

Nihon Sekkei

The Hotel That Started Nishi-Shinjuku’s Skyline

When the Keio Plaza Hotel opened on 5 June 1971, it was the tallest hotel in the world. Standing 47 floors above Nishi-Shinjuku with three basement levels and a height of 178 meters, it was the first building to reach completion under the Shinjuku Subcenter Development Plan — Tokyo’s ambitious project to transform the former Yodobashi Water Purification Plant site into a modern high-rise district.

Designed by Nihon Sekkei, the hotel received the Building Contractors Society Award in 1972. For many Tokyoans at the time, the appearance of a white tower on the open land west of Shinjuku Station was the first tangible sign that the city’s centre of gravity was about to shift. Where there had been warehouses and low-rise buildings, a new kind of urban landscape was taking shape.

The Vanguard of a High-Rise District

The formal urban plan for Nishi-Shinjuku was established in the 1960s. Once the water purification plant was decommissioned, large parcels of land became available for high-rise development, and the Keio Plaza Hotel was the first building to rise from that ground. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building — now the area’s most recognizable landmark — did not arrive until 1991, a full two decades later.

Throughout the 1970s, the Shinjuku Mitsui Building, the Shinjuku Sumitomo Building, and the Shinjuku Nomura Building followed in succession, filling in the skyline that visitors see today. Understood as the catalyst that set this sequence in motion, the Keio Plaza Hotel occupies an outsized place in the urban history of Nishi-Shinjuku.

Summary

The Keio Plaza Hotel was completed in 1971 with 47 above-ground floors and a height of 178 meters. As the first skyscraper realized under the Shinjuku Subcenter Plan, it launched what would become one of Tokyo’s most iconic high-rise clusters.

Step out of Shinjuku Station’s west exit and look straight ahead — the white tower at the front of the skyline has been standing there for more than half a century. Walk up to it and look back toward the station to understand the scale of what this single building helped set in motion.

Related: Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building No.1 / Shinjuku Mitsui Building / Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower

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