Built to plans by the British designer Thomas Heatherwick, the elaborate honeycomb-like structure rises 150 feet and consists of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 steps, and 80 landings for visitors to climb.

Upon its opening, Vessel received mixed reviews, with some critics praising its prominent placement within Hudson Yards, and others deriding the structure as extravagant.

Vessel was also initially criticized for its restrictive copyright policy regarding photographs of the structure, as well as its lack of accessibility for disabled visitors, although both issues were subsequently addressed.

[2] Designed by Thomas Heatherwick,[3] Vessel has 154 flights, 2,500 steps, and 80 landings,[3] with the total length of the stairs exceeding 1 mile (1.6 km).

[3] Stephen Ross, the CEO of Hudson Yards' developer Related Companies, said that its unusual shape was intended to make the structure stand out like a "12-month Christmas tree".

[12] After Vessel opened, Hudson Yards asked the public to give it a formal name, creating a website devoted to that effect.

[2] In an interview with designboom, Heatherwick said that his design for Vessel originated from a childhood experience when he "fell in love with an old discarded flight of wooden stairs outside a local building site".

[9][14] The concept of Vessel was unveiled to the public on September 14, 2016,[4] in an event attended by hundreds of people including New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

[3][2] Hosted by Anderson Cooper, the event featured a performance from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater that evoked the interlocking design of Vessel's staircases.

This drew criticism, not least because the developers had been given $4.5 billion of public money,[26] and Hudson Yards quickly stopped claiming to own others' photos of Vessel.

[36][37] Residents of the surrounding neighborhoods hired a suicide prevention expert, who suggested adding netting or raising the glass barriers.

Fortune writer Shawn Tully called Vessel "Manhattan's answer to the Eiffel Tower",[4] a sentiment echoed by CNN reporter Tiffany Ap.

"[52] Ted Loos of The New York Times said the sculpture, while a "stairway to nowhere" in the utilitarian sense, served as an "exclamation point" to the northern terminus of the High Line.

[53] Public Art Fund president Susan Freedman liked the renderings for Vessel but called it "a leap of faith in terms of scale".

[54] CityLab's Feargus O'Sullivan called Vessel, along with Heatherwick's other numerous billionaire-funded developments and architectural projects, "a gaudy monument to being only ever-so-slightly free.

It consisted mainly of stairs, with only a single elevator to connect one of the sets of landings,[58][59] and drew protests from disability-rights groups outside the structure.

[61] The United States Department of Justice filed a complaint alleging that because of the number of separate landings within Vessel, most of the structure was not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, except for the portions directly outside the elevator.