It was developed by The Related Companies and Apollo Global Management, and designed by David Childs and Mustafa Kemal Abadan of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.

[19] Deutsche Bank Center was designed by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM),[3] working with T. J. Gottesdiener[20] and Mustafa K. Abadan of the same firm.

[47] The base of the building contains a steel superstructure with the Shops at Columbus Circle, Jazz at Lincoln Center, broadcast studios, and originally AOL Time Warner's headquarters.

[26] To accommodate large overhead lights, SOM omitted alternating floor slabs so CNN's studios contained a floor-to-ceiling height of 27 feet (8.2 m).

The trusses distribute the weight of the concrete above to the steel columns below; they also contain ducts, elevator rooms, and hallways between the emergency stairwells of the towers and the base.

In addition, residents received a notebook computer that served as their "digital concierge", where they could look up the building's restaurants, stores, and entertainment areas.

[14][114] Mortimer Zuckerman's Boston Properties won the bidding contest, with plans to erect a headquarters for Salomon Brothers on the site, to be designed by Moshe Safdie.

[32] Planning for Columbus Center restarted in May 1996,[133][134] with the MTA outlining several criteria for the shape of the proposed development,[h] as well as a stipulation that the winner could not seek tax breaks.

[131][137] By May 1997, the city and MTA had selected five finalists: Related Companies, Trump Organization, Tishman Speyer, Bruce C. Ratner & Daniel Brodsky, and Millennium Partners.

[140] To the surprise of the developers submitting the bids, New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani announced he would revoke a tax break that he had promised to give to the winning bidder.

[143] In February 1998, the city and state agreed that the new building would have a 1,100-seat concert hall for Jazz at Lincoln Center, as well as rehearsal rooms and educational spaces.

[20] There were also disagreements over the distance between the building's twin towers, which was originally only 65 feet (20 m), as well as the extent to which the Jazz at Lincoln Center performance space should be recessed from Columbus Circle.

[163][164] The remainder of the $1.7 billion development cost would come from equity of Apollo, Related, AOL Time Warner, and the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.

[84] New York magazine compared AOL Time Warner Center to a situation where "your marriage is a wreck, you hate each other, everybody thinks you should get divorced, and yet you’re still building a lavish new home together.

[194] The construction process continued to experience difficulties; in April 2003, a fire damaged the fourth through seventh stories, including part of Jazz at Lincoln Center's future space.

[52] AOL Time Warner, facing further financial setbacks, was compelled to reduce some costs at the new headquarters, including canceling plans for a technology lab.

This led Apollo Real Estate and the Related Companies to occupy half of the vacant space, with Time Warner buying the rest for its subsidiaries.

[89][208] Time Warner Center's formal opening ceremony was held on February 5, 2004, with a benefit party being hosted upon the completion of the Shops at Columbus Circle.

[225] The south tower's residents also included Saudi royal Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, art collector Tobias Meyer, producer Verna Harrah, and businessmen Gregory Olsen and John Kluge.

Those of the north tower included ten doctors; businessmen Alan B. Miller, Michael Spencer, and Gerard Cafesjian; and two daughters of Turkish businessman Sakıp Sabancı.

[233][234] The following January, Time Warner sold its stake in the Columbus Circle building for $1.3 billion to the Related Companies, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and GIC Private Limited.

[98][238] The controversy in part influenced the United States Department of the Treasury to regulate large all-cash property sales in Manhattan starting in 2016.

[239][240] In May 2018, Deutsche Bank announced it would lease all 1.1 million square feet (100,000 m2) of office space for 25 years, relocating from 60 Wall Street beginning in the third quarter of 2021.

[245] After announcing plans to drastically reduce its overseas activities in mid-2019, Deutsche Bank returned two of the floors, covering 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2), to the Related Companies.

[17][253] At the end of the year, Muschamp was even more negative, characterizing the building as an example of "architecture of denial" and derided it as indicating "an utter lack of awareness that New York today differs dramatically from the city in the 1930's".

[33][42] Muschamp disliked the "lanterns" that were to be placed atop the towers, and he found the facade of the base to be "infected" by "aesthetic backsliding", but overall he thought the design to be a homage to the city's Art Deco architecture.

[42] By contrast, Martin Filler of The New Republic was dissatisfied with the revised glass design, especially as opposed to the masonry plans: "Light construction [...] implies the dual phenomena of weightlessness and transparency; and there is none of the former and little of the latter in evidence here.

[54] In 2003, Architectural Record wrote: "AOL Time Warner Center with its new twin towers is testimony of how the people of the city can overcome great obstacles to get on with life.

"[51] When Time Warner Center was almost completed, Paul Goldberger wrote for The New Yorker that, though the design had been intended to conform with the surrounding street grid, this was nullified by the building's sheer size.

[264] The American Institute of Architects' 2007 survey List of America's Favorite Architecture ranked the Time Warner Center among the top 150 buildings in the United States.