A Gehry Tower Rises
Eliot Brown
Beekman: The Ratner/Gehry Project That Wasn’t Dropped
To anyone who treks west over the Brooklyn or Manhattan bridges each morning, a quick glance to the area just south of the Municipal Building will reveal a new addition to the Lower Manhattan skyline: a skinny, tiered concrete skeleton that’s rapidly climbing upward.
The apartment tower-to-be—67 stories as of Wednesday—is a high-end rental building developed by Forest City Ratner, the firm that is desperately trying to build a new Nets basketball arena and accompanying 16-tower development near Downtown Brooklyn. And it is also—as the distinct, undulating aluminum façade now rising on the building’s lower half might suggest—designed by Frank Gehry, his first residential high-rise.