New York Times Tower - 620 Eighth Avenue

[Edward]

Building New York Times Tower.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/208/489380191_8bab15821c_o.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sudentas/)

[212]

Amazing photo, Edward!

[RandySavage]

Great photo. Is it safe to assume those steps are temporary?

[MidtownGuy]

Wow Edward!! Incredible shot.

[ManhattanKnight]

Is it safe to assume those steps are temporary?


Almost as scary as these:

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/9120/img0316dbankha4.jpg

(Excerpted from: http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=163211&postcount=484)

[Muscatinho]

Picture taken 5/8/07.

[Vengineer]

the crown doesn't look half bad

[sfenn1117]

With each new picture I'm thinking this tower is the best new building in NY in decades. It's all coming together fantasticly.

[londonlawyer]

With each new picture I'm thinking this tower is the best new building in NY in decades. It's all coming together fantasticly.

It's a great building, and it's quite unique.

[MidtownGuy]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/231/492289111_c6698e2ad2_b.jpg





http://farm1.static.flickr.com/225/492289117_94a54b8b2a_b.jpg





http://farm1.static.flickr.com/199/492289127_8bae873fe3_b.jpg

[TREPYE]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/231/492289111_c6698e2ad2_b.jpg



That crown looks so.......sharp! (pun intended) ;)

Still not sold MG??

[MidtownGuy]

I like it, I like it:)

[macreator]

The little circular attachment about 1/3 of the way up the spire is a bit distracting. Anyone know what purpose it serves?

[Edward]

See my picture a little earlier - it's an observation platform.

[Fabrizio]

spikey:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mirlito/184842345/

[alonzo-ny]

See my picture a little earlier - it's an observation platform.

open to the public?

[mgp]

See my picture a little earlier - it's an observation platform.

I was told the platform was there to service satellite / telecommunications dishes...

[TREPYE]

The little circular attachment about 1/3 of the way up the spire is a bit distracting. Anyone know what purpose it serves?

I thought that it holds additional flood lights to light up the upper portion of the mast. Maybe all of the above^

[macreator]

Either of those could make sense. I can't wait until we see this baby lit up at night. I'm starting to warm to the building now that the crown is really coming together.

[pianoman11686]

http://www.newyorkology.com/archives/images/102.topofnewnewnorktimes.JPG

http://www.newyorkology.com/archives/2007/05/high_in_the_sky.php

[pianoman11686]

Horizonr (http://www.johnlumea.com/2007/03/box_is_a_box_is.html#more)

Box Is a Box Is a Box

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/magritte_1.jpg
"The Treachery of Images" (1928-29), Rene Magritte

Is Philip Nobel, the "resident curmudgeon" of Metropolis magazine, going soft already? Probably too soon to tell, but historians of such things —€” do they even exist yet? —€”
may well look back on this moment and say that this was when Philip Nobel started to lose it. Asked why, they will say that it was
one part Nobel, one part never-ending crisis of Modernism, one part New York Times Building and, oh, 10 parts New York.

I'll get back to this momentarily, but we needn't wait for the verdict on Philip Nobel to know that, despite "getting one in" occasionally, large-scale Modernist architecture has spent most of the last 40 years on the ropes. Among the first to put it there were architect-scholars Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, with their pithy and generously illustrated 1972 study Learning from Las Vegas. Whether or not you've already read Las Vegas, you should read it now to see how right —€” and how much more wrong —€” the authors turned out to be.

What Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour mostly saw when they surveyed the Modernist built landscape of the late 1960s was "heroic and original" architecture that was irrelevant, they said, because it did not speak with explicit symbols
that most people could understand.

As Experts with Ideals...[Modern architects] build for Man rather than for people —€” this means, to suit themselves, that is, to suit their own particular middle-class values, which they assign to everyone...Developers build for markets rather than for Man and probably do less harm than authoritarian architects would do if they had the developers' power.

One does not have to agree with hard-hat politics to support the rights of the middle-
middle class to their own architectural aesthetics, and we have found that Levittown-
type aesthetics are shared by most members
of the middle-middle class, black as well as white, liberal as well as conservative.

The authors nicknamed "heroic and original" buildings
ducks —€” after a duck-shaped poultry stand on Long Island that appears in Peter Blake's 1964 book God's Own Junkyard. These were buildings "[w]here the architectural systems of space, structure, and program are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form": a "kind of building-becoming-
sculpture."

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/long_island_duckling.jpg
The "Long Island Duckling" (1931), in Flanders, N.Y.

The B-side of the authors' class critique was that ducks
were not only aesthetically elitist but unnecessarily —€”
and inappropriately —€” expensive:

We architects who hope for a reallocation of national resources toward social purposes must take care to lay emphasis on the purposes and their promotion rather than on the architecture that shelters them. This reorientation will call for ordinary architecture, not ducks. But when there is little money to spend on architecture, then surely greatest architectural imagination
is required. Sources for modest buildings and images with social purpose will come, not from the industrial past, but from the everyday city around us, of modest buildings and modest spaces with symbolic appendages.

So it was that, opposed to "heroic and original" ducks, the authors —€” inspired by the schlock commercial architecture
of the Las Vegas strip —€” prescribed an "ordinary and ugly" alternative: decorated sheds. Exactly as mundane as they sound, decorated sheds were buildings "[w]here systems of space and structure are directly at the service of program, and ornament is applied independently of them."

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/decorated_shed1.jpg
Sketch from Learning from Las Vegas

Summarizing the distinction between duck and shed, the authors wrote: "The duck is the special building that is a symbol; the decorated shed is the conventional building
that applies symbols."

For them, ducks were symptoms of a sickness within
the basic culture of architectural design:

To replace ornament and explicit symbolism, Modern architects indulge in distortion and overarticulation. Strident distortion at large scale and "sensitive" articulation at small scale result in an expressionism that is, to us, meaningless and irrelevant, an architectural soap opera in which to be progressive is to be outlandish.

Writing later that "[i]f articulation has taken over from ornament in the architecture of abstract expressionism,
space is what displaced symbolism," the authors conclude:

...this is not the time and ours is not the environment for heroic communication via
pure architecture.

When Modern architects righteously abandoned ornament on buildings, they unconsciously designed buildings that were ornament. In promoting Space and Articulation over symbolism and ornament, they distorted the whole building into a duck. They substituted for the innocent and inexpensive practice of applied decoration on a conventional shed the rather cynical and expensive distortion of program and structure to promote a duck...It is now time to re-evaluate the once-horrifying statement of Ruskin that architecture is the decoration of construction, but we should append the warning of Pugin: It is all right to decorate construction but never construct decoration.

THERE are still ducks, and there are still decorated sheds. But the line between the two is no longer so bright and clear as when Learning from Las Vegas was published in 1972. Modernist explorations of program- and site-driven form —€” from Eli Attia's 1972 design of Pennzoil Place for Philip Johnson to Foster & Partners' 30 St. Mary Axe —€” along
with continued experiments in the deep texturing of
building surfaces, have often made it difficult to tell
which is a shed and which a duck.

On Foster & Partners' Hearst Tower, for example, the stainless cladding on the external structural members is obviously ornamental. But so are those big notched corners. Both the chamfering and the structural detailing are executed on such an "heroic" scale, to use the authors' word, as to mask the fact that the tower is, for all intents and purposes, a box. This is a high-end decorated shed, to be sure, but a decorated shed nonetheless. "Duck" and "decorated shed" becomes a distinction without a difference.

I digress, but not much. For while it's not that difficult to see why many people read the Hearst Tower as something other than a decorated shed (that's the idea, dear), some are just as seduced by —€” and confused about —€” buildings that are more open about their essential decorated shed-ness.

Look at the word that Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour chose to reinforce what they really meant by decoration: applique. That's a word that those of us who came of age in the 1970s would have associated with the felt cut-outs, brocade and sequins on our grandmother's purse. Applique. Tacked on.

There could not be a clearer illustration of that in our own time than the ceramic-tube screens bolted on to every 52-story facade of the soon-to-be-completed New York
Times Building, near Times Square.

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/nyt_pianofxfowle.jpg
New York Times Building: Model by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and FXFowle

Ceramic tubes aside, the building, designed by the Renzo Piano Building Workshop and FXFowle, bears a striking resemblance to the new Bloomberg Tower (right), which no one would describe as anything other than a very nice box.

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/bloomberg_pelli.jpg

Indeed, isn't that what the new Times tower is too, a very nice box —€” a shed —€” with more elaborate decorations?

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/nyt_aerial.jpg

SOMEHOW, Philip Nobel couldn't bring himself to
say so. On the contrary, his October 2006 Metropolis review of the Times building commends the New York Times for having not commissioned a decorated shed —€” or at least
not a Times-befitting version of the "faux bawdy" sheds
of 42nd Street.

This "path of least resistance," he writes, might have resulted in the Times building "a conventional skyscraper with a funny skin." This is how Nobel characterizes a shortlisted proposal by Frank Gehry and David Childs that, at one point, was widely regarded as the frontrunner in the Times's invited competition for the building. Several weeks before the final decision, the architects withdrew from the competition, citing irreconcilable differences —€” with each other and with the process as a whole.

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/gehrychilds_nyt.jpg
Model of New York Times Building proposal (2000) by Frank Gehry
and David Childs

But Nobel mentions the Gehry/Childs proposal to contrast it unfavorably with the Piano/FXFowle offering, as if that too wasn't a conventional skyscraper with a funny skin. What's the difference?

Nobel says it's the symbolism: The Gehry/Childs building
"was itself a sign," while the Piano/FXFowle building achieves
its aims "without recourse to symbols of any sort."

Nobel seems to misconstrue the central dichotomy
of Las Vegas, which serves as the backdrop for his
critique. The authors did not say "buildings with no
symbols (Nobel's Piano/FXFowle) vs. buildings as symbols (Nobel's Gehry/Childs)" They said "buildings with explicit, comprehensible symbols (decorated sheds) vs. buildings
as implicit, inscrutable symbols (ducks)."

If Nobel means to say that the Gehry/Childs proposal was a duck, he is mistaken. The duck of Las Vegas —€” "the special building that is a symbol" —€” is a duck because it "indulge[s] in distortion and overarticulation" of the structural form itself. This is not what the Gehry/Childs concept did, as even Nobel seems to recognize when he calls the concept a conventional skyscraper with a funny skin, and again later: "Gehry tried to say 'New York Times' in the new language of the New Times Square: in signs and symbols, loudly but only on the surface."

In a similarly confused manner, Nobel lays the groundwork for his conclusion that Piano made the Times building speak "without recourse to symbols of any sort" by writing,
first, that

the Piano design employs the very stuff of architecture —€” the same steel that makes the building stand, the glass that shields it —€” to create a whole that says, with appropriate rigor, the New York Times resides here

then by asking rhetorically:

How...does one make the necessary skin and bones of a building —€” already so busy meeting the needs of climate and gravity, function and budget —€” combine to create a palpable effect that will reliably communicate something as dimly understood as a feeling? An aspect?
An idea?

But little of whatever feeling, aspect, or idea the new
Times tower communicates is expressed by steel and
glass, skin and bones —€” most of which is obscured to any flaneur-of-the-street by those ceramic tubes.

Indeed, what speaks most "loudly, but only on the surface" is the tubes themselves. And the story they tell is fairly explicit. Am I the only one to see in those giant screens columns of newsprint rendered in ceramic?

Another digression: In his May 2006 Metropolis review of Foster & Partners' Hearst Tower, Nobel asks why Norman Foster used the diagonal structural grid that has attracted oohs and aahs from every quarter:

Was it perhaps —€” gasp —€” merely about aesthetics and exterior effect? There certainly was pressure to wow from clients well aware that their own signature headquarters would be compared to the flashy (and famously green) Conde Nast Building designed by Fox & Fowle for their chief rival. Hearst did hire Norman Foster, after all, and it is not a reach to imagine that, in return, they expected to get a Norman Foster.

...

Foster has inserted as much signature
"Foster" as he could —€” as much as he needed
to gull the critics —€” but against the massif of...homely, honest New York buildings near
and far, his polygonal bulges and chamfered edges rub angrily. The result is a spectacle for those who love architectural diversity, even incongruity...But with its structural grid revealed to be elaborate whimsy, its office floors offering no salvation for the Dilberts within, and that corner of Midtown seeming to devour in fascia and cheap brick the pricey effects of Foster's effete glass —€” effects provided primarily to further the branding efforts of architect and client —€” it's hard to join in the chorus of praise that has greeted the building.... emphasis added

Of course, you've already guessed that the $64,000 word here is branding.

Renzo Piano was paired with Fox & Fowle for the same reason that Frank Gehry was paired with David Childs. Like Gehry, Piano had never designed a skyscraper; and like David Childs, Fox & Fowle [now FXFowle] had designed several.

Times metro reporter David Dunlap reported in October 2000, when the Times selected Piano, that it was Piano who a month before had "invited Fox & Fowle to join him," but there is little doubt that Piano —€” known for his elegant civic and cultural projects —€” was told, as a condition of his possible selection, to align himself with a local firm that knew how to design very tall buildings. Both the Times and its developer Forest City Ratner knew that a 52-story tower is not a museum to the tenth power. They needed to make sure that their new tower would actually stand up, and Fox & Fowle's recent experience designing the Conde Nast (1999) and Reuters (2001) buildings in Times Square provided a lot more assurances of that than anything in Piano's background.

[pianoman11686]

[continued]

Herbert Muschamp wrote in October 2000 that "Piano [would] employ new techniques in structural engineering, vertical circulation and curtain wall construction, in association with Fox & Fowle." But it looks, for all the world, as though the only truly necessary thing Piano himself gave to the Times was what Foster gave to Hearst —€” that most ineffable of spirits: a brand.

To be sure, Piano created this brand partly with steel and glass, and with a certain sensibility about space and light. But these are not the things that win competitions —€” not really. Mostly, Piano used screens —€” a recurring theme in his work for the better part of 25 years —€” to create a seductive image. In return, it is Piano —€” not FXFowle —€” who gets the headlines and Piano whose own brand is enriched.

You get a taste of this division of labor on the FXFowle
Web site, which tactfully —€” perhaps a little too tactfully —€” describes the Times project as "combining the best of European design and New York acumen." It might be a little unfair to read this as "We built the house, he hung the drapes," but certainly the turn of phrase invites that translation.

Be all of that as it may, Nobel is right that the Times dug "deeper than the glib for architectural expression." The Times's new building might even be more aesthetically nuanced than it would have been without Piano's ceramic screens.

But in pegging "decorated shed" to Las Vegas and 42nd Street, Nobel offers a literal reading that misses the net entirely —€” as if, since 1972, architects haven't devised all sorts of new ways to "decorate," and as if more abstract decoration makes a shed thus ornamented any less of a prettified box.*

Learning from Las Vegas is not hard to understand. Nor is
the new Times building. But truly, Philip Nobel spins himself into such knots trying to curse the one and bless the other —€” and misreading both —€” that it's virtually impossible to give a coherent account of what he is actually saying, other than that he really likes the building and that he really likes
Renzo Piano.

WHAT could possess a man like Philip Nobel to go to
such lengths to say that a building that is so obviously a decorated shed...isn't? It's a little like Magritte's famous painting of a pipe —€” "The Treachery of Images" (how perfect!) —€” which Magritte underscored with the caption,
Ceci n'est pas une pipe: This is not a pipe.

Ceci n'est pas une caisse, Nobel is saying. This is not a box. Only he isn't being surreal. Or is he?

With New York cozying up to developers as never before —€” City law now requires that the base of every new tall building conform slavishly to the street grid, i.e., that it be the kind of built-out-to-every-street-wall box that can provide the most hospitable home to banks and big-box retail —€” architects are already finding out how difficult it is to get anything but a box built in the City.

A cynic might say that Nobel, having decided to switch rather than fight (and tapping his inner Goldberger in the process), checkmarked the Times building to provide cover for any architects that might still want to do tall-building business with the City. Nobel to architects: "You're not going to do your best work here. I'm not going to challenge the system that makes it so (I've got a career, too, ya know). So just do the box they want and give it a nice facade. I'll give you at least a B."

Or maybe Nobel likes boxes. Deep in the heart of many a curmudgeon lies a little reactionary just itching to get out. Maybe for years Nobel has been waiting for the building that would enable him to reveal his true conservative self. Maybe, it's about hitting 40. Maybe, post-Muschamp, it's become fashionable to say that a building can just be an ugly, ordinary building. But in design circles, saying that a standard-issue developer box is OK isn't so good for street cred. So you bait it as "a classic," thank God for ceramic tubes, and ride the wave.

Nobel himself says he's just in love. Gushing like a schoolgirl over the captain of the football team —€” and, except for the bit about "social critique," sounding quite a bit like Venturi et al. circa 1972 —€” Nobel in the February 2007 number of Metropolis is in full Piano-swoon:

...now (OMG, this is totally embarrassing!) I have a little critic crush on him. Don't tell. It's just that, you know, he's like a real architect, an architect's architect —€” possibly the last of the greats not so bored with the pursuit of their craft that they need to turn their buildings into works of social critique, ego reinforcement, snazzy product design, or, God forbid, art."

