The Downtown Dream Hotel is getting skinned in quilted, robot-silver sheet metal. You may remember t

The Downtown Dream Hotel is getting skinned in quilted, robot-silver sheet metal. You may remember that this hotel, running up the back of the swank Maritime Hotel in Chelsea, took the place of the Covenant House homeless shelter . Renderings show a slick, swiss-cheesey airline travel reservations database metallic facade slanting over a sidewalk where white, trim, well-dressed airline travel reservations database couples walk holding hands. The building was designed in the 1960s by Albert Ledner, who also created the threatened O'Toole Building of St. Vincent's Hospital. The Times called the 17th Street building "Ledner s most dramatic work... When completed, the white tile facade burst out from its low-rise tenement surroundings like a storm wave over the bow ."
This will be the city s ugliest building in 2017. If not sooner. People will walk by and say, What were they thinking? When the city and state budgets finally collapse, this luxury hotel, like others, will either be abandoned or turned into police barracks for the men and women fighting the insurgence. Meanwhile, airline travel reservations database Happy Friday!
I like the cheese-grater rendering, but doubt it will look that good in reality. As other commenters have said, it probably won t age well. You have to give it points for imagination, though. It s definitely not another boring glass box.
As someone who lives directly across 17th St. from this thing, I can tell you that we are not anxiously awaiting the opening of this joint. I can recall when the Hiro Ballroom initially opened. The entrance was on 17th St. it was a nightmare. Honking cars lined up, stretching the entire avenue block all the way back to 8th Ave. It was only after the neighbors started organizing that they moved it to 16th. They have since moved the entrance to 9th. Ave., near 17th St. All of this coupled with the blocking off of 17th St. ,west of 9th, to vehicle traffic- lest the residents of The Caledonia be irritated by the comings goings of patrons of the clubs that they chose to move in across the street from- has turned the corner of 17th. St. 9th. Ave. into an insufferable Hell! Don t even get me started on the 24hr. bodega the pizza joint that now stays open through the night to accomodate these loud-ass drunks....Ugh! Bring back the youth of Covenant House!
I had a friend in high school who wound up at Covenant House after (in his words) I can t tell when I m tripping and not tripping. That was when I found out what it was. After he left school for the program, I never saw him again.
Jeremiah Moss is the defender of all the undistinguished hunks of masonry that lend the streets their rhythm and give people a place to live and earn a living: bodegas, curio stores, a metalworking shop in Soho, diners, and dingy bars.