An item by Justin Davidson in this week's edition of New York magazine showed a rendering of part of a tower designed by Daniel Libeskind that is planned to rise above the 14-story, limestone-clad, office building at One Madison Avenue that extends from Madison to Park Avenue South on 23rd Street.

The rendering indicated that the glass-clad tower would have curved facades, part of which would be "cut away" to reveal stepped balconies and multi-story columns supporting the top of the tower.

The short article said that "one diagram in Libeskind's new book, 'Counterpoint,' suggests that the 54-story condo, hovering on columns over an existing building, could top out just shy of 937 feet."

The famous, 700-foot-high MetLife Clocktower building, which was designed by Napoleon Le Brun & Sons and is now being converted to residential use, occupies the northwest corner of the same block and when it was completed in 1909 was the world's tallest. It was modeled on the campanile in the Piazza San Marco in Venice.

Mr. Davidson's article did not indicate were the new tower would rise on the block. "Initial designs," it said, "show a glass-curtained tube with cutaways spiraling up and around the facade to reveal segments of terraced verdure, like cultivated patches on the side of a steep alpine slope."

"The whole project has an air of fantasy about it, but the developer is begging that the current fiscal misery will end before the approvals process does. 'The assumption is that by the time construction starts, we're going to be looking at a different economy,' Lloyd Kaplan, an Elad spokesman said," the article concluded. Elad is the developer and it also has converted the former Gift Building at 225 Madison Avenue to residential condominiums and also has converted a large part of the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue at 59th Street to residential condominiums.

The Libeskind tower at this site has been rumored about for quite some time but no renderings or details were made public. Mr. Libeskind won acclaim for his 1999 design of the Jewish Museum in Berlin and subsequently was designated the master planner for the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site at Ground Zero.

The Clocktower's official address is 4 Madison Avenue and it has long been one of the city's iconic skyscrapers.

MetLife also built the impressive, massive, scalloped-sided, limestone-clad office building at 11 Madison Avenue on the block immediately to the north and it was originally conceived as an extremely tall skyscraper whose tall height was not completed due to the Depression. Its foundation and structure can still support an enormous "roof-top addition." Known as the North Building, it was designed by Harvey Wiley Corbett and D. Everett Waid and it is notable for its very impressive vaulted corner entrance spaces.

It and the Clocktower direct overlook Madison Square Park as does another residential skyscraper now nearing completion, One Madison Park, on the south side of 23rd Street at the foot of Madison Avenue. One Madison Park is a slender glass tower designed by Cetra/Ruddy. It is not as tall as the Clocktower.