Super-palazzo

When walking around in Midtown Manhattan near Grand Central last week, I noticed that most of the pre-War buildings were 10-12 story super-palazzos.  The buildings typically have highly-sculptural classical window frames that sit on a continuous sill that breaks up the façade into a series of stacked trays.  These buildings, and several similar examples in Boston, might suggest ways to conceive of the facades of the 10-15 story buildings that make up several of our on-going planning efforts.  This has become a common scale of building in our projects since 10-11 stories is the minimum building density that overcomes the increased costs of steel-frame construction (over wood-frame construction).

-Tim