740 Park Avenue

The most exclusive and powerful building in the world.  Only billionaires need apply.

740 Park Avenue: Where the Über-Wealthy Go to Live

You Supposedly Must Have $100 Million In Cash To Live In This New York Apartment Building

740 PARK AVENUE: Inside The Most Powerful Apartment Building In New York
"740 Park Avenue is a legendary address, at one time considered (and still thought to be by some) the most luxurious and powerful residential building in New York City. The co-op, on the corner of 71st Street and Park Avenue, has an impressive past. Built in 1929 by the grandfather of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis--who lived there as a child--740 Park has just 31 residences that have, over time, commanded some of the highest real estate prices in New York history."






Update:
See http://www.businessinsider.com/740-park-avenue-powerful-address-2014-8?op=1

Driving Around New York City

Met Life Tower

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Life_Insurance_Company_Tower

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower is 700 feet tall, and was built in 1909.  It was the tallest building in the world, until the completion of the Woolworth Building in 1913.  Today it is being converted into a Mariott hotel.



A new 100-story tower to the north was planned, but only the first 32 floors were built.

Shelton Hotel

The Shelton Hotel, built in 1924 and now called the New York Marriott East Side, was a 35-story hotel, 387 feet tall with 1200 rooms, and was the tallest residential building in the world when it was built.


Source: http://daytoninmanhattan.blogspot.com/2010/08/1924-shelton-hotel-49th-and-lexington.html

Today, it is lost in the forest of buildings in New York, but at the time it was very futuristic. It only has 646 rooms today and is  4-star hotel.


NY Marriott East Side

Rhapsody in Blue

A musical portrait of New York.

The Plaza Hotel

The Plaza Hotel (theplazany.com) was built in 1907 at a cost of $12.5 million.

The Woolworth Building

The Woolworth Building was constructed in 1913, and was the tallest building in the world at 792 ft (241 m) until 1930 when it was surpassed by 40 Wall Street (now the Trump Building), then the Chrysler Building, then the Empire State Building.  It is still the 19th tallest building in NYC.

It had a grand opening on April 24, 1913, so this is the 100 year anniversary of its opening.

It has an elaborate lobby.

Source: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021105098

It also has a highly elaborate crown.



"As the Woolworth Building rises to the top, the richness of
decoration increases—in the two canopies where the tower is set
back, the small towers or tourelles at the top, and the crown with
its pinnacle. There is drama in the way these features are also
interpenetrated with space, so that they are at once prouder—in
the rich decoration, and more humble—by welcoming the
outside world as space into themselves."
--http://www.beautyofnyc.org/Woolworth%20Building%5B1200-standard%5D.pdf

During the Roaring Twenties, she ruled the world, but with grace and humility.  She said that the world is a wonderful place, but it can be even better.  She was soon surpassed, and then forgotten.  But not outclassed.

Jersey City

 
Skyline of Jersey City

Northern New Jersey gets no respect.  It is always lumped in with New York City. Its largest city, Newark, has only 278,000 residence.  But its 10 most-populated northern counties together have a population of about 6 million in an area of about 2500 sq. miles, with a GDP of about $339 billion/year. On a map this is roughly the area east of I-287.  This makes Northern New Jersey the 16th most economically powerful city on earth, and 8th in the US, ahead of Boston and San Francisco.  Jersey City has 6 skyscrapers taller than 150m, with another one, Harborside Plaza 7, planned.  It has the 98th best skyline on the planet, beating out Pittsburgh and Detroit.

New York is still ranked #2 (after Tokyo) even without New Jersey.  So welcome Jersey City/Northern New Jersey!  It would never show up on the list of best cities on earth elsewhere by the European snobs.  But let's hear it for New Jersey.

