Westin Tokyo

A 23-story, 89.9-meter hotel completed in 1994 within Yebisu Garden Place, Meguro Ward, Tokyo. Developed by Sapporo Breweries on the site of its former Yebisu brewery, the hotel holds 445 guest rooms and anchors the mixed-use complex connected by a moving walkway to JR Ebisu Station.

Use

Office tower

Area

Meguro City

Completed

1994

Floors

23 above ground, 5 below

Height

89.9 m

Developer

Sapporo Breweries

A Brewery Reborn as a Garden District

At 1-4-1 Mita, Meguro Ward, Tokyo — five minutes by covered moving walkway from JR Ebisu Station — the brick-toned facades of Yebisu Garden Place open onto a sequence of plazas and passages. At the heart of this complex stands Westin Tokyo, a 23-story hotel completed in October 1994. It rises 89.9 meters and holds 445 guest rooms, making it one of Tokyo’s larger luxury hotels of its era.

The land beneath Westin Tokyo once held the Yebisu Brewery, operated by Sapporo Breweries since the Meiji era. When the brewery relocated in 1990, Sapporo Breweries initiated a large-scale mixed-use redevelopment on the 7.5-hectare site. The resulting Yebisu Garden Place combines a hotel, department store, office buildings, restaurants, a cinema complex, and residential towers — all connected by a distinctive arched passage with a roof of glass and ironwork that evokes European railway station architecture.

Ebisu’s Transformation

The opening of Yebisu Garden Place in 1994 fundamentally changed the character of the Ebisu and Daikanyama neighborhood. Before the development, the area had been a working industrial site at the edge of a residential district; afterward it became a destination in its own right, one associated with a certain urban refinement that shaped how the surrounding streets developed through the 1990s and 2000s.

Westin Tokyo, as the complex’s anchor hotel, absorbed much of the high-end accommodation demand that the development generated. The hotel contains several dining venues and has been a venue for weddings and formal events since its opening. Its 23-story profile is modest compared to the supertall towers elsewhere in the city, but within the deliberate human scale of Yebisu Garden Place it reads as the correct height.

Summary

Westin Tokyo opened in 1994 as a 23-story, 89.9-meter hotel within Yebisu Garden Place — Sapporo Breweries’ redevelopment of its historic Ebisu brewery site. With 445 rooms and a location directly connected to JR Ebisu Station by covered walkway, it has served as an anchor of one of Tokyo’s most thoughtfully composed post-industrial mixed-use districts. Arriving by the moving walkway from the station and entering the complex from below is still the best way to experience what the development set out to create.