Park Avenue Skyscraper Becomes Tallest Building In NYC, Western Hemisphere
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – New York City just reached a new milestone in architecture: 432 Park Avenue, between 56th and 57th streets, is now the tallest building in the city and the western hemisphere.
It just reached its full height of 1,396 feet tall, 28 feet taller than One World Trade Center-- if you don't count the building's spire, 1010 WINS' Sonia Rincon reported.
To see the highest rooftop in New York from down on the street-level of Park Avenue in Midtown East, you have to crane your neck and roll your eyeballs back.
"There are thousands of them around the world, it just happens to be a little taller," one man, unimpressed, told WCBS 880's Alex Silverman.
New York's tallest buildings have always been its icons: the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center.
Silverman: "Are people going to think of buildings like this when they think of New York?"
Passerby: "I don't think so, no."
But Carol Willis, the director of the city's Skyscraper Museum, doesn't quite agree.
"They will be a distinctive form that one will be able to pick out immediately as the 21st century-type," she said.
With the cheapest units selling for $7 million, Willis says it represents the grand monopoly game that is New York real estate.
One penthouse apartment is on sale for $81 million, the other penthouse unit sold for $95 million.
The building can be seen from the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and even Monmouth County, New Jersey, where one woman 1010 WINS spoke with is from.
"I was always thinking to myself, 'What is that building that's just gone up because it's changed the complete landscape of New York looking across the Sandy Hook Bay," she said.
While some believe it's changed the skyline for the better, others disagree.
Another woman 1010 WINS' Rincon spoke with who works on the Upper East Side said the shiny, skinny tower seems out of place.
"Compared to other buildings, the architecture is way too thin, squeeze in-between, so I feel like it's lacking something," she said.
But as Rincon reported, it won't lack much in the way of views from the high floors, which will total 89 when it's completed.
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