Quote:
Originally Posted by NYguy
I find that to be baloney, best served on a sandwich. New York City's skyline, as it has been classically defined (even before the ESB) has been dominated by spires - of different shapes and sizes. So if you don't love spires, and prefer the flat roofed variety of skyline, so be it. But you don't love the New York skyline. If this building is built as is, that's fine also. It won't be the last skyline defining skyscraper built in the city.
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I don't have a problem with any of the spires or pointy tops of early 20th century skyscrapers in NYC. I have problem mainly with these three recently completed supertalls:
New York Times (2007), whose spire is 28.7% of the building's structural height
Bank of America Tower (2009), whose spire is 21.3% of the building's structural height
One World Trade Center (2014), whose spire is 23.0% of the building's structural height
For comparison, in Chicago the skyscraper with the largest (proportionally speaking) spire is Trump Hotel & Tower, whose spire is 15.7% of the building's structural height. That's already pretty bad, but is still much better than the above three NYC buildings, and all other spire-bearing buildings in Chicago have smaller spires than Trump Hotel & Tower.
Also, I didn't say I am against all future spires in NYC. All I said was that we need to be careful going forward. You probably would agree with me that NYC should try to avoid having another supertall whose spire accounts for 20 - 30% of its structural height.
BTW, if you go to the Diagrams page and look up US (not just NYC) buildings completed before 1950, including destroyed buildings, you will see that many other cities also had lots of buildings with spires or pointy tops. I don't think the NYC skyline is defined by spires and peaks per se. Rather, pre-1950 skylines were typically filled with spires and peaks, but because NYC's skyline has been dominated by old buildings for so many decades, it may appear to be defined by spires and peaks.