I travelled on the East River ferry to a project site yesterday and took the picture above from Pier 11, just off Wall Street.
The brick wedding cake is 120 Wall Street, constructed in 1929. The pin-stripe facade just behind it to the west (to the left from this angle) is 110 Wall Street, constructed in 1965. The green glass prism to the north, to the right, is 180 Maiden Lane, constructed in 1982, and the in-construction tower to the right is the (currently stalled) 161 Maiden Lane.
If I were looking for buildings from those decades that were not particularly famous but which were stereotypes of generic high-rises of their eras, I couldn’t do better than to select these four buildings.