This easy, breezy answer does exactly what it's supposed to do. Nobel innoculates himself against the charge that, at last, he is the one who has been gulled. And he does it with a dose of naughty, self-referential counter-branding that serves to reinforce the brand itself: "resident curmudgeon."

OF course, I'm being provocative. The more worrying prospect is that Philip Nobel is depressed.

Depressed that Norman Foster + London =
30 St. Mary Axe...

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/30_st_mary_axe.jpg
Photo: Nigel Young/Foster & Partners

...but that Foster's New York equation "adds up" to so much less —€” the Hearst Tower (box with chamfered corners)...

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/hearst_tower.jpg
Photo: Michael Ficeto; courtesy of Hearst Corporation

...or, worse, 200 Greenwich Street, aka "Tower 2," at
ground zero (box with chamfered top).

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/200_greenwich.jpg
Rendering: Foster & Partners

Depressed that Barcelona has Jean Nouvel's Torre Agbar...

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/torre_agbar.jpg

...but that the best New Yorkers can hope for from Nouvel
are the boxes of 40 Mercer Street (stacked boxes)...

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/40_mercer.jpg

...or 110 Eleventh Avenue (box base and box tower
with textured facades).

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/100_eleventh_ave.jpg
Rendering: Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Depressed about a New York in which Freedom Tower architect David Childs can describe his design for 7 World Trade Center as a "pure extrusion of the historic street grid" and expect to be congratulated for it. As if New York didn't really need design architects at all. As if the City could just "extrude" boxes of various heights up out of every four-sided parcel, wrap them in glass —€” or ceramic tubes —€” and be
done with it.

http://www.johnlumea.com/images/7_world_trade_center.jpg
Photo courtesy of Open House New York

So depressed about all of this, our Philip Nobel, that perhaps he has written New York off for innovative architecture and, to preserve his own sanity, feels compelled to create an alternate New York reality in which a box isn't really...a box.

Seems harmless enough, right? But what if every architecture writer used Nobel's review of the Times tower
as a kind of Kantian categorical imperative to describe every
new box as if it weren't one? How long would it be before we forgot how to hope or work for anything other than boxes? What kind of brave new surreal world would that be?

The fact is, it would be all too real.

New York is a city of tall buildings, and, with another million people expected to be added to its numbers between now and 2030, the need for many more tall buildings will not be subsiding any time soon.

Only by shaping tall buildings —€” by giving them curves, cuts, and tapers, rather than leaving them as boxes; and by making them taller and thinner, rather than shorter and wider —€” is it possible to use these buildings to (1) preserve more land for public use and (2) to minimize the negative physical impacts associated with them: to provide for people on surrounding streets and sidewalks (and in adjacent buildings) more and larger views; more sunlighting and daylighting; less congestion; smaller shadows with shorter duration; and reduced wind effects.

Only by shaping tall buildings is it possible, in other words,
to create the most sympathetic urban environment for
an increasingly crowded city.

By ignoring these most basic architectural principles,
the New York Times and its architects have snubbed their responsibility to the City and squandered a rare opportunity to chart a course for the City's large-scale building future. Instead, they have designed and built an unshapely box that consumes half a city block and rises a shocking 52 stories sheer from every adjacent sidewalk. An internal public garden —€” about where Bloomberg's mid-block pedestrian oculus is —€” will do about as much to mitigate the ill effects of this box as those ceramic tubes will. Which is to say, precious little.

Perhaps the best thing that can be said of the Times building is that it provides the public with a concrete glimpse of what is in store at ground zero —€” on an exponentially more ponderous scale —€” if they don't act very soon to demand better.

PHILIP Nobel was able to recognize the Hearst Tower as little more than "a stack of standard open-plan offices." That, he said —€” in a sighing, dismissive riff on "Whatever." —€” is "...fine. Just fine." And it might be.

The new Times building is even more of a "stack" than
the Hearst.

But it's not fine. Not fine at all.

comments john@johnlumea.com

Posted by johnlumea in ArchiCulture, Brave New World, Buildings & Spaces, Crit on Crit, Gotham, Long Form | Permalink

[lofter1]

Horizonr ^^^ loves the sound of his own key board ticking away ...

Such a blowhard.

Plus: That blog entry is 2 + months old -- which makes his words even more tired than usual ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[pianoman11686]

We get outdated articles posted quite often on this forum. I happened to stumble upon it, and realized it hadn't been posted yet in this thread. No harm done.

[macreator]

Horizonr ^^^ loves the sound of his own key board ticking away ...

Such a blowhard.


Glad someone said it.

[Ninjahedge]

Some of his criticisms are WAY out there.

Somehow he likes giant pine cones better than boxes. Of course, there are other things the buildings he has shown resemble.

And that little Gehry nightmare that would have been the NYT tower? Looks interesting, but the usable space is compromised, and it does not seem to address the issues of allowable construction in that airspce. I am not saying the CURRENT design is my favorite either (I REALLY do not like those cladding rods), but it is definitely better than that cacophonous hodgepodge up the street (atop the classy "Chevy's" restaurant) that tries to use dischordant colors and forced alterations in perspective to inbue a form of exaggerated polymorphic shape and depth to a building as artistically deep as Paris Hilton.

Hell, the Gehry building on the West Side is interesting, but looking at it from the NJ side, it looks like it is not finished. Liek a misplaced bit of winder decoration, or 1/3 of a huge sail on the Hudson.

Gehry works for himself and his buildings with little concern, it seems, for what is around them and how they will be percieved from any place other than his chosen rendering spots.

I am not totally downing the man, but sometimes big architects have trouble stepping away from all the people around them that tell them they are great and actually see their creations from the real world.

[RandySavage]

I was in Hoboken over the weekend (wish I remembered a camera). I know the crown isn't finished yet, but from across the Hudson, the top of this tower doesn't work for me.

At that distance the rods are much fainter than in the renderings/diagrams, the spikes dominate and the crown of the building looks messy, perpetually incomplete, like a bird's nest.

It's not a surprise that Barclay Tower looked more like Go-Bot than ever from across the river. The good news is that BofA Tower is shaping up well on the western skyline.

[Ninjahedge]

randy, I live over there. I can get you a pic if you want oe, or several.

Best vantage point is up on "Castle Point" on the Stevens campus. Gets you above most of teh clutter/rails/whatever below and gives you a free look of most of manhattan.

Aside from that there are the piers and Sinatra Park.


As for the NYT tower, it just looks like a plain flat wall from a distance. Not much pizazz at all... :(

[Spoon]

I agree that the NY times crown looks terrible and unfinished from Hoboken. It looks like super long spikey points and sloppy.

btw...that black penn plaza building looks massive and ruins a lot of the view from Hoboken.

BOFA is peeking through. whoo!!!

[stache]

I agree about the Times crown. It's reminding me of the Conde Nast bldg., which never looks quite finished on top.

[ManhattanKnight]

By LAD PAUL

When people learn that I have been working in the new building since the News Service and Web group moved in the week of April 23, the first question I invariably get is: "What's it like?"

Here are some answers.

It's open, bright, clean, orderly and quiet. You have a feeling that even the air you're breathing is somehow fresher.

But after the newness of those features wears off (less than the first full day), the irritations and frustrations of a brand new and largely unfinished building begin to set in. And newspeople being what they are, it's not long before kvetching becomes the norm. But that's not fair, because there is much that is surprising, interesting and plain enjoyable about 620 Eighth Avenue.

The first thing you notice is the light. Having windows on all sides is liberating and refreshing. The glass walls live up to Renzo Piano's vision and do make you feel integrated with the external environment. But then the automatic blinds come down and all you can see are fuzzy outlines of what's outside. Eventually the blinds go back up, although probably only part way. Then you have a half-obscured view of what's out there. But it's a view, which is a lot better than many of us had in the old quarters.

The antics of the blinds are amusing. When you first see the entire long wall of them lowering or rising in unison, it's arresting. Then they become a little mysterious. Their position doesn't always seem to correspond to light conditions. Finally, they can become troublesome as people discover how to raise and lower them locally. Some like them down; some like them up. You can anticipate the rest.

Another noticeable feature is the quiet. Nine floors up, we hardly hear any city noise at all. I don't know what the sound will be like on 2, 3 and 4 where the main news and feature departments will be, but it's got to be better than the din of car horns, sirens and street demonstrators on West 43rd, or the shrieks of MTV fans on the 44th street side.

