MoMA Monster Update: City Planning Downsizes Nouvel’s Tower (but it’s still too tall)

Planned MoMA/Hines tower's neighbors, as seen from E. 54th Street: Museum Tower, left, Financial Times Building, right. (MoMA in the middle.)

What was expected to happen has, in fact, now happened: The NY City Planning Commission this morning voted in favor of the MoMA/Hines tower designed by Jean Nouvel, with one major modification: Designs must be resubmitted to comply with the commission's stipulation that the height of the tower be reduced by 200 feet, to 1,050 feet

That would still make the MoMA Monster more than twice the height of the tallest building now on its E. 54th St. block---Emery Roth & Sons' Financial Times building, a mere 496 feet high (41 stories), compared to the 1,250 feet and 85 stories in the plan submitted by MoMA/Hines, now subject to modification. The FT building, on the corner, fronts on Avenue of the Americas, where highrise office towers are commonplace. The MoMA/Hines building would be a very tall mid-block stalagmite on E. 54th St.---a block that had been low-rise in character until a MoMA-related luxury apartment project, Museum Tower, was erected to help provide funds for the museum's 1984 Cesar Pelli expansion.

The proposed tower's postage-stamp lot (which extends from E. 53rd to E. 54th St.) is difficult to photograph, because it's now shielded by black-covered fencing. I stuck my camera through a gap in the fence on 54th St., and got this: