From the windows of Two Penn Plaza, the offices of Architectural Record survey a tough-talking, broad-shouldered scene straight out of Miracle at 34th Street: It’s where the garment district collides with Macy’s, animated by the daily headlong rush of thousands of commuters inclining toward Pennsylvania Station and home. The renovated interiors may soften our perceptions‚ street odors fade away and the anachronistic perspective outside seems almost romantic, if frantic—until we return to the street.

The view of Two Penn Plaza presents a different face. This great gorilla of a building must be one of New York’s most deplored. Its list of detractors includes Joseph Giovannini, who, writing in New York magazine in April 2003, listed Two Penn as one of the eight worst buildings to have blighted our skyline: “We tore down McKim, Mead and White’s Pennsylvania Station for this?” (Yes, ironically Record occupies the site of the greatest architectural travesty of the 20th century.)