Construction at 100 Greenwich Street is in full swing, as the 25 story hotel’s lower levels are now taking shape. The building was designed by architect Gene Kaufman, whose similarly scaled hotel at 6 Water Street is currently rising on Manhattan’s southern tip.
Within the past few months, motorists on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and nearby residents witnessed the rise of a tower crane to the east of the Kosciuszko Bridge, followed by two concrete pillars. They are seeing the progress on the east span of the Kosciuszko Bridge Replacement, the city’s first major new bridge since the Verrazano-Narrows opened over half a century ago in 1964.
The hotel at 6 Water Street in the Financial District, slated to stand 29 stories tall, has reached its eighth floor. The future 249 room establishment, designed by Gene Kaufman, is located near the southern tip of Manhattan, making it the southernmost construction project on the island. Only seven highrise buildings claim a latitude further south.
Since New York’s earliest days, church organizations have held a considerable amount of the city’s real estate, which they use not only for direct religious services, but also as a means of generating income. Over the past year, we witnessed the destruction of one of the oldest properties of the kind, as the 119 year old Bancroft Building has been reduced to a pile of red brick rubble.
Satellite skylines across the water from Manhattan are a curious phenomenon: they appear to stay frozen in time for decades until they hit sudden, and typically large, growth spurts. As Lower Manhattan was still reeling from the tragedy of 9/11, Jersey City sprouted a forest of cranes. East of the Financial District, the current decade has ushered Downtown Brooklyn’s skyscraper renaissance, as its solitary peaks are now morphing into manmade canyons. Yet as 2015 draws to a close, Long Island City is set to command development watchers’ attention, and the region’s perpetual skyline underdog is about to undergo a complete overhaul.