(Photo: From left: Jack Manning/The New York Times/Redux; Rebecca Sahn )

15. Reuters Building
3 Times Square
The elegant Art Deco Rialto Theatre, its façade outfitted with graceful aluminum fins, floated above a layer of tawdry storefronts. By 2001 it had all been replaced by the Reuters Building, Fox & Fowle’s ungainly collection of intersecting planes.

(Photo: From left: NYC Municipal Archives; courtesy of Museum of Modern Art/Timothy Hursley)

16. Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
Yoshio Taniguchi quilted several of the museum’s previous versions into a spreading super-MoMA that hasn’t stopped growing yet. The density of crowd-drawing buildings irritates the neighbors, but it’s a plus for New York as a whole.

(Photo: From left: Courtesy of Robert A.M. Stern Architects; Jack Pottle/Esto)

17. The Westminster
180 West 20th Street
Nobody mourns a service station, and anyway, it’s hard to justify devoting a prime site in Chelsea to one, even at $6 a gallon. Robert A.M. Stern replaced it with a tasteful, neo-Deco condo in tan brick with a graceful canopy. A definite improvement, unless your tank is running low.