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Architecture

The Municipal Building That Hid a Subway, a Street, and a Rooftop View

The Municipal Building That Hid a Subway, a Street, and a Rooftop View

The David N. Dinkins Municipal Building was designed as a civic machine, combining city offices, streets, subway access, and a newly opened public rooftop view.

Why So Many New York Towers Have Tiny Cranes on the Roof

Why So Many New York Towers Have Tiny Cranes on the Roof

The small crane-like machines on New York rooftops are building maintenance units, and they quietly shape how skyscrapers are designed, cleaned, and inspected.

The Skinny Tower That Helped Carnegie Hall Pay Its Bills

The Skinny Tower That Helped Carnegie Hall Pay Its Bills

Carnegie Hall Tower squeezed past the Russian Tea Room, rose 757 feet from a narrow site, and helped turn cultural air rights into a Midtown business model.

How Steinway Tower Turned a Tiny Midtown Lot Into the Skinniest Skyscraper on Earth

How Steinway Tower Turned a Tiny Midtown Lot Into the Skinniest Skyscraper on Earth

Steinway Tower is not just tall. It is a quarter-mile engineering compromise built around a landmark, a tiny footprint, luxury finance, and controlled motion.

The Skyscraper Built Inside a Landmark Shell

The Skyscraper Built Inside a Landmark Shell

Hearst Tower solved an old New York problem by preserving a 1928 landmark base while building a 46-story diagrid tower through it.

The Twisting Towers That Turned Views Into Value

The Twisting Towers That Turned Views Into Value

One High Line's two towers twist away from each other to create more separation, better light, and more Hudson River views.

The Building That Helped Break Cooper Union's Free-Tuition Promise

The Building That Helped Break Cooper Union's Free-Tuition Promise

41 Cooper Square was designed as a bold, green, world-class academic building. It also became tangled in the financial story that ended Cooper Union's century-and-a-half tuition-free tradition.

Google's Manhattan Groundscraper Built on a Freight Terminal

Google's Manhattan Groundscraper Built on a Freight Terminal

St. John's Terminal gave Google something rare in Manhattan: enormous horizontal floors where a headquarters could grow out instead of up.

The Manhattan Apartments Built Directly Over I-95

The Manhattan Apartments Built Directly Over I-95

The Bridge Apartments turned air rights above the Trans-Manhattan Expressway into housing, then left residents living over one of New York's dirtiest traffic funnels.

The Skyscraper That Hangs Over an Art School

The Skyscraper That Hangs Over an Art School

Central Park Tower's most revealing detail is not just its height. It is the cantilever that lets the tower hang over the landmarked Art Students League to protect park views.

New York's First Concrete Building Became a Tiny Landmark Beside Whole Foods

New York's First Concrete Building Became a Tiny Landmark Beside Whole Foods

The Coignet Stone Building was built as a concrete advertisement in 1873. More than 150 years later, it still sits apart from the city around it.

The Stepped Manhattan Building Designed to Keep Its Shadow Off the Park

The Stepped Manhattan Building Designed to Keep Its Shadow Off the Park

Mercedes House looks like a staircase because a straight tower beside DeWitt Clinton Park would have created a much harder approval fight.