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I find myself relating to David Lehman when I talk about 432 Park Avenue. It doesn’t seem to belong, just as Lehman felt the Twin Towers didn’t belong in his poem “The World Trade Center” (Poems of New York 187). In the first half of his piece, he states, “When it went up I talked it down \ As did many other New Yorkers. \ The twin towers were ugly monoliths.” I feel exactly as the poet felt. This residential skyscraper is just a basic, dull pillar that rises above all the beauty New York architecture has to offer. It is, in fact, taller than the Empire State Building if you do not include its antenna. I don’t know if I will be able to relate to Lehman in the second half of his poem when he begins to feel differently about the WTC, but what I do know is that each time I look out of my dorm window and see 432 Park Avenue, I cringe at its offensiveness and its $81,000,000 apartments. This building stands for everything New York shouldn’t be, an ugly residential that cares more about the money rather than the aesthetic.
I always forget about this building. I completely agree with you about its appearance and crude material presence, but it is interesting to think about how it often takes tragedy to change the way we feel about things. Now the Twin Towers are still ugly, but they are also beautiful and a very important memory for many of us.
My hope isn’t that tragedy must occur to make this skyscraper more appealing to me, but more or less regain a sense of architectural beauty that this city deserves. If you Google projects that are under construction in Manhattan, the list is endless. There are a series of towers that are planned and already being worked on, some of which still within the World Trade Center. I believe with time, this building will signify something more than just overpriced apartments. I hope that the rest of the buildings that follow in its footsteps do so as well, especially since most of them are being built very close to Central Park where a lot of older buildings remain.
the think is the view must be fantastic, but it is fantastic for people who won’t appreciate, who might be there one or two months a year
the same archetect built 20 Fenchurch, a big tower in London that was shaped in a way that it accidentally melted cars parked under it. So maybe he gave up on complex …
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