# Why New York Just Built a 1930s Skyscraper ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper.webp]] **Creator:** The B1M · **Published:** 2026-07-29 · **Length:** 14:59 · [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvgdVeKtj9M) > Caption source: YouTube English (en-GB) manual captions via yt-dlp (first try). Section headings follow the video's own chapters. Screenshots were grabbed from the 1080p HLS stream. The interviewee (Christopher Bonanos, city editor of *New York* magazine) and host (Fred Mills) are named in The B1M's companion article, [New York Is (Finally) Building Beautiful Skyscrapers Again](https://theb1m.com/video/new-york-is-finally-building-beautiful-skyscrapers-again) by James Rabey, not in the captions. Sponsored by Rayon Design; extra footage credited to the Dronalist, KPF, Disney, Alubuild USA (a Tower Holdings Group company), Kyle Tillyer, SELLING NEW YORK, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, the Museum of Modern Art, Samson Katt, Ally Travels, NENINYC and Mike Peel. ## Outline ### 0:00 Intro - **0:02** New York is home to some of the world's most beautiful skyscrapers, a city that knows how to create buildings "revered around the world". Or at least it was. ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t0015.webp]] - **0:22** Glass towers, easier to develop, build and replace, have taken over a large part of the skyline. They stand for the "glittering modernity" of NYC and appear in countless films and TV shows, but on their own they can be hard to tell apart. - **0:41** The host loves a New York skyscraper but misses a time when the skyline was full of buildings "like that". Then he spots one: "Wait a minute, that's new." ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t0052.webp]] ### 1:00 19th Century New York - **1:04** In **1850** New York was changing fast: the era of **Tammany Hall**, the **New York City Police Riots** and huge population growth. The number of New Yorkers rose by nearly **60%** over the decade. - **1:21** This was the dawn of **Fifth Avenue**, the "millionaires' row". In the mid-19th century wealthy New Yorkers made it an elite hub by building big, lavish mansions, which "set the foundation blocks for what would come". ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t0135.webp]] - **1:40** Christopher Bonanos: 120 years ago a row of mansions ran north from the **New York Public Library**, and they're all gone. In the early 20th century the mansions came down and office buildings with ground-floor retail went up. The very rich moved uptown, to side streets or into apartment buildings, avoiding "the dreaded income of commerce", which they considered beneath them. - **2:04** The world's plushest brands filled those ground-floor shops, and the modern Fifth Avenue was born. ### 2:14 Fifth Avenue Today - **2:20** By **2023** Fifth Avenue had the **most expensive retail rents** anywhere on the planet. ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t0225.webp]] - **2:29** There's no more prime location: Fifth Avenue cuts through the middle of Manhattan and runs alongside **Central Park**, the world's most famous urban green space. ### 2:41 The Making of 520 - **2:41** Five minutes' walk from **Grand Central**, "New York's new darling", **520 Fifth Avenue**, came out of a very specific set of conditions: a corner site on the world's fanciest commercial corridor, surrounded by low-rise **landmarked** buildings, with **air rights** available. - **3:02** That's a rare development opportunity. What's rarer is that the building is "undeniably gorgeous". - **3:12** Midtown is full of boxy, characterless office towers. 520's **terracotta facade** and tall **arched windows** stand out as a nod to the **Beaux-Arts** buildings and limestone mansions that stood here more than a century ago. ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t0320.webp]] - **3:30** Bonanos: over the last five to ten years there's been a move back to **masonry skins** on skyscrapers. People are tired of seeing the same thing after so many glass towers. Architects call it the **International Style** because it's everywhere, with "at least a consistency, if not a sameness". Both the public and developers want something distinctive: a CEO commissioning a tower may want it to say "you're different". - **4:12** In a sea of glass and metal, 520 stands out. #### 4:19 Sponsor: Rayon Design - **4:19** The host imagines the penthouse: a bedroom and bathroom facing the **Empire State Building**, plus an art gallery of his favourite **London** skyscrapers so he doesn't get homesick, all laid out in **Rayon Design**. - **4:55** Rayon is pitched as a next-generation CAD platform: a library of more than **50,000 CAD blocks**, an **AI tool** that generates custom blocks in seconds, and everything in one place from concept to final design and presentation. Viewers can try it free and use a 520 Fifth Avenue floor-plan template ("keep your hands off my penthouse"). #### 5:48 The site's history - **5:54** Every stretch of New York sidewalk is full of history, and 520's site is no exception. Almost two centuries ago it held one of the **first dedicated shelters for homeless Black children** in America (historically the Colored Orphan Asylum). ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t0612.webp]] - **6:12** In **1863** it was burned down during the **New York Draft Riots**. Since then the site has held an antiques shop, an art gallery and many office buildings. - **6:25** Creating today's tower took decades. The site was originally **three buildings with two owners**: **Tahl-Propp Equities** owned 520 Fifth, and **Aby Rosen** owned 516 and 518. - **6:41** Seeing the value of one bigger combined plot, they formed a partnership so they could develop or sell all three sites together. - **6:51** In **2007** Rosen's company, **RFR Holding**, bought **air rights** from nearby landmarked buildings, so a tower on the 520 footprint could climb very high. - **7:04** "From that point on it's a really simple story. I'm kidding, by the way. This is still New York City." - **7:10** Thanks in no small part to the **Global Recession**, a **legal battle** broke out between the partners by **2009**. Over the next decade the site passed through numerous hands and multiple redesigns. On-screen headline: "Ceruzzi, SMI bring in new partner to try and save Fifth Ave development" (Rubina Properties joins as partners try to stave off foreclosure). ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t0728.webp]] - **7:23** The original buildings were eventually demolished, and **construction finally began in 2022**. - **7:33** Bonanos: this is less unusual than it looks. It "happens in New York a lot". Assembling the money and the site takes so much manoeuvring that some projects take "a generation to get off the ground". It isn't fast, but it's "less of a ridiculous train-wreck" than it might seem. It is still remarkable that a site right in the middle of things took so long. ### 8:08 Supertall and Super Fancy - **8:09** 520 may look different from other new towers, but it's still a **supertall, super-slim luxury tower**. "Now, where have we seen that before?" - **8:25** The programme: **100 apartments** across **37 floors**, **25 levels of offices**, retail space and a **private members' club**. "This thing isn't for the average Joe." - **8:42** The **Beaux-Arts** design takes cues from classic New York landmarks, including the stepped forms of the **1916 Building Zone** law, which forced developers to set buildings back to protect air and light at street level. - **9:01** Cladding: **beige terracotta** at the base, then **fluted metal treated to look like terracotta** higher up. Huge **arched windows** dominate the facade and, near the top, look out over **Central Park** and **Bryant Park**. (The B1M article adds that the tower has **5,500** curtain-wall panels.) ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t0905.webp]] - **9:20** Before glass became widespread, **limestone and masonry** were hugely popular. 520 harks back to that era "with a modern twist". - **9:33** Bonanos: New York hasn't seen much terracotta in about **80 years**. 520 uses architectural terracotta in simpler forms than the old buildings. The archetype of the old style is the **Woolworth Building**, with gothic-cathedral detail cast in glazed terracotta and "dripping in ornament". Here the ornament is simpler and geometric, mostly finely ribbed arches on each floor: "a contemporary riff on art-deco, filtered through the modernist era that came after". ### 10:17 Constructing 520 - **10:11** It looks old-school outside, but inside it's a modern supertall. - **10:20** The **Empire State Building** used a **structural steel frame**, which carries most of the weight, clad in limestone and masonry walls. - **10:32** Today's towers, 520 included, are usually built around a **reinforced concrete core** with concrete slabs and concrete columns. The core is strengthened with **shear walls**, rebar and **link beams** of concrete and steel. ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t1045.webp]] - **10:50** **Belt floors at levels 32 and 52** tie the columns together to reduce sway, stabilise the tower and house mechanical equipment. - **11:01** The tower narrows as it rises to make room for premium apartment floors. The tops of the setbacks become **balconies** for office workers and residents. - **11:15** The plot is tiny. 520 rises **305 m** (1,000 ft) on a footprint of about **10,500 sq ft** (on screen: 987.09 m²; the article says 10,625 sq ft). The **Chrysler Building**'s footprint is more than **3.5 times** larger. ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t1130.webp]] - **11:37** At street level it's only **85 ft** wide, giving a width-to-height ratio of **1:12**. - **11:54** It sits on one of Midtown's busiest intersections, so closing roads during construction was out of the question. The site had no space to store materials or set up work. - **12:07** Everything was meticulously planned, and every crane swap was carried out "with military-like precision". Crews used **hoists** to lift materials and limit time spent on the ground, and built a **custom shoring system** that took up as little room as possible. ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t1220.webp]] - **12:28** Deliveries were scheduled for maximum efficiency, and there were a lot of them: **6,000 tons of rebar**, **1,000 tons of steel** and nearly **30,000 cubic yards of concrete**. - **12:43** The headaches were worth it: "The result looks incredible." ### 12:53 Who's It For? - **12:54** It's great to see New York's architects flexing their creative muscles, but there's an elephant in the room: luxury apartments, a **four-storey members' club** and boutique offices make it yet another pencil-thin supertall for the mega-wealthy. - **13:12** Bonanos: New York has an enormous **housing shortage**, and everyone is "paying through the nose" to stay. It's infuriating, he says, to watch a 1,000 ft building go up with only 100 apartments (speaking about such towers generally, not 520 in particular). Many units go to billionaires or near-billionaires overseas, and they'll probably hold value because New York real estate has risen for generations. "It's a safer bet than buying a lot of stock." ![[images/Why-New-York-Just-Built-a-1930s-Skyscraper-t1315.webp]] - **13:47** By **2025**, **98 of 520's 100 apartments** had sold, at prices from **$1.7M** to more than **$12M**. ### 14:03 A Symbolic Building - **14:03** 520 is more than its apartments: it's billed as a **"vertical city"** because of its mixed uses. - **14:11** The host has covered many New York projects that claim to hark back to the past, but few do it as well as 520 Fifth Avenue. - **14:23** It may be a luxury supertall, but it shows New York "can still build good buildings", which is worth celebrating. - **14:37** Rayon Design sponsor reminder (free trial for architects and interior designers) and subscribe call. ## Things Mentioned ### The building: 520 Fifth Avenue - Corner of **Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street**, Midtown Manhattan, about five minutes from Grand Central. - **305 m** (about 1,000 ft) supertall; footprint about 10,500 sq ft (987 m²); 85 ft wide at the street; slenderness 1:12. - **100 apartments** on 37 floors (98 sold by 2025, $1.7M to $12M+), **25 office floors**, retail, and a four-storey **private members' club**; billed as a "vertical city". - **Facade**: beige terracotta at the base, terracotta-look fluted metal higher up, tall ribbed **arched windows**, stepped setbacks with balconies; 5,500 curtain-wall panels (per the article). Facade footage credited to **Alubuild USA**; design footage credited to **KPF**. - **Structure**: reinforced concrete core with shear walls, rebar and link beams; concrete slabs and columns; **belt floors at levels 32 and 52**. - **Quantities**: 6,000 tons of rebar, 1,000 tons of steel, about 30,000 cubic yards of concrete. - **Timeline**: three-building assembly, RFR air-rights purchase (2007), partners' legal battle (2009), a decade of changing owners and redesigns, demolition, construction start (2022). ### Other buildings & places - **Fifth Avenue** (millionaires' row; world's highest retail rents in 2023), **Central Park**, **Bryant Park**, **New York Public Library**, **Grand Central**. - **Woolworth Building** (archetype of ornate glazed terracotta), **Empire State Building** (steel frame with limestone and masonry), **Chrysler Building** (footprint more than 3.5 times larger than 520's). - The site's past: a shelter for homeless Black children (the Colored Orphan Asylum), burned in the 1863 **Draft Riots**; later an antiques shop, art gallery and offices; 516, 518 and 520 Fifth Avenue as separate buildings. - London skyscrapers (the host's imaginary gallery). ### Architecture & planning concepts - **Beaux-Arts**, **Art Deco**, the **International Style** and modernism; the return of **masonry skins**. - **1916 Building Zone** law (Zoning Resolution) and its setbacks; **air rights** transfers from landmarked buildings; **supertall** and **super-slender** "pencil towers". - Construction logistics: no road closures, choreographed crane swaps, hoists, a custom shoring system, just-in-time deliveries. ### History & context - **Tammany Hall**, the **New York City Police Riot** (1857), the New York **Draft Riots** (1863), 1850s population growth of nearly 60%, the **Global Recession** (2008–09), New York's housing shortage and luxury supertalls bought by overseas buyers as investments. ### Organisations & companies - **Tahl-Propp Equities**, **RFR Holding** (Aby Rosen), **Ceruzzi** (Properties) and **SMI** (USA), **Rubina Properties** (from the on-screen headline), **KPF** (Kohn Pedersen Fox), **Alubuild USA** / **Tower Holdings Group**, ***New York* magazine**. ### Sponsor & channel - **Rayon Design** (paid promotion; browser-based CAD with 50,000+ blocks, AI block generation, and a 520 Fifth Avenue floor-plan template); theb1m.com full story; Get Construction Talking; The World's Best Construction Podcast. ## Biographies - **Fred Mills**: Presenter and co-founder of The B1M. He hosts this episode on location in Midtown and imagines his own 520 penthouse in the sponsor segment (named in the article, not the captions). - **Christopher Bonanos**: City editor of *New York* magazine and a long-time writer on New York's history, architecture and culture (author of books on Polaroid and the photographer Weegee). In the video he explains Fifth Avenue's shift from mansions to commerce, the return to masonry and terracotta facades, why New York sites take a generation to assemble, and why 1,000 ft towers with only 100 apartments are infuriating during a housing shortage. - **Aby Rosen**: German-born New York developer and co-founder of **RFR Holding**. He owned 516 and 518 Fifth Avenue, partnered with Tahl-Propp, and bought the landmark air rights in 2007 that made a supertall possible. - **Tahl-Propp Equities**: New York real estate firm that owned the original 520 Fifth Avenue building and partnered with Rosen before the 2009 legal dispute. - **KPF (Kohn Pedersen Fox)**: New York-based architecture firm credited with footage of the tower in the video; widely reported as the design architect of 520 Fifth Avenue. - **James Rabey**: Author of The B1M's companion article on the video. - **The B1M**: UK-based construction and infrastructure video channel ("the definitive video channel for construction"). - **Rayon**: Maker of Rayon Design, the CAD platform that sponsors this video.