New Park Avenue Tower Is Tallest, if Not the Fairest, of Them All

New York: When viewers tune in to "The Tonight Show" these days, besides Jimmy Fallon's huge smile and the Afro of his bandleader, Questlove, they are met by a remarkably realistic Manhattan skyline.

There is the cityscape on a curtain, of course - a staple of late-night television since Johnny Carson was on the air - but also 37 wooden models behind Fallon's desk. And not just of familiar landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, but less obvious ones, too, including the Hearst Tower, the Pier 17 mall and the Maritime Hotel.

Yet one building is missing that is impossible to miss, and not only from Fallon's offices at Rockefeller Center but just about everywhere in New York City: 432 Park Ave.

On Friday, the 104-unit condominium tower, between 56th and 57th streets, reached its peak of 1,396 feet. At 96 stories, it is arguably the tallest building in the city. One World Trade Center has its spire, but the skyscraper itself is 28 feet shorter than 432 Park. As for the Empire State Building, this new 93-foot-by-93-foot concrete megalith bests it by nearly 150 feet. From the living room of 432 Park's penthouses, it is possible to look down on the observation deck there, flash bulbs glittering like an oversize chandelier.

But even more than the views from the apartments, it may be the views of them that give 432 Park its allure. From Central Park, Park Avenue or Park Slope, there it is. On the George Washington Bridge or Long Island Expressway, there it is. In the bleachers at MetLife Stadium or Citi Field, there it is. Everyone from cinematographers and muralists to tourists and snow globe makers must now contend with the tower.

"It's almost like the Mona Lisa," Harry B. Macklowe, the developer building the $1.3 billion tower, said at a topping-out ceremony on Friday for 1,500 construction workers. "Except instead of it looking at you, you're looking at it wherever you are. You can't escape it."

Not that everyone agrees the building, developed with the CIM Group, based in Los Angeles, is a work of art.

"God, does it stand out," said Marlene Rosenthal, who regularly glimpses it while riding Metro-North. "It's a status symbol, and that's the name of the game in this city."

There can be no doubt the skyline has changed, yet New Yorkers are less sure whether it has changed for better or worse. Some are awed by the slender, omnipresent obelisk, its perfect symmetries, an undeniable feat of engineering; others are repulsed by its dimensions, both physical and financial, where units cost as much as $95 million, an undeniable feat of excess.

"For people who watch the skyline and love it, I think there's a real struggle," said Vin Cipolla, president of the Municipal Art Society. "There's a handsomeness about the building you can't deny, but it's so out of context and so imposing, it's hard to know what to make of it."

His group has urged City Hall to more closely monitor these supertowers. A dozen others are already in the works throughout Manhattan.

The monuments in New York, unlike those in London, Paris and Washington, have always been its tall buildings. This one is no different.

For the first three centuries, it was a pair of churches, Collegiate and Trinity. Then came the World Building, Manhattan Life Insurance, Park Row and Woolworth, emblems of the city's business and media might. The Empire State Building, constructed in 410 days, showed hardworking beauty and recessionary resolve. The World Trade Center, both original and resurrected, built as a symbol of defiance that the city would be great again.

And now, with more than half of the 104 condos sold, including the $95 million penthouse and the cheapest units starting at $7 million, 432 Park proves that that skyline is for sale.

Whoever said money can't buy happiness has never been inside an apartment 1,300 feet above a bustling metropolis.

Yet even if those apartments are out of reach, it is only a matter of time before anyone can buy one - albeit on a postcard or a plate at Fishs Eddy. Movie and advertising backdrops also seem inevitable. Snow globes and other knickknacks might be slower to incorporate 432 Park.

"Unless it becomes a part of the lexicon or the public consciousness of New York, I don't see it becoming a big souvenir," said Nathan Harkrader, a co-founder of NYCwebstore.com, an online souvenir shop. "This has to be something people in Atlanta, Chicago or Las Vegas are going to recognize and know."

And so the producers of "The Tonight Show" have yet to decide whether to include 432 Park in their skyline. The New York Mets have ruled out adopting it in their logo, a spokesman said, and the same goes for the badge of the Fire Department.

Tony Malkin, whose family has controlled the Empire State Building since 1961, said he would not add 432 Park to the interactive displays on its observation decks, which help visitors identify the skyline. "It's medieval," Malkin said. "That's where towers come from, the Middle Ages. The wealthy built them for protection and isolation from the city below."

Fortresses can still be seductive, though. For Demid Lebedev, a 17-year-old daredevil who posts his exploits on Instagram, 432 Park was his Everest. One day, after watching the tower grow, he and a friend decided, "We need to get up there," he wrote in an email. "When we made our way up to the crane I believe we were around the 90th floor and it was incredible! We were literally above the clouds. I can't really compare it to any other building." His photos received thousands of views online, and he received a visit from police detectives a few days later but was not arrested, Lebedev said.

Such reactions are what inspired Macklowe to build 432 Park, he said, which is unlikely to be overshadowed anytime soon, thanks to its location at the edge of Midtown.

What surprised him was any criticism of his building as ugly or uninspired. "If somebody thinks a 1,400-foot building is boring, well, I just don't get that," he said. To those who find it crass, he pointed to the hundreds of workers building and soon operating the tower: "A lot of guys have come up to me today and said, 'Thank you. Because of this building, I can afford my own house.'??"

It just won't be one down the street.

If Manhattan has truly become a playground for the rich, here is its new beacon.