According to Robert A. M. Stern, David Fishman and Jacob Tilove in their excellent book, New York 2000, Architecture and Urbanism Between The Bicentennial and the Millennium," they were intended to provide the character and scale of midblock townhouses, which in uptown neighborhoods counterbalance the big-scale avenue development."

"Despite stoops and bay windows, these buildings seemed rather heavy-handed, although according to the editors of the AIA Guide, "the tiers of connected balconies at the rear lined with black ships’ railings reveal a more masterful command of the problem." The 2010 edition of the guide, however, noted that "unlike much 1980s architecture, this has aged well."

The authors also noted that "the same firm’s adjacent fifteen-story Hudson Tower, at 350 Albany Street, on the southeast corner of the esplanade, came off somewhat better, combing bay and corner windows that lightened the mass as they opened up apartments to the spectacular views. Thanks to their scale and materials, the combination of the two, according to grace Anderson, writing in Architectural Record, evoked ’an ineluctable Manhattan streetscape,’ which could as much be credited to the Cooper Eckstut master plan as to the work of the architects.’"

The buildings have five-step stoops and attractive rectilinear entrance surrounds surmounted by bay windows The stoops are contained within the building lines and flanked by sidewalk landscaping with low fences and rounded low walls that can be used for seating.

These low-rise buildings face the Gateway Plaza complex at Battery Park City that is on the south side of the North Cove large-yacht basin.