Architect’s rendering of One Vanderbilt Place and Grand Central Terminal. Image credit: Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates

Representatives from the project developers, Grand Central Terminal, and private citizens argued the proposal.  On February 4, 2015 the City Planning Commission held a public hearing on the proposed One Vanderbilt skyscraper project.  The proposed building would be 1,450 feet high and take up a block bounded by Madison Avenue to the west, Vanderbilt Avenue to the east, 42nd Street to the south, and 43rd Street to the north.  The project would also include transit improvements to the overcrowded Lexington Avenue subway station in Grand Central, as well as accommodate the projected influx of riders once the MTA East Side Access program is completed.  On December 11, 2014 Manhattan Community Boards 5 and 6, through the Multi-Board Task Force on East Midtown Rezoning, recommended denial of the project.  On January 29, 2015 Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer gave a conditional approval of One Vanderbilt after negotiating additional community benefits with project developer SL Green.

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Proposed Rendering of Tammany Hall Addition. Image Credit: LPC

Applicants argued that addition would echo the domes of classical architecture, pay homage to the Lenape who once occupied Manhattan. On November 25, 2014, the Landmarks Preservation Commission considered an application to construct an addition to a building that housed the Tammany political machine at 44 Union Square East, an individual City landmark. The building was the third Tammany Hall constructed, and the only one extant. Designated in 2013, the neo-Georgian 1929 building was later utilized as a union hall, theater, and film school. The building is substantially intact, though storefronts have been created at the ground level facing Union Square Park. (more…)

Labor Day commemorates the history of the labor movement and the social and economic gains of workers in the United States.   New York City has been a location for many significant milestones of labor history.  We here at CityLand document the changes in New York City land use, but we would be remiss to ignore that behind every land use change is the hard labor of American workers, from demolition to construction and all points in between.  These men and women in the labor community have helped shaped New York’s majestic skyline.  In celebration of the holiday, we have created a list of historic places that have a connection to the labor community.  Some of these site have even been designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission.  From all of us here at the Center for New York City Law, have a happy Labor Day!

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Anthony Wood

Save our skyline. If not, tear down the Chrysler building and demolish the Empire State Building. If action isn’t taken these stars of the New York City skyline will be permanently eclipsed. If the public can’t see them, why preserve them? Even the preservation resistant Real Estate Board of New York would likely gasp at the notion of demolishing these two iconic New York landmarks. “The view of the New York skyline is nationally and internally renowned,” so stated Judge Richard McGill in a ruling against a Weehawken project that would have blocked it. The presence in the skyline of the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building are as quintessentially New York as Central Park or the Statue of Liberty. The public can still feast their eyes on them from multiple vantage points, whether from the approaches to New York City or from its sidewalks. How much longer will that be the case? (more…)

Rendering of Proposed Mixed Use Tower, located at 217 West 57th Street, New York. Image Credit: Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture.

Skyscraper to be built as-of-right, but requires Landmarks to review and approve its impact on adjacent individual landmark. On October 22, 2013, the Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to issue a certificate of appropriateness to Extell Development, despite one dissenting vote,  to allow a portion of a new planned tower to cantilever over the individually landmarked American Fine Arts Society building, located at 215 West 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The tower, which is intended to rise to over 1,400 feet, will house a Nordstrom department store at its base, and residences and a hotel above the store.  The French Renaissance-style landmark building has been continuously occupied by the Art Students League of New York since its construction in 1892.

The cantilevered portion of the building would be visible from multiple street vantages. The cantilever would extend 28 feet into the landmark lot, approximately one-third of the lot. The section intruding into the air above the Art Students League would start at 290 feet above the street and 195 feet above the roof of the art school, which is equivalent to “20 stories of air.” The cantilever would be set back 80 feet from the street wall.

At the public hearing, Gary Barnett of Extell stated that the project, which would constitute “a significant addition to the New York City skyline,” would create over 1,300 jobs and generate over $1 billion in tax revenue for the City over 20 years. Barnett said the proposal would in no way detract from the landmark. Preservation Consultant Bill Higgins argued that the cantilever and the landmark would “exist in different planes of urban experience.”

Architect Gordon Gill, of Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture, said the glass-faced building would be composed of cantilevers, including a “sky lobby” 139 feet above the street. He said the cantilever over the landmark would give the building “a sense of scale” and a “modulation of the texture” of the otherwise sheer side façade.  Gill said the transparent façade of the new building would provide “a contrast” to the stone-clad landmark, and “add texture and animation to the street.” (more…)