The story you've heard about the lights is true. They are sensitive to movement, and in the first few days when only one late-night person was working in the News Service or the Web newsroom, the lights did not detect them and went off. The intrepid Ray Krueger, late editor in the News Service, found that if he got up and took a lap around the copy desk waving his arms every 20 minutes or so, the lights came on and stayed on. The sensors have now been adjusted so that they can detect fingers moving on a keyboard, and there are no more problems.

For those who work in the cubicle-style workstations, the space is ample and, at least in the units that have the higher walls, quite private. The matte cherry-wood finishes are soothing, and the cubes, combined with banks of filing cabinets, provide ample flat surfaces for people to pile things and abandon them for days, weeks or forever.

For those working at copy-editor style desks, the consensus so far seems to be "not so bad." Some customization will be needed for some people. Handedness turns out to be important, and lefties seem to have the advantage in the initial setups. Editors who need to write on paper as well as work at a keyboard will find it awkward until adjustments can be made.

The chairs seem to receive universal approval. They're sturdy, sleek and cool, both figuratively and literally (stainless steel and black with mesh backs). The adjustments seem to satisfy most needs and body types. There are some reports of neck and shoulder pains, but nobody has yet figured out if these are from the chairs or desk setups.

There is copious filing and storage space -- at least on the 9th floor where the News Service and part of the Web empire live: drawers, filing cabinets, closets for both coats and shelves. More than enough. Don't know if that will be the case in the newsroom, but if you run short, our rates are surprisingly affordable.

The bathrooms are all stainless steel and small tiles. Sparkling, shiny, clean, new. Couldn't be nicer.

The automatic faucets take some experimentation. With practice, you can find a sweet spot to hold your hands so that the water will run long enough to soap and rinse. A bonus: individual paper towels. The clunky roll towel dispensers that jam are in the past.

The sound that the automatic toilet flushers make is one of the oddities. Some people liken it to a small animal being strangled. Personally, I hear a couple of high, whiny notes from the Sopranos' theme music.

You heard correctly that the filtered drinking water system was not working for the first few days. It has been on now since the second week of occupancy and works fine, as do the 50-cent coffee-tea-hot chocolate dispensers. The cups are individually brewed from little filter pouches, and as a fairly choosy coffee drinker I will testify that the coffees are surprisingly tolerable. (You may remember the Flavia machines that we had for a while on the 11th floor.)

The elevators are creating culture shifts. It is unclear how many years it will take before we stop reaching to press a button upon entering the car (you push your floor button before you enter). And everybody gets off on the wrong floor at least once in his first couple of days because the display in the elevators doesn't tell you the floor where you just stopped -- just the ones that are scheduled for stops. (You have to be watching the lighted numbers and see your floor turn off, or remember to notice the little number signs on the wall outside when the doors open.)

It is folly to rush into an elevator lobby and jump into the first open car. If it is not destined to stop at the floor you want, you can't change it. And another new feature: cell phones now work everywhere, including elevators. Oh, joy.

As for the desk phones, they are a lot different. If you are a heavy phone user -- one for whom speed and dexterity are crucial -- I recommend that you do not pass the training sessions if they are still being offered. There are a lot of new features and some of the old ones don't work the way we are accustomed to.

Finally, the neighborhood. For people who don't commute from New Jersey and know of the Port Authority Bus Terminal only from its reputation, take heart. That reputation is long out of date, and indeed the Port Authority is an oasis in an area that otherwise retains some of the flavor of the pre-Disney Times Square.

It houses some useful retailing and services (florist, shoe repairer, book stores, cards, Duane Reade, electronics, a postal substation and the always valuable bowling alley and blood bank). Also there is the fairly new restaurant that is getting good word-of-mouth reviews, Metro Marché, of which we said in the paper in December, "The brasserie-style menu includes seared skate wing with marinated beets and horseradish cream; wild mushroom ravioli with porcini cream and shaved parmesan; and steak frites."

Of our two side streets, 40th is the more interesting. It has a fine selection of salad bar-deli-type places, including one directly out lobby door on that side; a place for wraps; a Turkish grill; and enough pizza and fast food joints to keep your waistline and coronary arteries fully stuffed. And if its fabric, fringe, buttons or lace you want, you won't find many better blocks.
On 41st, next door east of the NYT, is a New York Sports Club where you can burn off some of that fast food at a special discount rate for NYT employees.

So, as you hear the grousing and grumbling (or if you read the wiki in which the pioneering residents of the new floors are compiling their frustrations), keep in mind that there is a large other side to the story. And also keep in mind that in four weeks of working here so far, I haven't yet heard anybody say they'd rather move back.

Ahead of the Times (In-house publication)

[lofter1]

All in all the "inmates" seem pretty damned happy at their new digs (as I'd expect they would be) ...


... keep in mind that in four weeks of working here so far, I haven't yet heard anybody say they'd rather move back

[RandySavage]

Ninja, do you have any recent pics of BofA and NYTT from Hoboken you can post?

[Ninjahedge]

Not recent, although if i got my arse to castle point I could snap a few. I think I still have an ImageShack account, but I don;t know if they allow img hosting anymore (or if you have to link them and go to their site).

Anyone know?

[alonzo-ny]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/192/511411012_5585005428_b.jpg

[macreator]

The spire reminds me how great this would have looked if the tower itself had gone up to ~1,000 feet and then had the ~300 foot spire stuck on top.

[Deimos]

The southern facing part of the crown looks like it's complete. Saw it last night and it looked great at dark... can't wait to see it lit up!

[Sparkletron]

http://efferential.net/NYTT.htm

Click on the image to switch back and forth. Shots are approximately one month apart.

-S

[lofter1]

A few guys have been working all week on the grid on the lower part of the facade above Eighth Avenue where the "The New York Times" sign will be installed ...

It looks like they have about 1/3 of the brackets installed so far. I'm thinking that the sign might be up by the end of June.

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_47a.jpg

Renderings show it will look like this ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/TT_Piano_05d_FacadeName.jpg

[Eugenious]

Pretty sure it beats this.

http://www.kevindayhoff.com/uploaded_images/20060721_nytimes_building_in_new_york_city-762545.jpg

[pianoman11686]

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700872.jpg

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700873.jpg

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700874.jpg

Whether this building officially passes the Modernist test or not, you have to acknowledge its detailing is ultra-crisp, its frame muscular...much like the best works of Modernism.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700876.jpg

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700877.jpg

[Edward]

New York Times Tower (http://wirednewyork.com/skyscrapers/new_york_times_tower/) at night.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1272/533999161_008aec2b09_o.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/groups/a/pool/)

[BrooklynRider]

That is a GREAT shot. Frameable!

[macreator]

Bravo for a truly jaw dropping shot. I need to take a look at the Times building after-dark.

Anyone know when the rod uplighting will be turned on?

[pianoman11686]

Don't know. Anyway, here's a few more shots I took today in the late afternoon.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700886.jpg


Liking those red staircases...

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700889.jpg


http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700887.jpg


Notice the effect of the interior lighting on some of the windows on the right-hand side in this shot. The ceramic tubes just dissolve into the background. You really have to see it in person to appreciate it.

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700888.jpg


Great shot, Edward. From the PA roof?

[sfenn1117]

Edward, that shot is stunning!

[kz1000ps]

I'll fifth(?) the notion and say that your shot, Edward, is amazing. Like BrooklynRider said, it's very frameable. Or in my case,I'd say it makes for a perfect desktop background.

Right-click-save-as...

[lofter1]

methinks Edward got that shot from somewhere in his new building ...

[TREPYE]

Beautifully detailed...;)


http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700889.jpg


http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700887.jpg

[GVNY]

GVNY gives this tower a thumbs up.

[krulltime]

I just love to look at this tower everytime I have a chance when walking in NYC. I really like this one. Thanks for the photos guys!

[kz1000ps]

The building looks positively ALIVE in this picture! And light as a feather too..

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700887.jpg

[lofter1]

Exactamente ^^^

Nothing inert about this beauty :cool:

[stache]

For the most part I'm not feeling it.

[millertime83]

Ninja, do you have any recent pics of BofA and NYTT from Hoboken you can post?

These two are from last month.

[Citytect]

Hmm.... I don't like the crown much, but the rest of the building looks pretty darn good, in my opinion.

[Derek2k3]

http://img78.imageshack.us/img78/9633/dscn17640132tg5.jpg
elsonic (http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showthread.php?t=131927)
Classy.

[antnyg33]

NYT Interiors

[BrooklynRider]

Nice environment.

[macreator]

I understand why they chose a dark color for the rug, but it still doesn't sit well with me in a modern hi-tech setting. Otherwise, a nice interior save for the out of place green chairs in that last shot -- what's up with them? :confused:

[econ_tim]

Don't know how recent this is, but this is a different view from Sky House.

http://www.skyhousecondo.com/constsiteviews/43b_NW2.jpg

[lofter1]

Great hang out spot ...

http://wirednewyork.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4286&d=1181758984

[Fabrizio]

ew... red accents with industrial grey carpets... and those green chairs... it looks like Milan in the 1980's.

