The New York City Housing Authority’s Board recently voted to rename the Bronxdale Houses and the Bronxdale Community Center for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The Bronxdale Houses were built in 1955 and are composed of twenty-eight seven-story buildings housing 3,479 residents in the Soundview section of the Bronx.

Sotomayor moved into Building 24 at Bronxdale Houses with her mother and father when she was three years old. She lived there from 1957 to 1970, and moved away two years before she graduated as valedictorian from Cardinal Spellman High School.

On the renaming, NYCHA Chairman John B. Rhea commented, “From NYCHA’s perspective, the Justice has shown that growing up in public housing does not limit one’s possibilities. One of the most important actions the NYCHA Board can take is renaming the Bronxdale Houses for Justice Sotomayor to serve as an inspiration to others.”

The renaming came in response to a petition drive from residents of Bronxdale Houses and staff from City Council Member Annabel Palma’s office. A public renaming ceremony is expected to take place in June.

McGraw-Hill Building/Flickr

Raymond Hood’s terra-cotta-clad McGraw-Hill building is a pleasure to glimpse at any time of day.

After three years of construction work, the Sky View Parc mixed-use development in Flushing is getting closer to the completion of Phase One, which includes three of the planned six residential towers which sit atop the retail and parking base. The 14-acre site along College Point Boulevard will ultimately house 1,100 luxury condo apartments above the 800,000 square-foot shopping center and cost over $1 billion.

A few of the commercial tenants–which will include a BJ’s Wholesale Club, Best Buy, and Target, among others–have already opened for business. The retail portion is already over 70% leased.

It was recently reported by the Post that developers Jason and Joshua Muss, whose family owned the land, have had their equity partner Onex move to bring Related Companies in as a “consultant” for apartment marketing and retail leasing/management before any construction begins with the remaining three residential towers. Construction delays have left the phase one towers unfinished even though occupancy was scheduled for summer 2009. In March Muss Development asserted that 40% of the 448 Sky View Parc phase one apartments had been sold, but at that time none of the sales had closed.

View the full Flickr photoset here.

If the electricians only placed that light fixture two feet higher or lower, a charismatic little piece of 1940s commercial signage could have remained intact. Despite the interrupted sign, the storefront is still in use as a launderette on East Tremont Avenue in the Parkchester section of the Bronx. If its neighbor to the left is any indication, the seems like the launderette sign will soon be put out of its misery when it’s covered over in an all to common vinyl awning. I guess we can take comfort in the fact that the new awning will be back-lit thoroughly and with environmentally-conscious fluorescent bulbs.

No summer barbecues here/Flickr

In response to the tragic death of 24-year-old Connor Donohue in March, the Department of Buildings (DOB) has been conducting city-wide safety reviews of balconies and terraces. Donohue fell from his 24^th-floor balcony at 330 East 39th Street when the railing gave way. DOB’s recent investigations at hundreds of buildings have found dangerous conditions across the city.

Orders were issued prohibiting residents from using their balconies at sixteen buildings—failure to comply can mean fines for the building management and/or the physical sealing of balcony doors. The DOB also found that about 800 building owners have not filed the proper balcony and facade inspection reports, which are required every five years.

At Co-Op City in the Bronx, balconies on seven buildings within the complex were deemed off-limits. DOB says that the city-wide review is still in its beginning stages, so you can bet more closings will likely occur.

As with the spate of construction crane collapses and other accidents, it’s great that the DOB is taking some action to try and remedy systemic failures—it’s just sad that it always takes the loss of life to spur action. As heftier city budget cuts are sure to come down the pike (and it always seems that it’s the people doing the groundwork at any city agency—inspectors and the like—who get axed first) we’ll have to see what, if anything, really changes.

The Elmhurst branch of the former Jamaica Savings Bank is a modern gem that shines across the gray, exhaust-ridden expanse of Queens Boulevard. In its 1967 review of the new building, the New York Times noted that “motorists on Queens Boulevard are doing double-takes as they go through the Elmhurst section near Woodhaven Boulevard,” and over forty years later, you can bet that they still do. Catch a glimpse of the twisting glass pyramid today and you’ll think you’ve stumbled upon some forgotten early work of Eero Saarinen. Could it be some permutation of his Kresge Auditorium or an early stab at the concrete wings of the TWA terminal at JFK?

Alas, the building sprang from humbler architectural origins at a later time, but this fact in no way diminishes its dynamic presence along the boulevard. It’s both a quirky roadside attraction that begs you to pull over (and open an account while you’re at it), and a 1960s Modernist glass and concrete institutional outpost that could be sharing a Midtown corner with Lever House or the Seagram Building. The structure no longer houses the Jamaica Savings Bank, but rather a Capital One Bank branch—the product of a couple of mergers and renamings, with which New Yorkers are all to familiar (to this day Chemical Bank coin wrappers still seem to surface in the kitchen junk drawer).

The Jamaica Savings Bank was founded in 1866 to support the growing southeast Queens community of Jamaica. Unlike the globalized behemoths of today, Jamaica Savings kept its sights local, and supported retail banking and neighborhood development in Queens. In 1966 the bank was celebrating its centennial, and it commissioned the William F. Cann Company to create a new branch office in Elmhurst at 56^th Avenue and Queens Boulevard. The site was chosen to try and take advantage of the new shoppers drawn to the nearby Skidmore Owings and Merrill-designed Macy’s (the circular Queens Place Mall at 56^th Avenue) and Alexander’s (now the Rego Park Center at 63^rd Road) department store, as well as the growing population of the large LeFrak City housing development.

William Cann and his team were charged with planning a dynamic bank building that could hold its own amongst the boldly geometric forms of the nearby retail developments, and build it on an irregular diamond-shaped plot with no right-angled corners (see image at right). Cann’s elegant solution came in the form of a dynamic glass structure, with two large marble-clad concrete piers that support a sweeping hyperbolic paraboloid roof. The undulating reinforced concrete roof is clad with green copper panels and seems to float above the bronze-tinted quarter-inch thick plate-glass walls set with silver and bronze mullions. The column-free banking floor is grand, but human-scaled at only 43 feet at its tallest point. To help Queens Boulevard drivers identify the purpose of the oddly-shaped building, a tall vertical cylinder was erected in the parking lot that featured the bank’s name.

Despite over forty years in continuous use as a retail-banking establishment, the integrity of the design has remained with only minor alterations. In 2005 the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission voted to designate the building a landmark, but had its decision revoked by the City Council. Despite the lack of formal protection, the building retains it’s googie meets gray-flannel charm and Queens is better off for it.

View the Jamaica Savings Bank Flickr photo-set here.

The lobby of 15 Central Park West

This past weekend activists descended upon the Washington-area homes of Bank of America’s general counsel and a JPMorgan Chase lobbyist to call them out for opposition to financial reform. Should the NYPD be ready to break out the protest pens along Central Park West? They may, when those protesters learn that Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein paid $26 million in cash for his new duplex at 15 Central Park West.

Blankfein purchased the apartment in the Robert A.M. Stern-designed luxury development, which houses the likes of A-Rod, Sandy Weill, and CPW’s scariest FSBO, before he sold his former home on Park Avenue. That duplex at 941 Park Avenue was listed at $13.5 million (plus $11,327/month maintenance) and is said to have just found a buyer.

Gowanus Expressway/Flickr

The Gowanus Expressway cuts its way through Brooklyn. Some pretty impressive height for those shoes on the wire.