Renderings of the utility structure planned for outside the 96th Street station of the under-construction Second Avenue subway

From the December issue: Those sticky summers languishing on the platform will be obsolete for future riders of the Second Avenue subway. Unlike most city subway stations, where air is sucked through sidewalk grates by passing trains, the new stations will be chilled by a modern ventilation system.

But much to the dismay of some Upper East Siders, that ventilation system will be housed in permanent aboveground utility structures situated at each end of the stations, many as large as midsize apartment buildings, rising up to nine stories tall.

As part of its first phase of Second Avenue subway construction, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is planning eight of these structures along a 34-block stretch of the Upper East Side. [more]