Ugliest skyscraper in NYC?

[mcnoch]

Hello,

I learned that is close to impossible to come up with an answer to the question for the most beautiful skyscraper in NYC, so I will try it with the opposite. Which one is the ugliest?

I am in for the Pan AM Building, because it is so brutal and misplaced.
Your votes, please.

[ramvid01]

Pan Am is by far not the ugliest building in my opinion. That title easily goes to the Marc on 8th avenue. Appallingly white and extremely ugly plus it completely sterilizes the street interaction with its duane reade and what used to be the Link sales office. As for ugliest structure, well that easily goes to the parking lot in Queens Plaza.

[antinimby]

I usually don't get too much into these kind of threads because there is just so much ugliness in NY that it's nearly impossible to say any which one is the ugliest.

However, I just have to say that the Marc is most definitely NOT the most ugly.

You may hate it, but you cannot say it's the most ugly when the whole freaking city is full of brown, housing project looking towers-in-the-park, which not only are grotesque but also breaks up the city grid.

They are essentially lifeless voids in an otherwise very healthy street environment.

And I haven't even gotten started the tons and tons of dated, 50's/60's international style boxes you see on Park, Madison, Lexington, Sixth Avenues.

I'd gladly take something like the Marc over these countless scars on the cityscape each and every time.

Considering the Marc replaced an above ground parking garage (with no retail mind you) with a pleasant tower and now retail, however boring they may be.

This to me is still a vast improvement over what was there before both for the block and the cityscape.

Each and every time a movie shows a flyby over Manhattan and shows the clusters of the brown housing projects scattered throughout, I just cringe and hope it's brief enough to where the audience does not notice too much.

And I'm not even going to bother talking about the many Gene Kaufman/McSam atrocities, as that deserves it's own thread altogether. :mad:

[Bob]

By far and away, 60 Wall Street. King of the beasts.

[Scraperfannyc]

130 liberty street. It's just too big to flush down the toilet.

[TREPYE]

I am in for the Pan AM Building, because it is so brutal and misplaced.
Your votes, please.


Definetly! That is one ugly offensive POS. If people like it I could only imagine it is because it is so disdained that its adversaries have made a martyr of it. I for one cannot pity such a symbol of corporate disregard for aesthetics; hopefully Ill see the day that it is deconstructed and build something that is at least mediocre.

[Fabrizio]

With regard to the MetLife, is it : "I know what I like" or "I like what I know"?

The building is a misplaced beauty... but a beauty.


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Ugly for me, are the buildings that want to be in Houston, out along a highway. The buildings that were designed with the suburbanite-mindset in mind. Those are buildings that destroy the city's fabric. What could be uglier than that?

The WORST offender for me is John Portman's Marriot Hotel.

Folks: where's the entrance? Once you find it you'll notice that it's really designed for motorists and not city foot-traffic.

See too, the blank side walls.

To think that this building destroyed one the city's finest blocks: a charming mix of old theatres: the original Helen Hayes, the Bijou, the Morrosco and a charming small art-deco hotel ( the Belair? ) ... all torn down to make way for this:

http://www.portmanusa.com/hotel/newyork_marquis.html

The entrance with concrete columns and 350 American flags to great you (in case you forgot you were in America):

[Stern]

We have a number of these "ugliest" threads already.

Here's one:

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=12601&page=4