Just because it has been nearly an entire month since mentioning 51 Astor Place...
...glassed up except for the very tippy-top, which will house the hypermatter reactor ... you can notice the tippy-top (descriptive!) on the Third Avenue side...
OK, OK — here.
Anyway. Getting used to seeing it now here?
15 comments:
I just got used to not looking at it. I take the subway from and to Astor Place every day and wasn't even aware the thing was covered with glass now, until I saw your post.
Holy Christ, it's even more hideous in reality than it was in the renderings.
Office park chic. Where are the five acres of parking?
That's not a very space-saving design is it. When you literally cut corners of a building like that, isn't a lot of valuable space lost? Isn't that why buildings are typically designed in a rectangular shape? Fuck this place and every other building that is trying to be a monument to some architect/developer's insipid overblown ego.
Getting used to it.
Only problem is, that when I am walking west on the south side of St.Marks, and I look ahead at Astor Place, I see that Astor Place is now a tiny narrow little alleyway between Cooper Union and The D.S. building. It scares me. It's narrow and enclosed and forbidding. I have to turn around and run back the other way. (sigh)
Oh, yeah, the Bumpit at the top makes ALL the difference.
The sunless north side reminds me of the far recesses of a freezer...the place where frozen peas go to mummify and be forgotten by time and space. I feel bad for the people on 9th Street who have this menacing thing obstructing their view of the sky.
This building is a shiny example of how one building impacts those around it - Cooper Union, once a grand pillar of this square, because of old 51 Astor's setback, is now much less of a notable building... lost in the Dark Star's shadow.
@ Goggla & Bowery Boy
+1
She's as cold as ice
Willing to sacrifice our love
You never take advice
Someday you'll pay the price, I know....
@ glamma
Yes!
@10:21 and @11:09
The shape is partly dictated by the developer's requirement to restore the site lines between Astor Place and Stuyvesant St. Once the scaffolding comes down, there's supposed to be a public plaza there that will open things up a bit. A little polish for this turd.
I waiting for the July sun to hit it and blind every car driver on 9th St.
No, the reflections are blinding so very hard to ignore. Once it was so bright, before it even had all the glass, I couldn't see my book while I was on the bus. My eyes hurt remembering that sad, sour moment.
What is that diagonal shape from the top to bottom on the third Avenue side?
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