Saturday, March 5, 2016

OLIGARCH’S ERECTION

The things that give cities a bad conscience are self-evident: seeing the rise of 432 Park Avenue, the tallest,
ugliest, and among the most expensive private residences in the city's history - the Oligarch's Erection, as it should be known - as a catchment for the rich from which to look down on everyone else, it is hard not to feel that the civic virtues of commonality have been betrayed.”


Adam Gopnik, “Naked Cities, the Death and Life of Urban America,” in the New Yorker, October 5, 2015, pp. 80-85