By Kim Velsey 10/29/12 7:30pm

Skyscraper Living

The bathtub in the unoccupied New York by Gehry penthouse. No water rippling in this store.

Skyscrapers May Shiver and Sway, but They’re Perfectly Safe (Just Stay Away From the Windows)

“You can tell the building is rocking back and forth because you can see the pocket doors hitting the wall,” said Eric Williams, a computer engineer waiting out Hurricane Sandy in his apartment on the 46th floor of the W Hotel and Residences in the Financial District. “It’s such a slow sway you don’t really see it, but you can feel it.”

Most of the building had been evacuated because of its proximity to the water, and he’d just received an email from the building management warning residents that the power would be shut off in the next hour, basically nixing elevator use, but he and his roommate were planning to wait it out. They didn’t fear floods on the 46th floor, but both of them were motion sick. He couldn’t see the building’s sway in glasses of water, but it was visible in the pots of water they’d filled in preparation for outages, a slow ripple from one side to the other, as though a hand were gently shaking the pots back and forth. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/08/12 6:55pm

Best Laid Plans

midtowneastrezoneafter-e1344959383673

Another Reason for the Midtown East Rezoning: Bragging Rights

We’re kind of embarrassed to admit that this never occurred to us until just now, reading The Times‘ recap of the Midtown East debate. Sure, all the familiar arguments on both sides are there—the city is moving too fast, the city is not moving fast enough, the buildings are too big, they are not big enough, we must compete, we must consider the consequence—but there is also are new argument that should have been obvious from the start, though no one has brought it up, at least not publicly, until Charles Bagli spelled it right out. Read More

By Matt Chaban 9/10/12 11:43am

In the Rezone

Hudson_Square_Small

Even a Smaller Hudson Square Will Transform the Manhattan Skyline

We know that the reason there are no skyscrapers in the middle of Manhattan has nothing to do with bedrock and everything to do with development patterns. And it is development that will alter that skyline once again. Trinity Real Estate recently unveiled their plans to rezone Hudson Square, the last undeveloped corner of Manhattan just west of Soho, north of Tribeca, south of the Village. As those neighborhoods would suggest, it is a place ripe for development. Just beware of over-development. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/10/12 5:46pm

Mysteries of Brooklyn

Dreams of our fathers: an early rendering from when Downtown Brooklyn was rezoned, less than a year ago.

Downtown Brooklyn Looking Up: At Least Eight New Skyscrapers on the Rise

Earlier this week, we profiled Tucker Reed, the recently enthroned director of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership. He is responsible for the continued redevelopment (some, maybe many, would call it gentrification) of the area, and he has some big plans in the works, like better connectivity and bringing in more tech firms.

It is also up to Mr. Reed to shepherd development in the area, and it looks like he will have his hands full in the coming years. The skyline has been utterly transformed along Flatbush Avenue in recent years as six new apartment towers rose during the last building boom: the Toren, the Brooklyner, the Oro, Avalon Fort Greene, the DKLB, and Forte (to say nothing of the smaller projects littering nearby neighborhoods).

But reading Brownstoner this past week, we were reminded of just how many more of these skyscraping towers are in the works, how much more the neighborhood is bound to change, maybe even a few times over. Read More

By Matt Chaban 8/01/12 6:03pm

Make No Small Plans

A good idea? (DCP)

Richard Florida Warns of Super-Tall Towers—So Should We Be Scared of the Midtown East Rezoning?

In its final grand zoning gesture, the Bloomberg administration is racing to rezone Midtown East, paving the way for what could be a wave of huge, skyline defining towers. But in an essay in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, Richard Florida seems to warn that that could be the wrong approach for New York, as it has been the case in other hyper-dense cities. Read More

By Matt Chaban 5/31/12 5:40pm

Skyscraper Living

Going up. (original image:Dave Hogerty/Curbed, with additions by NYO)

Just How Insane is the 57th Street Skyline Going to Be?

Last night, The Observer got a glimpse of the super-tall residential tower Gary Barnett has planned for Broadway and 57th Street, just one block away from his already very tall One57.

Our good friends at Curbed picked up on this and were brilliant enough to photoshop the two onto the same skyline. It is quite the striking image, but not quite complete.

After all, rival 432 Park is already underway—and looking for more investors, if you’re interested, as The Journal revealed yesterday—so we figured, what the hey, let’s put them all together.

Welcome to your new skyline, circa 2015. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/25/12 10:20am

Cloudbusters

Manhattan 1906, in the throws of a boom.

Paul Goldberger and Skyscraper Economist Jason Barr Debate the Manhattan Skyline

Last week, The Observer learned with the help of Rutgers economics professor Jason Barr that the reason for the development of Midtown apart from Lower Manhattan, and the skyscrapers both possess, had nothing to do with bedrock beneath these towers, as had long been believed.  Call it the uncanny valley, the soaring mountain range that makes the New York City skyline the best in the world.

Having determined what was not the cause of this unique skyline, The Observer thought we had figured out what was, that being the flight of the wealthy north.  But it turns out one very influential urban investigator begged to differ: New Yorker architecture critic and Pullitzer Prize winner Paul Goldberger. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/17/12 7:17pm

Cloudbusters

Twin peaks. (Jason Barr)

Uncanny Valley: The Real Reason There Are No Skyscrapers in the Middle of Manhattan

Among the reasons New York has the finest skyline in the world—consider that a statement of fact, not opinion—is not simply the skyscrapers bounding up the island of Manhattan but also their unusual arrangement. Like a great mountain range, the city is arrayed around the twin peaks of Downtown and Midtown.

Perhaps the appeal is Freudian.

It has long been believed that New Yorkers could thank God for their unusual agglomeration of buildings (or, for those on the Upper West Side not believing in His good work, eons of geological development). It turns out that Manhattan has a bedrock unusually suited to the construction of very tall buildings, in many cases just a few meters below the surface. But that solid land drops away in the gooey middle of the island, long limiting the heights of buildings in the city.

Or so the aphocraphists have been passing down for decades, at least since noted geologist Christopher J. Schuberth released his seminal The Geology of New York City and Environs in 1968. Therein, he posited his belief in a correlation between bedrock and big buildings, and like the Empire State Building, it has stood the test of time. But like a bad retaining wall, it all came tumbling down last month. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/13/12 5:35pm

Troubling Developments

Burning down the house. (Getty)

Are Skyscrapers Bad Luck?

Few things are as associated with New York—bagels, the subway, Woody Allen—as skyscrapers, from the Empire State Building to the World Trade Center. They are increasingly becoming defining icons in other world cities, as well, from Dubai to Shanghai, a fact that may well auger a coming economic crisis for a few eastern economies, according Read More