Old Stones

We are no Rome, but New York is a town full of old stones as this view of West 92nd Street can attest to. And like the sacking of Rome by the Vandals or Visigoths, or whoever it was, the city is always being torn at by their descendants in destruction, the Developers.

Mind you, not everything in NY is worth saving, but many attractive old buildings are torn down every year. Often the projects are a success for the builder, the city and the neighborhood. Other times, a small, fine old building is torn down to make way for something much larger in a neighborhood that can ill accommodate it. Under the zoning laws south of 96th Street, you could possibly put a 20 story structure where a four story brownstone sits.

Generally, little thought is given to neighborhood context, which on the Upper West Side would be it's pre-World War One character. The worst example of this is the Ariel East on Broadway and 100th Street. It is a spindly glass box out of context with its surroundings situated mid-block and dwarfing not only the buildings on either side of it, but also everything in a ten block radius except, perhaps, its sister building across the street.

Penn Station was destroyed in the 1960s to build Madison Square Garden and the city has never recovered from it.
In that transaction the city exchanged a monolith of urban progress and civility for a harvest gold, pin cushion shaped arena that is best entered from underground. After that event, a landmark law was enacted, but it is weak and one look at the map of landmarked buildings in the city shows the strong influence of political players other than preservationists.