Take the main tower of the Houses of Parliament in London and wrap it cardboard and plunk it down in midtown and you almost have the Sterling Plaza.

This 33-story condominium tower has good proportions, lots of balconies and corner windows and a very distinctive roof.

According to an August 16, 1984 article in The New York Times by Paul Goldberger, then its architecture critic, the Miami-based architectural firm of Arquitectonica was brought in to add some "touches," including the roof design, to the building's plans already done by the architectural firm of Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman & Efron. Arquitectonica achieved worldwide celebrity in the 1980's for their bold and flamboyant designs of apartment buildings in Miami.

Of Arquitectonica's rooftop design, Goldberger observed that "it is not only ill-suited to the building of which it is a part, but unattractive enough to make one yearn for the days of flattops."

The notion to avoid a flat roof and do something dramatic and maybe Post-Modern, however, was laudatory, even if the execution appears unfinished. Perhaps the residents' association will raise some money to commission an art work for the roof that will make a little better, and less threatening, sense of the roof's design. It's not all that bad, but it could be better.

The rest of the 176-unit building is quite straightforward and good of its kind. The façades have quite a bit of vitality, especially with the wrap-around balconies. Its plaza on the Second Avenue corner is quite successful with a large interesting sculpture, curved planters and many trees.

The project was developed Fred Wilpon and Saul B. Katz.

It is interesting that this 1984 building's rakishness was paid the supreme complement by 100 United Nations Plaza, which was completed nearby at 327 East 48th Street in 1988: its top is rakishly slanted, giving this neighborhood a new signature of prominent slant rooflines.