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\n Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: CrossingLights, DBOX, Getty, Shutterstock\n <\/p>\n
Every year, New York\u2019s skyline shifts a little bit, as developers amass air rights to build new supertalls that increasingly make the Chrysler and the Empire State look like kids\u2019 toys. While the new towers are less public-facing than their predecessors \u2014 many are condos for billionaires or skyscrapers commissioned by a single tenant, such as JPMorgan Chase\u2019s 270 Park or Ken Griffin\u2019s Citadel Tower \u2014 they still draw our attention, our praise, and sometimes our scorn. Sometimes it\u2019s for their wacky design choices, like Extell\u2019s torch on Eighth Avenue, or their market failures, like the overpriced, more than half-empty condos of Brooklyn Tower. Occasionally, they become sagas in and of themselves, like 432 Park, with its crumbling fa\u00e7ade, a swaying stack of luxury condos haunted by howling winds where billionaires get trapped in the elevators. Below, a look back at what happened with New York\u2019s supertalls this past year.<\/p>\n
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Photo: Douglas Elliman\n <\/p>\n
Condo sales at the Downtown Brooklyn supertall \u2014 the first of its kind outside Manhattan \u2014 relaunched this June, a year after Silverstein Properties took control of Michael Stern\u2019s ambitious (perhaps overly ambitious) skyscraper. Despite a controversial design (many find it foreboding), it\u2019s not like no one wants to live there. But rentals and sales have been slow, a fact that brokers attribute to pricing: Even if the tower cost Billionaires\u2019 Row prices to build, you can\u2019t charge them to live above a Trader Joe\u2019s in a neighborhood that isn\u2019t even prime Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, residents described <\/a>the building as something of a ghost town, though not an unpleasant one. \u201cThere\u2019s fewer people in the elevator, but I don\u2019t know who\u2019s complaining about that,\u201d one said at the time. StreetEasy shows <\/a>that 12 condo sales have closed this year, almost all of them selling at a discount, though that was to be expected. A number of new leases have been signed for rental units. Still, with what appear to be 35 condo closings since sales launched, there are still more than 100 units left to move. Not a total ghost town anymore, but the elevators should still be pretty quiet.<\/p>\n Photo: Spencer Platt\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n For the past four years, the 102-floor ultraluxury condo tower near 57th Street has been the subject of a mess of litigation<\/a> between the developer, Harry Macklowe, and the condo board, which claims that the building is rife with construction defects. Owners at the condo, where many units sold for upwards of $20 million, have complained of leaks, creaks, and elevators that break frequently, in one case trapping a resident for more than an hour.<\/p>\n While the developers and contractors have tried to downplay the issues as standard new-construction glitches, in October, the New York Times came out with another damning story:<\/a> The tower\u2019s concrete fa\u00e7ade is rife with cracks and missing chunks, a result, it appears, of Macklowe\u2019s obsession with building an \u201cabsolutely pure\u201d white tower. Unwilling to compromise on the vision created by architect Rafael Vi\u00f1oly, Macklowe resisted<\/a> putting strengthening additives like fly ash into the concrete mix because they would darken it. In a 2012 email, one director at Vi\u00f1oly\u2019s firm warned that insisting on the pure-white concrete would mean \u201cgoing down a dangerous and slippery path that I believe will eventually lead to failure and lawsuits to come.\u201d A number of engineering and structural experts who spoke with the Times described the building\u2019s fa\u00e7ade issues as deeply concerning \u2014 one warned of \u201cconcrete hand grenades\u201d falling from the fa\u00e7ade onto pedestrians if they were not fixed.<\/p>\n Photo: CrossingLights | CC BY 4.0\n <\/p>\n Extell\u2019s midtown skyscraper on Eighth Avenue, between 45th and 46th Streets, with its 300-foot- drop ride at its pinnacle, seemed too wacky to actually get built, but after stalling out for a few years ago, construction is now moving forward<\/a> again. The tower, which would be used as a hotel and tourist attraction, tapers near the top to a narrow section scarcely wider than the elevator core, then blooms out again into a torchlike upper section. The swirly top part is intended to be an observation deck and restaurant, and below it, in the narrow section, a thrill ride<\/a> will drop visitors 300 feet in 90 seconds, a feature that makes its construction seem all the more unbelievable.<\/p>\n Photo: Courtesy of DBOX\n <\/p>\n Ken Griffin was adamant that employees at his hedge fund, Citadel, return to the office, but he needed more space to keep everyone in New York. So the real-estate-trophy-loving billionaire, who owns a quadruplex penthouse at 220 Central Park South, decided to buy the air rights from St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral<\/a> and St. Bart\u2019s Episcopal Church<\/a> and build a 1.7 million-square-foot office tower at 350 Park<\/a>. Citadel is expected to take about half the tower, which is being developed with Rudin and Vornado. He\u2019s hired Norman Foster\u2019s<\/a> Foster + Partners to build it, one of several Park Avenue office towers the firm is taking on and arguably its least exciting one.<\/p>\n Photo: Max Touhey for JPMorganChase\n <\/p>\n This fall, JPMorgan Chase celebrated itself, capitalism, and Manhattan office culture with the opening of 270 Park<\/a>, the $3 billion Norman Foster\u2013designed skyscraper that it started planning before the pandemic and refused to give up on, even when the future of the office looked pretty iffy for several COVID-infected years. It\u2019s often written about as a bellwether for the office market, but JPMorgan isn\u2019t typical of most corporations or even most financial institutions: It earned more profit last year than any lender in the history of American finance and the building reflects that.<\/p>\n The office tower has too many perks to count: Guinness on tap, an in-office wellness center, and a flag in the lobby programmed to fly in whatever direction the wind is blowing outside, except when there isn\u2019t any wind, in which case it will flap jauntily anyway. With space for 10,000 employees, it\u2019s not even big enough for the bank\u2019s New York workforce. Instead, it will be the brawny centerpiece of a midtown office campus<\/a>. And while this seems to sit in tension with Zohran Mamdani\u2019s recent mayoral victory, as Justin Davidson recently wrote, \u201cthey\u2019re really interdependent elements of the same complex metropolis.<\/p>\n Extell, known for building Billionaires\u2019 Row towers like One57 and Central Park Tower and angering Upper West Side residents, is planning to build<\/a> its tallest tower yet between West 66th and 67th Streets \u2014 a 1,200-foot-tall behemoth on the site of ABC\u2019s New York campus, which a community advocate described as \u201ca block of the Upper West Side that has midtown zoning.\u201d Also no affordable-housing requirements. After an expensive, yearslong fight to build the Sn\u00f8hetta-designed 50 West 66th Street, which recently topped out, Extell CEO Gary Barnett offered to make 20 percent of the units at this new tower affordable to get the community\u2019s blessing. The community responded by demanding 30. At the moment, they\u2019re at a standstill. A few blocks south, Barnett marked a significant milestone this year, selling out his last unit <\/a>at One57, the supertall that set off the Billionaires\u2019 Row craze.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/35c0b60babf8b78478629ec95c0fa2f787-GettyImages-1397612998.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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