Can you imagine Paris or Washington D.C. allowing the construction of a luxury 80–100 story luxury apartment building tower to obliterate or otherwise hinder views of one of the following wonders of the architectural world?
That would be a crazy idiotic scenario. These are landmarks, for God’s sakes.
Well, in New York idoCity it seems that architectural preservation is not as much of a priority as one might imagine, at least for developers of influence. For the Empire State Building, the jewel of the city’s skyscraper skyline culture, has indeed been eternally ruined by a staggering, as yet unfinished 860-foot residential tower. “While some view these towers as symbols of progress, others see them as monuments to the ever-widening wealth gap,” states the New York Post.
As a kid living in Stuyvesant Town, if I strained my neck out of my bedroom window, I could see the Empire State; the view has long since been obstructed. From my wife’s former office facing North on Fifth Avenue, the building was in full view until an apartment building entirely blocked it. And a friend who bought a converted loft in the west twenties with a “Balcony view of the Empire State” as a selling perk lost it when the Virgin Hotel reached the fifteen floor mark.
New York is historically a city on the rise—just look a that horrendous jumble of steel and glass at Hudson Yards—but the squeezing of towers into narrow footprints because the engineering enables excessive monetary rewards is disrespectful to the city and its citizens—and looks ugly, too.
One thing I’ve learned for buyers to take note is that in the canyon streets lined with large buildings, the automobile engines during the day and garbage trucks at night reverberate at virtually the same annoying levels. And the higher one goes, the louder and more terrifying are the wind gusts that cause the towers to bend back and forth.
