Plenty of building sites in 1903:
It’s not often you see a parody as well executed as the website for One Liberty, the redevelopment of the Statue of Liberty as condos. From the “One [Something]” name to the tagline “Goodbye Huddled Masses, Hello Muddled Cocktails” it manages to encapsulate everything mockable in the current real estate boom.
In reality, we’ve turned churches, factories, office buildings, schools, and warehouses into condos, so how big a stretch is it really? Many of the converted buildings are designated landmarks; many are landmarks in the sense of being important to people who live and work nearby.
I don’t expect to see national monuments turned over to developers any time soon, but honestly if you’d have told the executives of the Irving Trust bank and the New York Life Insurance Company a hundred years ago that their headquarters buildings would be converted to apartments, I doubt they’d have been able to stop laughing.
