Old plans for a new tower here were obsolete, scrapped when the market crashed. Now we hear about the new plan coming to replace it. New York Yimby has a photo:
And Crain's reports:
"The Mallorca-based hotelier RIU Hotels & Resorts is nearly done demolishing a derelict residential property at 301 W. 42nd St. on the multiparcel site. The site includes an adjacent vacant lot on Eighth Avenue just north of that building as well as one to the west along Restaurant Row. According to previous reports, RIU plans to build a 600-room, roughly 300,000-square-foot tower. Currently work on the five-story 301 W. 42nd St., an eyesore whose boarded up windows, ground floor porn shop and graffiti scrawled exterior made it look like a throwback to the avenue's gritty days decades ago, has reduced it to its second floor."
2007
Again, something colorful, low-rise, accessible, with a fascinating history, is being replaced by something dull, big, exclusive, with no history at all.
I love Crain's use to words like 'derelict' and 'porn shop'. They definitely want you to know it's a good thing that's happening here. >_<
ReplyDeleteAside from the general blandness of these buildings, the worst aspect of them is that they are inherently exclusive. Nevermind the fact the renting/living there is out of the question for 95% of the population, even the ground floor will now likely only be a lobby (perhaps, 2 lobbies should they provide a seperate one for the affordable units) - instead of the shops that existed in the older building. This will further the decline (or solidify the extinction) of the actual neighborhood and render the area nothing other than a forest of vertical suburbs.
ReplyDeleteEyesore? Even abandoned and forlorn, that thing possessed a beauty and a soul that no glass tower, no matter how expensive, could ever begin to hope to match. God how I hate the cretins who have set themselves up as the arbiters of worthy architecture in this city.
ReplyDeleteI like Kyle Campion's description... vertical suburbs. That's exactly what these sterile, glass phalli are... vertical suburbs. And they will house the very people that made/make the suburbs so antiseptic and empty.
ReplyDeleteThese kinds of buildings are the (beautiful) meat and potatoes of the city landscape . Nothing fancy, but I love looking up at them.
ReplyDeleteVerical suburbs- fantastic observation
ReplyDeleteThis building isn an ugly POS. There is nothing special about. If you love these types of buildings, just go to Bronx or Queens and you can see thousands of buildings just like it.
ReplyDeleteThese posts make it sound like the building was some kind of historic theatre.