New York

The New York Megapolitan Area should also be split up for comparison purposes. I now show it as 1.28 tn gdp. (Source). Here are the parts:

1. New York City and Long Island.  NYC itself has 8.2 million.  Nassau County has 1.3 million, and Suffolk County has 1.5 million, Westchester County has 949,000, and Rockland County has 312,000 for a total of 12.3 million.  For census purposes, this is the New York-White Plains-Wayne, NY-NJ Division + the Nassau-Suffolk Division - 3 counties in NJ (Bergen, Hudson, Passaic).  The gross NY state product is $1.16 trillion, and the population of the whole state is 19.5 million.  The estimated GDP of NYC itself (the areas listed above) is $850 bn.
2. Northern New Jersey. Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Somerset and Union counties.  Total population 6 million.  This is the Edison-New Brunswick, NJ area + Newark-Union, NJ area plus the three counties above less a couple of small counties.  The gross NJ state product is $497 bn and the population is 8.8 million.  So a reasonable estimate would be $339 bn.
3. The Connecticut parts are in the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk MSA.  This has 889,000 residents and a GDP of $85 billion.

One57

Situated on 157 West 57th street the tower will become the tallest residential building in the city when it is finished next year.


 

(Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205834/One57-development-Buyers-Manhattans-expensive-high-rise-kept-secret.html) 

432 Park Ave

 432 Park Ave. will be 420 m (1379 ft) tall when completed, taller than the Empire State Building, but not as tall as 1 WTC.  A penthouse on top just went on sale for $85 million.

"At 1,302 ft above the street, the penthouse will be taller than the observation deck at One World Trade Center, which is 1,251 feet, even though the building is 1,776 feet with a 408-foot antenna.  It will be in competition with other buildings, such as One57, a glass-walled, 1,000-foot-tall design on West 57th street."
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204571/432-Park-Ave-New-York-Citys-highest-apartment-goes-market-85-million.html

Hi Tech on Roosevelt Island

http://americancity.org/forefront/view/Tech-and-the-city

"“Because of the really strong transit links,” says Pinsky in retrospect, “what Roosevelt Island offers you is the chance to, one the one hand, create a real campus, which was very important to these schools, but on the other hand, have that campus be easily accessible.” Isolation within reach was one reason a small pox hospital serving New York City residents was built on the island’s remote southern tip in the mid-1800s. Close enough, but not too close.
It’s a second hospital that provides the 10-acre site for what will be known, somewhat awkwardly, as CornellNYC Tech. Opened in 1939 when it was still called Welfare Island, Coler-Goldwater Memorial Hospital’s Goldwater Campus is a forgotten-looking brick complex, much of it resembling an Eastern Bloc institution. “It has infrastructure that’s appropriate for a 70-year-old hospital,” says Pinsky. Goldwater’s patients were already slated to be moved to Harlem by the end of next year. The city’s $100 million will be put to tearing down its buildings and putting in a telecommunications infrastructure, ending up with a wired greenfield."

The Ruins of New York

It’s only a short ferry ride from the bustle of city life, but the small island a half mile south of Manhattan is worlds away from the chaos of New York City.
While most New Yorkers think of Governor’s Island as a concert venue, an outdoor haven, or simply a respite from endless blocks of skyscrapers and concrete, a crumbling portion of the island reveals a very different history.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161945/Ruin-skyscrapers-Inside-abandoned-Governors-Island-military-base-limits-public-doesnt-stop-birds.html#ixzz1yNpq2IeW

Stairwells strewn with debris and walls crumbling slowly to dust, it is the island that New York forgot for 50 years.  Now, in a series of extraordinarily eerie pictures, the lost world of North Brother - quarantine zone, leper colony and centre for drug addicts - has been brought back to life.
It is hard to believe that these echoing corridors and abandoned halls were home to hundreds of patients - or that a criss-cross of tree-lined avenues were once roads.
But the haunting quality of these pictures makes it easy to imagine that it was a place of indescribable misery, which one inmate compared to the notorious black hole of Calcutta.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2094823/North-Brother-Island-Eerie-pictures-abandoned-New-York-leper-colony.html#ixzz1yNqBM2D5

A women’s asylum rots on an abandoned New York island

Hart Island, which sits at the western end of New York's Long Island Sound, boasts more than 850,000 residents - all of them dead. The island is now used primarily as a potter's field, but in its past it has housed a POW camp, a rehab facility, and a women's insane asylum.

