(Photo: From left: NYC Municipal Archives; courtesy DBox)

49. Riverside South
Riverside Boulevard, 59th to 72nd Streets
Donald Trump no longer has much to do with this palisade of apartments. Still, he retains the blame. The buildings aren’t terrible, and in theory it was a good idea to build over the tracks, but the plan yielded a forbidding wall severing the rest of the West Side from the river.

(Photo: From left: Courtesy Roy S. Wright; Rebecca Sahn)

50. Columbia University Lasker Biomedical Research Building
3960 Broadway
After a big preservation fight, Davis Brody Bond saved portions of the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was killed, and restored the 1912 façade, gluing it all awkwardly to a glum block. A Pyrrhic victory.

(Photo: From left: NYC Municipal Archives; Robert Benson)

51. Columbia University School of Social Work
1255 Amsterdam Avenue
Cooper Robertson’s blond masonry building at 122nd Street mitigates the effect of the oppressive wall that Columbia long ago built fronting the avenue, but it’s still pretty timid.

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