Gehry: Beekman Tower has NY persona

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Frank Gehry and his Beekman Tower

Beekman Tower, the 76-story residential skyscraper designed by starchitect Frank Gehry and developed by Forest City Ratner, is slated to open to renters early next year under the name “New York by Gehry at Eight Spruce Street.” As New Yorkers begin to get used to the new Downtown skyline neighbor since Beekman’s arrival, the Wall Street Journal sat down with the 81-year-old Gehry to talk about his inspiration. “With its stair-steps, it has a New York persona. I think I’ve nailed that part of it,” Gehry said. “I think it talks to the Woolworth Buidling. I like that juxtaposition. It sure as hell doesn’t talk down to it. It holds its own.” Although Beekman has already made a major splash on the New York real estate scene, this is only Gehry’s second major project in the city, after the IAC headquarters building on the Hudson River. He had been behind the original design of Ratner’s Barclays Center at Atlantic Yards and a proposed new Guggenheim museum on the East River, but neither of those projects came to be. “There was a business decsion [at Atlantic Yards] to change and make it a much smaller building. It wasn’t like everyone says that my building was more expensive. That wasn’t it,” Gehry said. Meanwhile, he added, “the Guggenheim over the water was never real. It was always kind of a dream.” [WSJ]

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