^ Times are changing.
There are some nice photographs of the changing skyline over the years in the link...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/r...g-skyline.html
New York City’s Evolving Skyline
A high-rise building boom, mostly of luxury condos, has transformed New York City’s skyline in recent years — and there’s more to come.
By Stefanos Chen
June 5, 2019
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New York has long been a city in the clouds, but with 16 buildings around 500 feet or taller slated for completion this year, 2019 could be the city’s busiest year ever for new skyscrapers.
For many years the city’s skyline was primarily defined by the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, both over 1,000 feet tall and built in the early 1930s. But New York’s horizon has been in perpetual flux now for the better part of a decade.
There are currently nine completed towers in New York that are over 1,000 feet tall, and seven of them were built after 2007. Nearly twice that many — another 16 such towers — are being planned or are under construction, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, a Chicago-based nonprofit that tracks high-rise construction.
The scale of this new wave of construction is unprecedented.
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New York’s skyline looks starkly different than it did a decade ago, redrawn by the massive Hudson Yards project on the West Side of Manhattan; a profusion of towers on and around Billionaires’ Row in Midtown; and the revitalization of Lower Manhattan, with One World Trade Center leading the way. The recent rezoning of Midtown East will cut even more of the skyline into unfamiliar silhouettes. And new heights will soon be reached in Brooklyn and Queens as well, thanks to luxury apartment high-rises.
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The new skyline is surprising, in part, because of the velocity of newcomers. The Empire State Building won a closely watched, three-horse race in 1931 when it raised its much-guarded spire to 1,250 feet, outdoing the recently finished Chrysler Building (1,047 feet) and the tower at 40 Wall Street now known as the Trump Building (927 feet).
That record remained unbroken, the skyline essentially unchanged, until 1972, when the World Trade Center topped out at 1,368 feet.
The city was devastated when the Twin Towers fell in 2001, and “people experienced the gap in the skyline viscerally,” said Judith Dupré, an architectural historian and author of books on skyscrapers. It was fitting, then, that the new One World Trade Center, completed in 2014, set a record height at a symbolic 1,776 feet. (Without the spire, the roof is 1,368 feet tall.)
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In 1908, when the Singer Building in Lower Manhattan became the first in the city to rise above 500 feet, only 26 percent of buildings of that height were designed for residential use, according to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Since 2010, 64 percent (including projects under construction) have been residential, most of them luxury condos.
“The price trend definitely correlates with height,” said Jonathan J. Miller, the president of the real estate appraisal firm Miller Samuel, who noted that unobstructed views became de rigueur for the most expensive apartment buildings of the last decade.
Central Park Tower, a 1,550-foot skyscraper under construction in Midtown, soon to be the tallest residential tower in the city, is hoping for total sales in excess of $4 billion — the most ambitious sellout in New York history. And an apartment at 220 Central Park South, a condo skyscraper that promises some of the best views of the park, closed in January for a record $238 million.
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Engineering solutions have also meant zoning loopholes. Developers are generally constrained in New York by a land-use calculation that determines the allowable height and bulk of a building. The ability to build thinner, and therefore cover less of the lot, has allowed developers to create very tall projects in some neighborhoods “as of right,” without petitioning the city and going through a lengthy review process, said Frank E. Chaney, a lawyer with Rosenberg & Estis, a real estate law firm.
One popular way to achieve greater height is to buy the unused development potential, or air rights, of adjacent properties, to amass a larger building.
“If you go back 10, 15 years, it was not nearly as common as it is now,” Mr. Chaney said of these mergers. “Now everybody and their brother is doing this.”
Critics argue that some new towers have also exploited the zoning code by creating excessively tall mechanical rooms that do not count toward a developer’s allotted square footage, but nonetheless effectively push apartments skyward for higher premiums.
“I call them fake floors,” said Gale Brewer, the Manhattan borough president, who estimated that 16 buildings have used this strategy to gain height. Some builders claim that the large mechanical or structural spaces are needed to service increasingly complicated buildings.
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Even amid the flurry of new construction, which includes a number of innovative designs, some complain that there isn’t the same sense of wonder there once was for skyscrapers.
“The awe that accompanies a new supertall is now tempered by the economic reality for many city residents that they simply can no longer afford to live in their beloved city,” said Ms. Dupré, the architectural historian.
Others fault the glassy sameness of many new towers.
“If you ask somebody, ‘How many residential buildings are over 800 feet?’ they’ll say one, or two, or too many,” said Anthony E. Malkin, the chief executive of the Empire State Realty Trust, which owns the Empire State Building. (The answer is 10 — six of which may be completed this year.)
Mr. Malkin, of course, is partial to the old skyline, before his building competed with new office buildings in Hudson Yards and Lower Manhattan for tenants and tourists. The new 1,268-foot mixed-use tower at 30 Hudson Yards, with its jagged peak that resembles a cut stalagmite, will have the Western Hemisphere’s tallest outdoor observatory deck, at 1,100 feet.
To keep up with the times, Mr. Malkin’s team has done a major renovation of the Empire State Building, with higher energy-efficiency standards and upgrades to the observation decks. The changing lights display, a beacon for the city’s mood and remembrances, still asserts its dominance in the night sky.
Nearby, more competition is looming. A proposed building in Midtown East called Tower Fifth, to be developed by Macklowe Properties, could rise to 1,551 feet, topped by an observatory with a 60-foot transparent slide.
“I’m not even going to comment on the subject of Tower Fifth,” Mr. Malkin said.
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NEW YORK is Back!
“Office buildings are our factories – whether for tech, creative or traditional industries we must continue to grow our modern factories to create new jobs,” said United States Senator Chuck Schumer.
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