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Ratner And Gehry's Beekman Tower Topped Off
By
Jen Chung
Published Nov 20, 2009
Modified Nov 20, 2009
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By
Jen Chung
Published Nov 20, 2009
Modified Nov 20, 2009
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Yesterday, developer Bruce Ratner and architect Frank Gehry celebrated the "topping off" of the 76-story Beekman Tower in lower Manhattan. A 10-pound bucket of concrete was lifted 900 feet onto the roof of the 1.1 million square foot skyscraper, which will have rental apartments, a pre-K through 8th grade public school, an ambulatory care center for NY Downtown Hospital, retail space, and public plazas.
Gehry, whose presence in Ratner's in-limbo Atlantic Yards project has been diminished, was in high spirits—he apparently pointed to the top of the building and said, "No Viagra." (It's his tallest building.) He told the Observer's Eliot Brown, "First of all, it’s a New York building, and so I respected the body of the New York skyscraper...We built many models of this. I holed myself up two days in a tall hotel room here and just looked at the skyline while I was designing it.” He also said the tower's undulation was inspired by Bernini.
While it may have been triumphant for Ratner to see progress on the skyscraper, he was served with another lawsuit to block the development of Atlantic Yards.
Tagged
beekman tower
Bruce Ratner
downtown
frank gehry
manhattan
skyscraper
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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