Reaching The End

Two unrelated items I recently read on the same topic…

First, Curbed had some discussion of the tallest buildings to be demolished: here. The fact that New York dominates the list should be no surprise, as we have more old skyscrapers than any other city. Putting statistics aside, there are stories to be told about each building: the original World Trade Center towers 1, 2, and 7 are not on the list because their destruction was not intentional demolition; but One Meridian Plaza in Philly and the Deutsche Bank in NY are listed because they could have been repaired after their respective fire and 9-11 damage but instead were demolished. The Singer Building had floors that were simply too small for economic use, and the City Investing Building had funny floor layouts and was next door to Singer, making their simultaneous demolition and replacement an attractive option. (That’s Singer and City Investing on the left of the picture above.) The fact that the average age of the buildings on the list at the time of their demolition was only 41 years suggests that most of them were doomed from the start by economics or land use.

Second, the last hurrah of the old Tappan Zee Bridge: here. It was ugly in itself, badly located, over-used, and poorly maintained. The new bridge manages to avoid the first of those problems and repeats the second. We’ll see about the third and fourth.