^ The Woolworth is another building I like to use as an example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The North One
I feel like that's a poor excuse in this case. Obviously, not everything can be preserved but a protected line of sight for one of the word's most iconic monuments isn't much to ask for. Other great world cities have them, London, Paris, etc. New York itself has protected neighborhoods so it's not exactly a new concept, some parts of the city are finished and should be preserved.
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Not a poor excuse at all, and in fact, that argument was brought up in the case of 15 Penn Plaza. The view of the Empire State Building can be blocked by anything (the much smaller tower I mentioned earlier). One Vanderbilt will block the view of Chrysler from some angles, but does that mean the City should freeze development to preserve that view? Of course not. London isn't New York, a city defined by it's skyscrapers. And New York shouldn't stop building because a view of one in particular could be "blocked". What if that argument was used in the time of Woolworth. We would never have gotten the Empire State Building in the first place. It's not a practical argument to be had in New York. You can argue about the
quality of what's getting built, as Amanda Burden did when she chopped 200 ft off the height of the Tower Verre (something that had no bearing on views of the ESB). But whether or not something can be built is decided by other factors.
And by the way, it can be argued that those blocks around the ESB should have been developed years ago with larger buildings, but that's just not where the business district was. But imagine if the planned Met Life tower had gotten built to its planned height, and not cut short as it was.