I guess it’s a real no-no to criticize a colleague’s work, but sometimes a project is just so bad [and so emblematic of a prevalent developer attitude] that one really has no choice. This project, whose ground breaking was just announced in the NYC real estate cyber world, is a mixed use development at the site of the long languishing Victoria Theater on 125th Street in Harlem — on the same block as the Apollo. Its design, if it can actually be called that, seems to epitomize the “something is better than nothing” attitude that has done so much damage to the street over the years rendering it an anonymous “anywhere” rather than the bustling “somewhere” it once was and, one can only hope, could still possibly be.

There are so many architects in New York who would have done an interesting building on this site that could have contributed to the renaissance of 125th Street as an important urban thoroughfare rather than the proposed extravaganza of pseudo-architecture that will do nothing but degrade what little is left of the street's architectural vibrancy. The building is a compendium of so-called architectural devices intended to give it character and to breakdown its ponderous scale. Ironically, they do just the opposite, creating a scaleless behemoth covered with gratuitous surface manipulations signifying nothing.

Clearly no building can be judged only on its own merits without considering its effects on the street, its neighbors and the city as a whole. Not only is this building an architectural monstrosity in and of itself, it is also a brutal insult to a once great street and a noble precinct of the city.

A Behemoth on 125th Street