I guess the developer of this residential high-rise at 931 First Avenue and 51st Street deserves praise.
He could have bulldozed the entire circa-1892 Romanesque revival elementary school building located on this corner and put up his high-rise at street level.
Instead, he kept the beautiful facade in place and built a condo tower inside it.
It’s kind of the same story with this new New York University dorm, a sleek, 26-story tower in the East Village.
It was constructed behind what’s left of St. Ann’s, on East 12th Street near Fourth Avenue, which spent most of its life as a Catholic church. Put up in 1847, it started out as a Baptist church and even housed a synagogue in the 19th century.
When NYU made its plans for the dorm a few years back, they decided to preserve a portion of the church’s facade and the gothic tower.
Ephemeral New York 