Yeah, 576 and 574 have a lot of character (572 did), I doubt whatever replaces them will…
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Assuming that Extell acquires this site, it will be a pretty large parcel. Obviously, all three buildings on 47th St in this image will come down.
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I’ve made a new thread for the hotel development that is further north.
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Seven years later and still “Waiting for Godot.” I assume that Extell will acquire the corner building.
The crappy block to the south needs to come down too.
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RW — You constantly contend that old, not classy, buildings need to come down. Wrong as can be. It’s in that “crap,” as you call them, where New York really thrives. Rents are lower. They often house small merchants, artisans, techy startups, and other folks who neither want nor can afford better space. To get rid of lots of these places can take the commercial life out of a district. For example, the first studio my artist wife found after we moved to the city was space in a junk building in the 20s that used to be a girdle factory. In addition to artists, the building had small wholesalers and retailers, techies, and a variety of other folks. Tearing it down would have killed that sort of environment. The life of the city is often housed in run down, old, non-descript places and they need to be scattered around in order to maintain the city’s vibrancy. So every time I read another of your posts about “crap” or a” POS” part of me cringes as I wonder whose life is wrapped up in that place and would be wiped out when it comes down. Not everything needs to be class A. Much needs to be old class C stuff.
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let me guess - the reply will be that this post sucks Dick Cheney?
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I respect your opinion, Chused, but I disagree. There is a place for class c buildings where small merchants can thrive in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and in parts of Manhattan, but not on one of the most expensive streets in the world.
Not to mention, Philippine Airlines, Oakley, and the tacky “I Love NY” souvenir shop do not add anything to the city’s QoL.
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Someone is a bit grumpy. Is it that time of the month?
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Chused, I applaud you!!!
That is not Philippine Airlines - that is the Philippine Embassy. The lobby is actually quite beautiful, I used to go there a lot as a kid. The exterior just needs a bit of love. But worth keeping IMO. Definitely adds to the QOL of Filipino immigrants to the city though.
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RW Last in this line from me. Nope. We need “crap” all over. Much of midtown goes dead after work hours. Big new buildings with nothing else around does not make for a lively city. Jane Jacobs Death and Life of Great American Cities correctly instructs us on that. Ciao.
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Agreed with Chused… it gets a bit annoying when there’s a nice new proposal and we’ve gotta read “yeah but this place 2 blocks away sucks, etc etc” and the place in reference is often (not always, of course) a perfectly decent, if nondescript, place that still gives the city its unique texture.
Even if some times I may agree with the statement, it’s the omnipresence of it and the irrelevancy to the thread topic that is often a bit of a debbie downer. Just my opinion
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That’s fine. We disagree.
I guess the question is would you rather live in an antiseptic city with no character, no history like Dubai?
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I guess you don’t travel overseas much. London and Paris don’t have the extent of garbage in prime spots that NY does.
I guess that London is very Antiseptic. Its lack of garbage on the street is so supercilious. And where are the rats? A city without monster rats eating the garbage on the street lacks character and is pretentious.
Paris is pretty awful too. How boring. Ennui per se!
What is this? The suburbs? Paris is so terrible.
Forgive me for not seeing the virtue in the grit in NY. Who would want to eliminate the Third World, Calcutta-style filth? It’s very egalitarian.
Let cities like Chicago and Seattle try to clean themselves up.
We need more filth — not less!
New York really was better in the past. It had character.
At least the good old days of out of control crime are back! That’s awesome!!
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Side note, but related to this current discussion. I greatly admire NYGuy as a valuable contributor over on the skyscraperpage forum, but one area where he is dead wrong IMO is the city’s stock of old buildings. If anyone even remotely suggests that they do not like a new proposal because it will result in the tear down of an old building, he practically bites their head off, saying we can’t make NYC a museum, and that they must have never walked the streets here, because the city is full of old buildings and can thus afford to lose a particular old building in place of a new project.
While he is partially right, the city is of course full of old stock, it’s also by no means an infinite amount. If old buildings are getting torn down across the city every year, one day we will wake up and most will be gone. And to the points raised here, those old buildings make New York, New York, and not Dubai, Shenzen, etc.
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I think it all depends on the context. For instance I think those buildings on Fifth just need some TLC and they could be fine additions to the cityscape. But I think the bottom two pictures you posted–the ones by MSG–are trash that needs to be razed. Also, the quality of the replacement matters a lot. If those buildings on Fifth were being replaced by a stunning supertall, I’d consider them a worthy sacrifice. But if it’s a featureless blue glass box that could be found in Houston or Toronto, I’d like them to stay. (I have to say though, that junk by MSG is so bad I’d even take a glass box over what’s currently there).
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I have traveled a great deal both in Europe and Asia. Paris and London? Both cities have gone through major urban renewal. Haussmann tore down huge sections of Paris between the 1850’s and 1880’s during Napoleon III’s reign. Which is why so much of Paris is so beautiful and homogeneous in style. A lot of London’s renewal was forced due to the bombing in WWII and reconstructed to look like it did before. Rats? rats are everywhere except Antartica. The biggest rat I ever saw was in a youth hostile in Germany.
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