(Photo: From left: NYC Municipal Archives; Rebecca Sahn )

18. Standard Hotel
848 Washington Street
The High Line always dodged through and between buildings; now it’s gliding beneath André Balazs’s emphatically nonstandard Standard Hotel from Polshek Partnership. Few will miss that brick warehouse.

(Photo: From left: NYC Municipal Archives; Rebecca Sahn )

19. Trump World Tower
845 United Nations Plaza
The site’s previous occupant, the 1961 Engineering Societies Center, had all the design grace of a pocket protector; the 861-foot ebony piano key that Costas Kondylis designed for Donald Trump has a certain minimalist suaveness.

(Photo: From left: NYC Municipal Archives; Scott Francis/Esto )

20. 173 and 176 Perry Street
At West Street
Richard Meier’s white-and-clear twin towers pierced the low-lying horizon line along West Street and launched an era of glass-walled designer condos. The transformation was inevitable; far better that the interlopers are stylish and bold rather than dumpy and self-effacing.