Robert A.M. Stern Architects and Silverstein Properties unveiled plans this week for New York City's tallest residential building: an 80-story, 912-foot-tall hotel and condominium tower at 99 Church Street, one block east of the World Trade Center site. A 175-room Four Seasons hotel will occupy the building’s lower 22 stories with 143 condos occupying the upper floors. Although the project joins more than 5,400 residential units and 3,700 hotel rooms already under construction downtown, according to a January 29 article in The Architect’s Newspaper, Stern’s choice of cladding his tower in limestone and cast stone will help it stand out against the increasingly common number of glass-clad towers—taking its cues, instead, from Cass Gilbert’s 1913 Gothic design for the Woolworth Building nearby. “It will be taller, but it’s like in color, and its fenestration pattern and needlelike shape are comparable to the Woolworth Building’s,” Stern told the paper. “On the other hand, it’s not in any way intending to be a Gothic building. It will have a strong but subtle presence on the skyline and, I hope, provide a good transition.” Larry Silverstein, who controls many of the new developments slated for the neighborhood, hopes that 99 Church Street will contribute to the revitalization of downtown. But as The New York Times’ City Room blog noted on January 30, a half-century ago the original 99 Church Street—home to Dun & Bradstreet and more recently Moody’s—was intended to do the same thing. Stern himself, writing in New York 1960, described it as “downtown’s first postwar office building of consequence,” although as the Times added “he went on to disparage the ‘stolid massing’ of the 11-story building and its ‘conservative, stripped-down, limestone-clad facades.’” Demolition on the old building is already underway; construction on the new 99 Church Street will begin this June and finish in 2011. No word yet on its cost.
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