This downtown Manhattan behemoth has been crowned one of the least attractive structures in the world.
The former Verizon Tower at 375 Pearl St.—near the Brooklyn Bridge—is the third ugliest property in America and the sixth ugliest in the world, according to a survey conducted by construction supply company Buildworld. To New Yorkers, this is no surprise.
“When an investment firm bought the much-hyped 1975 telephone exchange in 2007, a reporter Told the CEO: ‘Mr. Pariser, you have a challenge – to convert a GE dishwasher into an office building,'” buildworld wrote Via a bio for building in your survey. “The firm failed to meet the challenge and resold it for a fraction of its intended value.”
Indeed, the 32-story Blight, now an office and data center, was previously a towering gray obelisk—an eyesore in the downtown skyline, especially across the river in Brooklyn Heights for those who have long seen Manhattan’s downtown. Paid big bucks for views. houses. (The building has had curtain walls of glass installed in recent years, which certainly improved the overall appearance.)
modus operandi? No better source than Twitter – the social-media site where users usually take out many of their frustrations. Buildworld analyzed the number of negative tweets about buildings it disliked for its ranking.
Despite the Downtown tower being widely agreed upon, two other American properties have it beat in terms of design unpopularity. They are Washington DC’s J Edgar Hoover Building and Boston’s City Hall – both of which look modernist.
In terms of international rankings, the Pearl Street atrocity fell behind the building that the company found to be the most unattractive building worldwide: the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh.