Glassification of NYC

As New York changes and becomes "Glassified"--glass and steel buildings intruding more and more on the landscape and replacing established somewhat historical old ones...few places have changed more than Astor Place, just East of Greenwich Village.

As an article in Architectural Record notes:

"New York City is reaching a tipping point, architecturally. The city has the chance to go the way of London and Paris, where carefully chosen bits of contemporary architecture enliven an urban fabric that remains largely intact, or the way of Shanghai and Dubai, where relentless repetition of glass facades leads to a numbing sameness.

Several recent developments suggest that New York, for all its attention to the built environment—and 12 years of a design-savvy administration—is choosing the latter approach, permitting continuous walls of glass to erase the city’s history and leave its citizens with little to reflect on but reflections.

The place to see this happening most vividly is Astor Place, in Greenwich Village, where a new building by Fumihiko Maki is nearing completion. Maki, also the architect of Tower Four at the World Trade Center, is known for the taut elegance of his glass skins, and at Astor Place he has delivered just that: the free standing building is completely covered in dark glass, causing one designer whose opinion I asked to reply, “Is that a building? I thought it was a pavilion for a Plexiglas convention.” Entirely lacking in detail—unless you count a few metal fins and subtle variations in the size and color of the panes—the building offers nothing of human scale, and in a part of the city where humanity is at its most resplendent. For most of the building’s perimeter, the grayish glass continues right down to the ground.

Combined with several other recent developments, it may be the last straw for Astor Place and the adjoining Cooper Square."