(Photo: From left: Courtesy of Feder and Stia Architects; Rebecca Sahn)

52. Graceline Court
106 West 116th Street
A condo has sprouted over the roof of Malcolm Shabazz Mosque No. 7. Arguably better than the vacant lot that was there before, but couldn’t Graceline Court have a more graceful line?

(Photo: Courtesy of Stephen B. Jacobs Group; Rebecca Sahn)

53. 325 Fifth Avenue
Near 32nd Street
To make room for Stephen Jacobs’s mutant tower, the developer scooped out the middle of the block. The collateral damage included a quaint red townhouse, its aspirations all out of proportion to its size. A textbook case of a street that lost texture and variety.

(Photo: From left: Courtesy of Hearst; courtesy of Hearst/Michael Ficeto)

54. Hearst Tower
300 West 57th Street
The best work of corporate architecture to grace New York in decades, Norman Foster’s Hearst Tower negotiates deftly between its crystalline exoskeleton and the fanciful 1928 base by Joseph Urban. Turns out one era’s version of modernity can always talk to another’s.

Related:

• Articles by Justin Davidson
• Table of Contents: Sep 15, 2008 issue of New York | Subscribe!