The fore ground in this pic reminds me of my small town dentists office. He got the frames from Ikea.

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=4287&d=1181759017

The exterior is so cool... what happened?

[lofter1]

What happened?

Maybe it's this:

New York Times losing hometown subscribers as company's stock dives (http://www.editorsweblog.org/print_newspapers/2006/01/new_york_times_losing_hometown_subscribe.php)

[finnman69]

What happened?

Maybe it's this:

New York Times losing hometown subscribers as company's stock dives (http://www.editorsweblog.org/print_newspapers/2006/01/new_york_times_losing_hometown_subscribe.php)

they will have a cool building, but nothing to do and no workers one day

[stache]

They can rent or sell it.

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/33537/

Troubling Leak at the ‘Times’

Paper has a rat, too.

By Geoffrey Gray

The New York Times’s new building has a leak—and it’s in the office of top editor Bill Keller. “Apparently, they hadn’t applied the final coat of sealant to the overhang on the third floor,” says spokeswoman Catherine Mathis. “When we had a downpour it dripped in Bill’s office, near the window.” (No damage was done, Mathis assures, and the roof has been fixed.) There was also a “big rat” scurrying around Metro editor Joe Sexton last week—“one so huge it made him turn pale,” says one reporter. As for the high-tech automatic toilets: “They make catlike noises before they flush,” says another staffer. “It’s not quite like a meow, it’s more like the noise a cat makes when you step on its tail.” Meow! Other than that, the source says, the new Times headquarters is “fantastic: great energy flow, great feng shui, great qi.”

[Fabrizio]

"There was also a “big rat” scurrying around Metro editor Joe Sexton last week—“one so huge it made him turn pale,” says one reporter."

Happens in the best of places.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Rat was just frightened by the toilets.

[kliq6]

http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/33537/

Troubling Leak at the ‘Times’

Paper has a rat, too.

By Geoffrey Gray

The New York Times’s new building has a leak—and it’s in the office of top editor Bill Keller. “Apparently, they hadn’t applied the final coat of sealant to the overhang on the third floor,” says spokeswoman Catherine Mathis. “When we had a downpour it dripped in Bill’s office, near the window.” (No damage was done, Mathis assures, and the roof has been fixed.) There was also a “big rat” scurrying around Metro editor Joe Sexton last week—“one so huge it made him turn pale,” says one reporter. As for the high-tech automatic toilets: “They make catlike noises before they flush,” says another staffer. “It’s not quite like a meow, it’s more like the noise a cat makes when you step on its tail.” Meow! Other than that, the source says, the new Times headquarters is “fantastic: great energy flow, great feng shui, great qi.”

Thats funny, the paper has really went downhill with all the scandels, within 10 years i bet NY times sells the building.

[kz1000ps]

6/16

The rods look so much better in person than photos

http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/226/img4908ru3.jpg

I've long held the opinion that the low rise looks like a garage, but I thought it looked great when I went by this time

http://img367.imageshack.us/img367/889/img4909cq2.jpg

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/5898/img4911fs1.jpg

[londonlawyer]

6/16

The rods look so much better in person than photos.

I agree. This is quite an impressive tower, and it is of extremely high quality.

[JMGarcia]

6/16

The rods look so much better in person than photos



I've been saying that too.

I also think its a building meant to be see close up, much like Hearst.

From a distance the rods on the crown become too transparent. Yet, from street level in the surrounding blocks the crown rods are much better. Probably something to do with the angle looking up at them. It reduces the space you see between them and they become more solid.

[panderson]

From Curbed: Views from the top of the Times Tower (includes links to pics and video):
http://www.curbed.com/archives/2007/06/13/views_from_inside_and_atop_renzo_pianos_nyt_prison .php

Also, Times in-house video about their move:
http://video.on.nytimes.com/?fr_story=07873aa3690b120a42b78e8b42989bd9ac4a835e

http://www.curbed.com/2007_06_ren2.jpg

[NYguy]

JUNE 24, 2007

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/81130078/medium.jpg_http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/81130096/medium.jpg_http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/81130138/medium.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/81130078/large.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/81130096/large.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/81130109/large.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/81130138/large.jpg


http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/81130078/original.jpg

[Fabrizio]

Look at that line up from the left.

Funny, an I-talian has designed the most NewYorkCity-looking office building in years and years.

[kliq6]

And many Italians built the thing as well

[Fabrizio]

Pure Gotham City!

Adds some romance to the skyline.


---

[Fahzee]

workers are installing the rods on the signage portion of the building (above the front entrance).....

[stache]

Looks like Batman is installing the rod as well -

[lofter1]

workers are installing the rods on the signage portion of the building (above the front entrance).....
Oh, Yeah ...

I've been waiting for this :D

[Fahzee]

ha! or as the show would say...Blammo!

[BrooklynRider]

<<<splat!!>>>>

[lofter1]

Potential <<< splat >>> late this afternoon (but luckily, not):

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_50a.jpg

[lofter1]

I love the way Piano and his gang configured this part of the low-rise section
(where the loading dock connects with the Times Center area) :

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_50c.jpg

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_50b.jpg

[kliq6]

on NY1 there was a small piece about the building during the NYTimes closeup show on Sunday night, showed the interiors and move in process

[lofter1]

The installation of the rod section with the Times' name continues along Eighth Avenue ...

I really wanted to get the scoop on this one (i.e.: Post / Publish the first phtos anywhere) but ...

I'm going to the country tonight for a few days so undoubtedly I'll miss the final installation :( . Therefore ...

I hereby COMMAND an industrious wny-er to get those first pics and POST THEM HERE (please)

Here's the progress today after lunch hour -- the bottom tails of the capital letters are beginning to make their appearance ...

A rod section is raised up with simple pulley ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52d.jpg

Easy does it ... don't want to break any of those ceramic rods ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52e.jpg

Something dark can be seen at the top of the new section ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52f.jpg

It's the bottom of the "T" in Times ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52h.jpg

The sun is beating down (damn, it was HOT today!!) ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52i.jpg

The section is almost in place ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52k.jpg

Once it's in the guys celebrate ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52l.jpg

And then they get back to work ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52o.jpg

The pulley and line are readied to raise the next section ... and so it goes ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52m.jpg

[lofter1]

I also strolled through the Time Tower Lobby -- which just glows. Seems like a museum or gallery. All in all it's a terrific space ...

I kept thinking they were going to bust me for taking pictures (hence the lousy framing) ...

Looking from the 41st Street entry across the lLobby toward the doors on 40th Street ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_51a.jpg

The Elevator Corridors are a bit intimidating --

I don't think folks will be hanging out here ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_51c.jpg

But the Central Corridor which connects the Eighth Avenue side of the Lobby to the Central Lobby
(which fronts onto the Interior Garden) is an awesome space ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_51d.jpg

[RandySavage]

Thanks for the photos... definitely going to check it out in person.

[antinimby]

I also strolled through the Time Tower Lobby -- which just glows. Seems like a museum or gallery. All in all it's a terrific space ...
I didn't know they let the public go into the building.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Excellent, lofter1.

[pianoman11686]

Wow, it really does have a kind of museum feel to it. Wooden floors will do that. (How often do you see those in office buildings?)

Lofter, no worries: I'll be providing updates almost daily (if there are, in fact, noticeable daily changes).

[NYatKNIGHT]

They still haven't put up the row of screens with the text as of Saturday night.

It's the bottom of the "T" in Times ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_52h.jpg

I think it's the bottom of the "Y" in York.

[lofter1]

Had to come back into town a bit early :( ...

Passing by the Times Tower on Sunday evening I saw they hadn't progressed as far as expected --

And, like NYatKnight says, what we see now is actually the bottom of the "Y" (the bit on the left is the hanging end of the "h" in "The") ...

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo379x64.gif

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_53b.jpg

[Derek2k3]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/224/499434123_fa7e46359c_b.jpg
lucas_roberts426 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucasroberts/499434155/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/193/499435613_1891e19308_b.jpg
lucas_roberts426 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucasroberts/499434155/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/203/499434139_e869376241_b.jpg
lucas_roberts426 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucasroberts/499434155/)

The view from our 2nd tallest building. (don't stone me)
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/190/499434155_4e980844c8_b.jpg
lucas_roberts426 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/lucasroberts/499434155/)

[BrooklynRider]

Moody photos. Nice.

Second tallest building? C'mon now.

