Watch-Blog
This isn’t a Game
The City enacts building codes and zoning guidelines often to protect the public. Jacob Riis instigated housing reform and new tenement laws by exposing the horrid living conditions of the immigrant poor. The Triangle Shirt Waist Factory immolation yielded more...
THE GUARDIAN: Anything but “Super”
Like leggy plants given too much fertiliser, [sic] these buildings are a symptom of a city irrigated with too much money. The Guardian takes on the emergence of a "new" typology in "Super-tall, Super-skinny, Super-expensive: the 'Pencil Towers' of New York's...
Mechanical Voids Are Highbrow/Despicable
From New York Magazine's "The Approval Matrix: Week of February 4, 2019": "So it's perfectly legal right now for developers to put 160-feet tall "mechanical voids" in their buildings to give apartments higher priced views?" Wethinks they're looking at you, 50 W. 66th...
Out of this world!
GOTHAMIST picks up where it left off last week in its expose on the City Planning Commission's Zoning Text Amendment. Journalist Elizabeth Kim notes that although this language may impact the design of 36 West 66th Street, to revise "the design of a 160-foot tall...
LW! Makes More Headlines!
Our fight against supertall towers continues making headlines! LANDMARK WEST! board chair Page Cowley, FAIA and her fellow Community Board 7 member, Peter Samton, FAIA penned an Op-Ed for ARCHITECTURAL RECORD. Living Tall, Too Tall (linked above) outlines what...
Department of City Planning to Act on Voids
Attached HERE is a letter from City Planning--including information on their proposal to address excessive mechanical voids in Residential Buildings. This has been a long time in the making and it appears as though relief is in sight. Developers will still be...
LW! Making Headlines
LANDMARK WEST!'s fight against supertall towers is making headlines. The Department of Buildings Notice Intent to Revoke of their prior approval to amend the West 66th Street development is giving the developer, and the media lots to CHEW on. The developer is in...
The Spirit: West Side Tower Cut Down to Size
The West Side Spirit's Emily Higginbotham weighs in on the City's notice to revoke permits for 36 West 66th Street. Acknowledging that this is just "one of the latest Manhattan projects to face opposition from land-use advocates and local residents" she delves into...
Buildings near you—now 66% larger than intended!
Charles Bagli of The New York Times cited the postcard at left (dreamed up during a summer visit to the other Grand Canyon in Arizona) in his article The Empire State Building May Soon Have Another Rival... which went live on Friday evening. The journalist writes:...
Manhattan Delegation of City Council speaks out
In a letter dated January 10, the entire Manhattan Delegation of the City Council call upon Marisa Lago, Director of the Department of City Planning and Rick Chandler, the out-going Commissioner of the Department of buildings to prepare "immediate action" toward...
