| |
About 100 United Nations Plaza
This dramatic spike in the east midtown skyline is one of the most stunning residential towers erected in the city after World War II.
Designed by Der Scutt and Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman & Efron for developer Anthony Albanese, this 52-story, serrated monolith is sharply highlighted by its steep angled top: the architects shot an arrow in the air.
The tower, which was completed in 1986, was wisely set back from the very busy First Avenue corner where a very attractive 9,100-square-foot plaza with waterfalls and a fountain was designed by Thomas Balsley Associates.
Despite its almost lethal looks, this condominium project was a very important improvement to the United Nations/Beekman Place area as it introduced some long overdue glamour and became an instant landmark, albeit unofficial still. It is best viewed from Dag Hammarskjold Plaza across from Japan House in the spring, which is to say that this sheer midblock tower cannot be fully appreciated up close.
Its slanting roof is thematically repeated in the angled shape of many of the building's balconies.
As good as this is, it misses a bit because the lower half of the slanted roof, which looks like a pyramid from the south and north, has balconies bursting outwards, making an otherwise pure geometry quite complex. Obviously, the added value of balconies for such "penthouses" was most likely irresistible to the developers, and the buyers, but they sacrificed ascending to architectural masterpiece levels. (In comparison, consider the angled office tower designed by I. M. Pei and Partners in Dallas, Texas, with a more complex forms, a possible design influence here.)
"With a brooding exterior of brown brick and dark brown windows, any liveliness in the otherwise massive design rested on the shoulders of the army of balconies (provided for every apartment above the third floor)," observed Robert A. M. Stern, David Fishman and Jacob Tilove in their fine book, "New York 2000, Architecture and Urbanism Between the Bicentennial and the Millennium" (The Monacelli Press, 2006).
This tower appears to be related stylistically to Trump Tower: tall, shiny, dark, ominous, but desirable.
|