[ablarc]

http://www.pbase.com/nyguy/image/81130078/original.jpg
^ Two flavors of Gothic.

[stache]

Now the sign says "v York Times".

[lofter1]

Stache has got that ^^^ right ... this might be up by the end of the week ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_54n.jpg

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_54i.jpg

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_54l.jpg

[Spoon]

That looks pretty damn cool. Not your typical name on a building. The building almost looks like newsprint with it all gray. It's definitely grown on me.

[MidtownGuy]

That is gorgeous.

[lofter1]

I like it, too ... good from any angle :cool:

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_55n.jpg

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_55d.jpg

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_55j.jpg

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_55h.jpg

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_55k.jpg

[stache]

Reminds me of an image seen on a black and white television screen.

[lofter1]

Can't figure out what they're going to do with the two open corners at the end of the masthead :confused:

[lofter1]

Another reminder how it was designed to look ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/TT_Piano_05d_FacadeName.jpg

[lofter1]

Can't wait to see that ^^^ at night with lights :D

[stache]

Can't figure out what they're going to do with the two open corners at the end of the masthead :confused:

Banner ads?

[pianoman11686]

This signage is just so classy, so New York. Even though it's a step away from all that neon and LCD lighting, it just seems to fit in so well. For those wondering, the tubes are not actually painted, but have some kind of (black) material attached on the surface to produce the lettering. I'll try to get some close-ups either today or tomorrow.

[lofter1]

Right ^^^

The black material actually encases the rod -- and is very 3-dimensional when seen up close.

[Derek2k3]

It'd be nice if BoA was one block south.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/482202951_49d1ae8c74_b.jpg
aturkus (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/221/474052274_3447dd4ca2_b.jpg
aturkus (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/251/457203797_06cbb6e2ae_b.jpg
aturkus (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/244/449030006_cc43c9740e_b.jpg
aturkus (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/231/498393392_da67647714_b.jpg


http://farm1.static.flickr.com/246/456058305_dcbc353381_b.jpg
aturkus (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/213/456062825_a237be3a51_b.jpg
aturkus (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/178/482202445_36206f55ab_b.jpg
aturkus (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/216/482192672_4db84d3f26_b.jpg
aturkus (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/206/467377738_3020aadebe_b.jpg
aturkus (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aturkus/)

[ablarc]

It'd be nice if BoA was one block south.
Sho' 'nuff. Also ESB needs some company (but good company!); been lonely too long.

[lofter1]

That's ^^^ for sure ...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PB8OyqDeq1s

[Stern]

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/231/498393392_da67647714_b.jpg

Celluloid New York.

[Scraperfannyc]

I like this building as it sort of stands out by saying do not mess with me.

Just wish it was much taller than the standard midtown height.

[econ_tim]

snapped these today:

http://img172.imageshack.us/img172/4986/nyt5pl9.jpg

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/8786/nyt3hi6.jpg

http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/9144/nyt1qr2.jpg

[Spoon]

saw it tonight up close in all it's glory. One of the best looking buildings I have ever seen at night. The detail in all the steel is also totally cool. I wasn't a fan of this building going up and I still think the crown looks messy and they could have used less rods on the skin but all in all it looks great and better than all the other exposed floorplate crap residential stuff they are putting up all over and ruining this city wity.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Pentagram (http://blog.pentagram.com/archives/2007/07/sign_of_the_times.php#more) designed NY Times sign.

http://blog.pentagram.com/archives/NYT_Beaks_Detail_Sm.jpg

[Fabrizio]

The logo is made up of those? That is amazing and must have been extravagantly expensive to produce. God is in the details. Just wonderful.

[dbhstockton]

Sho' 'nuff. Also ESB needs some company (but good company!); been lonely too long.

It's a little belated and off-topic, but I feel the need to respond to this sentiment with a "careful-what-you-wish-for." Correct me if I'm wrong, but the Empire State Building is only 1250 ft tall; its relatively slender form, dictated by the 1916 setback zoning, would be overwhelmed by a forest of contemporary extruded floor plate slab towers, no matter how well-designed they may be. A resulting loss of classic "Gotham-ness" would be inevitable, similar to what happened downtown.

Find the Chrysler Building in the new photos and compare to the role it played in NYC's classic era:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/nycbw/106.jpg

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/nycbw/203.jpg

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/nycbw/217.jpg

The ESB is, obviously, bigger the Chysler, but just not big enough. Much of its drama feeds on its setting.

[lofter1]

The sign is complete ...

http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p242/Lofter1/NY%20Times%20Tower/L1NYT_57a.jpg

[antinimby]

Does that mean the construction sheds on 8th will finally come down and the sidewalks repaved?

For the sidewalks, I'd like to see them use the type of concrete that has a little bit of glitter in them that you see from time to time in Midtown.

That'll be nice touch.

[lofter1]

It looks like that ^^^ will happen soon -- sparkly would be nice.

The subway entrance stairs at Eighth / 40th are just about completed so once that is done I think they'll be doing the sidewalks -- new sidewalks @ W 41 / W 40 alongside the low-rise section have (for the most part) recently been installed and the retial spaces at street level are getting dry-wall, etc.

[lofter1]

The logo is made up of those? That is amazing and must have been extravagantly expensive to produce ...

Perhaps that ^^^ is one reason why the NY TImes announced this week that as of tomorrow the daily edition is going up from $1.00 > $1.25 and the Sunday Times is going from $#.50 > $4.00 :mad:.

A 25% increase in the daily paper rate (and the pain of digging for that extra quarter) will probably lose them a lot of individual buyers -- which is how I buy the Times (for various reasons).

[londonlawyer]

Perhaps that ^^^ is one reason why the NY TImes announced this week that as of tomorrow the daily edition is going up from $1.00 > $1.25 and the Sunday Times is going from $#.50 > $4.00 :mad:.

A 25% increase in the daily paper rate (and the pain of digging for that extra quarter) will probably lose them a lot of individual buyers -- which is how I buy the Times (for various reasons).

I think that $1.25 is a bargain. The FT is $2, and it doesn't have as extensive coverage as the Times does.

[Fabrizio]

If it's a way to chip-in for the sign, then I'm all for it.

[stache]

Read it online for $0.00.

[lofter1]

I sometimes like to read it on the subway :cool:

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/8919/nytimes50cmp6.th.jpg (http://img166.imageshack.us/my.php?image=nytimes50cmp6.jpg)

[Jasonik]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Thumbs_up.jpg/420px-Thumbs_up.jpg

[Edward]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1305/814514949_2fbf338b1f_o.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sudentas/show/)

[ZippyTheChimp]

Looks as advertised.

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1173/819119944_ed8d0c6a29_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1055/819119536_3220d5498c_o.jpg

[lofter1]

Nice chairs ^^^

[kliq6]

This tower looks great but for its height, coming in from JFK on Saturday evening, you couldnt see it at all. Weird

[macreator]

Walked by the building yesterday -- the Times "logo" looks fantastic.

[tmac9wr]

Nice chairs ^^^

LCM chairs designed by Charles Eames....I did a project on them at my old school back when I was an architecture major...I agree with you, they are very cool.

[lofter1]

LCM chairs designed by Charles Eames ...


These look like they have a nice powder-coat finish on the legs ...

Did the original Eames design have chromed legs?

Growing up we had an sort of Eames-ish dining set with chairs somewhat akin to these, except the legs were black wrought iron (think California / Eichler modern).

I'd kill to have that set now :cool:

[NYatKNIGHT]

I have an Eames chair, it has chrome legs.

[macreator]

I'd like to get an Eames set but I just can't justify spending that much cash. Man, I've got to get into hedge funds, then I can justify any expenditure. :D

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1193/859878720_3cec663b24_o.jpg
Looks very mechanical and raw, much like the West Side now.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1009/859878730_50d417b0c4_o.jpg
In person, the Times appears to be the same shade as the concrete on the McSam.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1081/859878780_f4d707049f_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1015/859878764_3a4348fbf6_o.jpg
I'd kill to see what it'd look like without the rods.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1002/859878816_2ca305ae61_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1419/859878828_cb29d1d88f.jpg
Timeless building.

[ablarc]

Timeless building.
But: A Building For The Times.

[antinimby]

I hope those McSams don't have much more to go. Anyone have the current floor count?

[TREPYE]

Beaux-Structuralism.....
:D;)


http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r260/pianoman11686/SA700889.jpg

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1025/876005042_468142e771_o.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1353/876005068_913308e615_o.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1376/876005062_653c2111b3_o.jpg

[Fabrizio]

The top is a great idea. Wonderful in the minds eye and in a rendering... but the execution is something else. I really love the Gothic, spikey, look of the sides as they rise, it's brilliant ...but seen from the front, the crown is just too transparent. Perhaps in other lighting situations?