Read more: http://io9.com/5917104/a-womens-asylum-rots-on-an-abandoned-new-york-island

What's more intriguing than an abandoned island with a rotting castle sitting just north of New York City? Bannerman's Island sits in the Hudson, just about 50 miles north of here, and American Heritage explains "this island fortress was once the private arsenal of the world's largest arms dealer," Frank "Francis" Bannerman. 
--http://gothamist.com/2008/10/14/bannerman_island.php#photo-1

The woods in this part of Staten Island grow dense, thicketed with thorny branches and barbed plants. Emerging from them, a large brick building looms, crumbling from years of disuse. Entering through a graffiti-covered archway, you find a sizable hallway lined with dilapidated concrete cubicles. This is the abandoned Sea View Hospital, a forgotten relic of the days when mental illness lead to being locked away and forgotten.
In its heyday, Sea View Hospital doubled as a tuberculosis treatment facility, although given the lack of a proper cure, it was more hospice than hospital. When the TB vaccine came along in 1946, the clinic was shuttered, but never demolished. Now it sits in the woodlands across the street from the new and improved Sea View, developed out of the half of the original facility that was not closed down. My roommate, an avid urban explorer, took me to visit the ruins of the sanatorium.

Read more: Exploring Staten Island’s Abandoned Sea View Hospital (Photo Gallery) · NYU Local http://nyulocal.com/city/2012/02/24/exploring-staten-islands-abandoned-sea-view-hospital-photo-gallery/#ixzz1yNsSm9TA

Data Center in NYC

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/realestate/commercial/in-former-new-york-telephone-tower-sabey-corp-plans-data-centers.htm

The former New York Telephone Company building at 375 Pearl Street will be converted into a massive data center using more than one million square feet of space. “This is definitely the tallest data center, and maybe the largest high-rise data center in the world”.

The most expensive building in the world

One World Trade Center, expected to open in Spring 2013, will cost an estimated $3.8 billion, making it the most expensive building in the world.  By contrast, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai cost only $1.5 billion.  1WTC will have a really, really tall pole attached to it, which will make it the 3rd tallest building in the world, at a symbolic 1776 feet.  However, the highest usable floor space will not be as high as Willis/Sears Tower in Chicago.

It will immediately be a white elephant.  "It turns out that there are plenty of people, including former New York State officials and New York City developers, who believe that 1 World Trade Center is folly. “An emotionally induced misuse of money,” said one such person. “You can only understand this as a political statement,” said another. “It makes no sense as a commercial real estate endeavor.”

Ok then, if it makes us feel better about ourselves, it is worth it right?

The Centurion

The Centurion is only 17 stories tall, but it is one of the most elegant buildings in the world. Watch at least the opening statement by I.M. Pei: "New York is the most exciting city in the world. It's not the most beautiful. Paris is more beautiful, London is more beautiful, but New York is exciting. It has life. New York is constantly changing."

"Located at 33 West 56th Street off Fifth Avenue, The Centurion is the first
ground-up residential condominium project in New York designed by the
internationally renowned Pei Partnership with I.M. Pei. Pei is known for elegant,
understated architecture, and his signature shows in this property. “It
feels very old world, especially in the context of the neighborhood,” says Amy
Williamson, sales director with The Centurion and vice president of sales for
Prodigy Network. “There’s been a significant trend in recent years toward
condo buildings that are tall glass towers, and it seems there is increasingly
a reaction against that, toward more elegant buildings. You can’t get more
elegant than The Centurion.”
--http://centurioncondo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/PromenadeMagazine-The-Centurion-Spring-2011.pdf

An underground park in NYC

http://delanceyunderground.org