Manhattan Living Architecture Museum- Part Two

In Midtown Manhattan, survivors from the 19th Century are still around cheek to jowl with buildings typical of waves of construction from the 20th and 21st centuries..

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 This total mix up of  competing styles is something you just take for granted after awhile...even when it becomes glaring such as down on Astor Place

And, of course, in the heart of Midtown Manhattan we are used to seeing skyscrapers from different generations next to each other...

Unfortunately, there are some kinds of buildings that were thrown up all over which we will   never escape or live to see torn down...such as the white brick apartment buildings ( and their red brick equivalent) thrown up hastily in the 1960's before the zoning laws were changed)...

And finally, just on a day to day level we see the endless parade of mediocre buildings that probably WILL go sooner or later...unless people are paying such high rents to live there that they will be left alone...not unlikely, when you think about it.

If there is any threat to the architecture of Manhattan at the moment, it may be the "glassification" of  old structures and building more and more new ones that just mirror the other buildings around them. An architect friend of mine sent me a link to something about this is in a recent issue of the publication Architectural Record. This last shot of how an older building in Astor Place was recently glassed over will give you an idea of what they mean...

And I believe "glassification" has been already been going on in Midtown for years (hotels near Grand Central have suffered this--and look at Park Avenue around the Seagrams Building)...however, there are just so many distinctive buildings in Manhattan that I guess the real threat they are talking about how is just how some key areas will sort of lose their past character and just become mirrors of what is around them...and the glassy craze may not last forever, anyway. No building trend in NYC ever seems to last that long....