[kliq6]

Visted the ESB roof on Saturday, great views as always but this tower looks great from up there and does stand out better in the skyline when you view it from there. Also OBP is already higher they Times and Chrysler without the spire so this one truly is the second tallest in the city now

[Bugsy12]

I'm new here, first post in fact, but I am curious to know if anyone is privy to the lighting scheme that will be employed at this building. Will the crown be lit from the inside out? The crown is screaming for some opaque or reflective behind the rods. Are they holding off because additional material would affect the its illumination?

[lofter1]

There will be LOTS of external lighting on this building ... some of the lighting instruments are now being installed on the exterior at the lower floors (not yet operational).

Not sure what is planned for up-top, but am imagining that it will look GREAT.

[LeCom]

One of the building's best aspects is how it improves 8th Avenue views. The tower looks quite nicely even all the way from 96th Street.

[TallGuy]

The top is a great idea. Wonderful in the minds eye and in a rendering... but the execution is something else. I really love the Gothic, spikey, look of the sides as they rise, it's brilliant ...but seen from the front, the crown is just too transparent. Perhaps in other lighting situations?

Can you imagine if the earlier version of 1WTC was actually built with the lattice comprising the empty top 30-50% of the tower?

[alonzo-ny]

That image haunts my dreams

[Fabrizio]

It would have said failure. A big chicken coop in the sky.

[JMGarcia]

The top is a great idea. Wonderful in the minds eye and in a rendering... but the execution is something else. I really love the Gothic, spikey, look of the sides as they rise, it's brilliant ...but seen from the front, the crown is just too transparent. Perhaps in other lighting situations?

Its an interesting affect. When seen from a distance its too transparent but the closer you get to the building it turns solid. Probably because the angle you're looking at it from up close and down below minimizes the visible empty space.

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1152/890839359_6cac27fd33_o.jpg

From this morning, got to work a little early.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1082/890839321_d1b2e6d3db_o.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1040/890839311_08b1dc5a68_o.jpg
As JM said, the crown looks more solid when standing close. The spire is in good proportion from here too.


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1440/890839411_d324fc258c_o.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1085/890839569_c53565476a_o.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1143/890839579_f6c7a41760_o.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1057/891684970_a19958381b_o.jpg

[GVNY]

Viewing these shots, it is quite clear that this is a wonderfully attractive tower. But from afar, it lacks dominance, especially at the crown.

[Fabrizio]

I do love how it fits with the pre-war buildings though. Notice Derek's first pick. (beautiful angle in that one, great eye)

[OmegaNYC]

Love the building, but for some reason it looks "short" to me. I guess it's cuz of the scale.

[millertime83]

I recently traveled to Sydney. While there I noticed that this building resembled the NYTimes Tower quite a bit:

http://skyscraperphotos.com/cit/dsy01/a/izsy119.jpg

[sfenn1117]

Construction elevator coming down!

http://i10.tinypic.com/5yvupf8.jpg

http://flickr.com/photos/franksvalli/900156661/in/set-72157601010347730/

[ablarc]

Messy at the top. Is it finished?

[NYatKNIGHT]

Doesn't look completely finished. Could use some greenery.

[DominicanoNYC]

This tower is very imposing, I really like rods.

[NYatKNIGHT]

DominicanoNYC, good to have you back.

[DominicanoNYC]

It's been a while, I must have gone on vacation a few years ago and just forgotten about coming back to the site... Then when I remembered I had trouble with my account and here we are just about 2-3 years later.

[ablarc]

Doesn't look completely finished. Could use some greenery.
Like a rack of parsley?

[NYatKNIGHT]

Sure. Or some trees like there were in early renderings.

[DominicanoNYC]

It'd be nice if they did add the trees, but I don't know if they will...

[Citytect]

Looks like much of what's behind the rods on the roof is still unfinished. The tenant for the top floors will be building out the rooftop amenities...

Aug 17, 2006 (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=115961&postcount=1735)

Baltimore-based Legg Mason will lease about 200,000 square feet, Cleveland-based Forest City said. Legg Mason will occupy the 45th through 50th floors, and agreed to the design and construction of a rooftop conference center and landscaped garden on the 52nd floor.

[ablarc]

It'd be nice if they did add the trees...
The garnish.

(At that height they'll look just like parsley.)

[Fabrizio]

How they garnished back in the 14th century...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandros80/296712367/

[ablarc]

^ Wow, that is impressive !!






(And it looks like parsley.)

[Fabrizio]

Another view:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpnice1/37164246/

It's funny because today you will see these kind of proposals and it seems so new.

Anyway, it would be wonderful to have a small forest on top of a tall skyscraper.

[DominicanoNYC]

The garnish.

(At that height they'll look just like parsley.)

That's right I keep on forgetting, doh!

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1093/927117768_dced2e4263_b.jpg
nosha (http://www.flickr.com/photos/nosha/927117768/)
July 25, 2007

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1008/871479270_1ee0c8a802.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=871479270&size=l&context=set-72157600945450365)

Click to enlarge

[Derek2k3]

Interesting read.



The Times Tower, in which I work, is an oppressive, outsized mess. It is the culmination of the logic of late capitalism, and the logical outcome of the premises of modernism and postmodernism.

It is billed in the propaganda material accompanying it as architecturally “transparent,” befitting the supposed journalistic transparency of The New York Times (which in reality is about as transparent as the Chinese politburo).

Weirdly, however, as so many of these photos show, the thing actually resembles a gigantic filing cabinet for humans, which is how Frank Lloyd Wright characterized skyscrapers in general, but which description suits this particular structure to a T. The facade is as gray, gloomy and forbidding as a tombstone blown up to a thousand times its normal size.

Is there any physical transparency? Sure, indoors. Everything, including all the offices, is surrounded by glass. Offices open onto the aisles via sliding glass doors. Here is a news flash to the architect who designed this place: people like and need a little privacy. There is no privacy here; everyone is under everyone else’s constant scrutiny.

One good thing about the open sightlines is that they allow one to get a quick advance view of the mice and Norwegian rats that have taken up residence here, :yuck: so the “transparency” isn’t all bad, I suppose.

The place is still under construction, and might be for years. That we had to move in here before actual construction was completed is a function of the fact that corporations are people (legally ordained such more than 100 years ago) and their employees are fungible commodified production units who have no say in their working conditions. The building is to its inhabitants what a body is to its cells, which are constantly being replaced.

That being the case, the corporation was also able to outsource the janitorial help, which now means that the waste baskets (of which there are far fewer than in the old building) are constantly topped by tottering towers of discarded food, just another magnet for the vermin.

The outside of the building has all the charm of a federal penitentiary. The old building had — you know — pointed roofs, and arches, and quiet little niches, and globes of light with the words “New York Times” printed on them it chipped black paint; it also had revolving doors. In other words, it had all that stuff that the logic of modernism deemed to be superfluous “ornamentation” — notwithstanding that people like ornamentation.

But no, form must follow function, and the outside of the new building consists of relentlessly rigid architectonic repeating patterns of steel and glass. Curiously — and this is a recurring motif throughout the building — the architect, or one of his sadistic assistants, thought it advisable to embellish the building with steel strips that have perfectly round holes punched through them, calling to mind stuff found in the old Erector sets. Some of these strips jut outward and culminate in spherical objects that are either lights (though if they are, they are never turned on) or surveillance cameras. They look creepy, like appendages of incomprehensible purpose extending from a crashed flying saucer.

Thank God the windows can’t be opened! If they could be, it would mean that, as in the old building, one of our funny and popular clerks would be able to fling open a window in July, kick off her shoes, sit on the ledge and wave her bare legs around while her skirt floated up around her and she shouted happily down to the theater-goers across the street. We can’t have people behaving like that! (Fortunately the clerk is question now works overseas, and moreover there are no theaters across the street, just porn shops.)

The top of the building is supposed to look like that. Really! It’s a “postmodern” touch. It actually looks as though the builder ran out of money to finish the top, but that’s OK, because the viewer is distracted from noticing this by the immense toothpick that gracelessly crowns the human filing cabinet that this building is. Note to architect: see the Chrysler building and the Empire State building for tips on designing tops.

The elevators are “smart,” which means that they have no buttons inside of them. A rider has to punch, on a panel on the wall outside the elevator, the button of the floor that he wants to go to. When he does, an electric sign comes on repeating the requested floor number, and a moment later it tells the rider which elevator to use. (The elevators are lettered; so for example if you ask for Floor 3, the sign will say: “Floor Three,” followed a moment later by “Go to Elevator F,” or “Go to Elevator C,” or whichever elevator the computer decides is the one that will get you to your floor the quickest.)

The upshot is that waits for the elevator are about twice as long as in the old building. Also, the elevator’s sensors are malfunctioning, and for the sake of corporate efficiency the doors stay open for only about seven seconds. This means that if you don’t bound into the elevator as quickly as possible once your floor has been assigned to you and the car’s doors have opened, the doors will whisk shut, and they will hurt you. If you are caught in the doors, you have to struggle to push them open; one person has already suffered a damaged elbow that required medical treatment. It’s like living in a Stephen King novel. (“Johnnie, the elevators don’t like us. They want to hurt us, and they’d kill us, if they could.”)

The world will run out of economically recoverable fossil fuels in this century, a fact that will permanently end industrial/technological civilization. In about a hundred years and maybe in as few as fifty years, the new Times Tower will be an uninhabited ruin among other uninhabited ruins. But, as Frank Lloyd Wright said, Manhattan’s skyline will make for marvelous ruins.

[alonzo-ny]

yeah i read that, to me sounded like the guy is mad at his life/job/corporate world/everything rather than the building.

[BrooklynRider]

I agree. He ought to go compare notes with the folks working in class C buildings. And, newsflash, the glass used in interiors these days is about allowing natural light to pentrate the internal areas of the building. Honestly, he sounds like a bitter douchebag.

Hey, is "douchebag" an allowable term here?

[stache]

Did anyone read the story about maggots falling on someone's head in this building? I think it was posted on Curbed.

[BrooklynRider]

I'm assuming they are talking about David Brooks and Adam Nagourney.

[Fabrizio]

The above rant could have easily been written in the 1950's when office workers found themselves working in modern buildings.

Some of the observations are down-right quaint, as if the authour suddenly woke after a 50 year long sleep:

"Note to architect: see the Chrysler building and the Empire State building for tips on designing tops."

[ablarc]

^ Still, it's a missive from the trenches.

[Skylimitone]

07.31.07

https://community.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2007/08/550849.jpg

https://community.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2007/08/550851.jpg


https://community.emporis.com/files/transfer/6/2007/08/550852.jpg

[DominicanoNYC]

This building looks it's best on sunny days.

[DarrylStrawberry]

The rods thinning out towards the top look cool in those last 2 photos. ^^

[Citytect]

^I don't think they thin out at the top.

[DarrylStrawberry]

I meant to reference the increase in spacing between them.

[stache]

Kind of like the hair on top of my head!

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1344/1007008685_c0a761c6b1_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1325/1007008619_a7e5b58ca8_o.jpg

[Citytect]

I meant to reference the increase in spacing between them.

See, I'm not a fan of the increased spacing. In theory and in the renderings, it seems like a good idea - sort of melting into the sky. But in reality, the wider spacing just makes the top look messy.

[lbjefferies]

See, I'm not a fan of the increased spacing. In theory and in the renderings, it seems like a good idea - sort of melting into the sky. But in reality, the wider spacing just makes the top look messy.

People just never learn. Of course it is messy--it is still under construction. Perhaps we should wait until the rooftop is complete and the garden has been installed before saying it does or doesn't work. Or, people can just continue making fools out of themselves complaining about this masterpiece before it is done. I'll be expecting the latter.

[stache]

...masterpiece?

[lbjefferies]

...masterpiece?


did i stutter?

[stache]

Not yet!

[Citytect]

People just never learn. Of course it is messy--it is still under construction. Perhaps we should wait until the rooftop is complete and the garden has been installed before saying it does or doesn't work. Or, people can just continue making fools out of themselves complaining about this masterpiece before it is done. I'll be expecting the latter.

By the same logic it's ill-advised for you to call it a masterpiece before construction is completed.

I really hope you aren't directing these statements at me, because I've defended this building when it was still considered an oversized prison or a parking garage. If you're going to come down on someone for saying something bad about the NYT tower, at least be familiar with what the person has posted about the building in the past, and not just conjecture what you think the person would say based on one or two posts. Otherwise you'll just come across looking like an ass.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I'm not too happy with the top, either. But I don't think it's because of the rod spacing.

More like this. (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=176627&postcount=2649)

Like the interior lights at night, the bright sky behind the rods makes them less distinct, and the crown looks too transparent.

[lbjefferies]

By the same logic it's ill-advised for you to call it a masterpiece before construction is completed.

I really hope you aren't directing these statements at me, because I've defended this building when it was still considered an oversized prison or a parking garage. If you're going to come down on someone for saying something bad about the NYT tower, at least be familiar with what the person has posted about the building in the past, and not just conjecture what you think the person would say based on one or two posts. Otherwise you'll just come across looking like an ass.


The logic is not at all the same. Assuming something will improve--as construction proceeds and is eventually finished--is a good one I think. Piano's vision has been exquisitely executed thus far with extensive preparatory research and top of the line materials. I don't think you need me to go back and show you all the early construction photographs where the body of the Times Tower looked straight-up ugly, and there were many people who rushed to declare it a massive failure (whether or not that group includes you, I could not possibly care less). But with a little imagination, I (along with admirable number of other forumers) realized this thing was going to be beautiful; which, of course, it is. Now as the top is under construction, there is another chorus of naysayers; and again i think they are wrong. It'll work, just have a little patience.

[kz1000ps]

But lbjefferies, what is there left to finish on the crown? The spire is done, framing is done, and I'd assume the bars are done since they haven't added any more in at least a couple of months by now, so what are you waiting for? Are you expecting this garden to all of the sudden pull the composition together? I sure don't.

[Citytect]

I'm not too happy with the top, either. But I don't think it's because of the rod spacing.

You're right. I'm not saying the rod spacing alone is the problem with the top - just that it contributes to the problem.

[Derek2k3]

If there is a garden, how will they get the trees up with no crane?
Elevators? Maybe they planted some acorns...

[Pussy Willow]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/nyctowers/2007/Picture273.jpg

[Derek2k3]

Thank you.

[Zephyr]

Yes .... Thank you Pussy Willow. (I feel like Sean Connery in Goldfinger for some reason. :rolleyes:)

Lamenting the glass staircase that was not built. But this will still be a building much talked about around the world. It's immaterial as to whether it is loved or hated. :cool:

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1070/1111567174_9dad37c293_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1312/1111573540_f7a11e7720_o.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1157/1111573498_12d6d5f109_o.jpg



http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1328/1111567242_ddb5867112.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111567242&size=o)

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1138/1111567286_26c2cb24a9.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111567286&size=o)

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1028/1111567276_051b8be427.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111567276&size=o)

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1314/1111567326_6400bdef7b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111567326&size=o)

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1235/1111573460_638b572e6b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111573460&size=o)

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1267/1111573480_a04d911198.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111573480&size=o)

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1032/1111577968_e0ca8e9315.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111577968&size=o)

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1310/1110946231_218e299677.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1110946231&size=o)


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1249/1111578116_f1b2a47590.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111578116&size=o)


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1189/1111573598_fa07d8a265.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111573598&size=o)


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1397/1110946219_96376058fd.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1110946219&size=o)


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1252/1111577956_180214ad76.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111577956&size=o)

[Skylimitone]

Which buildings are those rising in front of and to the right (if you're looking east) of the NYT Tower?

[scumonkey]

Those are the crappy POS buildings being thrown up by that skyline destroyer Sam Chang!

[Skylimitone]

Those are the crappy POS buildings being thrown up by that skyline destroyer Sam Chang!

What does POS mean?

[stache]

Piece of...

[Zephyr]

Thank you Derek2k3 for those photos, packaged in two posts. The second post is particularly interesting to me, after the context was revealed.

I had not noticed this type of interplay with other buildings, and I would image that the light would affect these same photos at different times of the day in such a way as to change them. I cannot wait to see this area this week, and again in a few months. Your photos will help me view them a little differently.

[lofter1]

It looks like they haven't quite worked out all the kinks of the synchronized blinds system ...

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1235/1111573460_638b572e6b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=1111573460&size=o)

[antinimby]

I actually don't mind the somewhat messy appearance as a result. Looks "lived" in.

[Radiohead]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v109/nyctowers/2007/Picture273.jpg

The top of the building reminds me of something...I don't know what?
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Oh yeah, now I know.........
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1045/1121778243_2d4f53fbff.jpg


Considering all the early hype, I was expecting another ESB or Chrysler Building. So much for hype.

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1028/1176890929_7dc34b2433_o.jpg

[Derek2k3]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1081/1232958157_7297ec60dd.jpg


http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1111/1232957167_5318f1a7c0.jpg
Hagen Stier (http://www.flickr.com/photos/30982458@N00/)

[Fabrizio]

This is just beau