# Zeckendorf Towers

Union Square, which marks the crossing of Manhattan's 14th Street and Broadway, had a checkered, sometimes grand, past. In late years, though, it fell on hard times. Its park has already been spruced up, and surrounding old buildings are being restored and replaced.

When the Zeckendorf Company, Inc., commissioned Davis and Brody to design a large mixed-use building for Union Square, they were more than a little conscious of a dual professional responsibility: to their client, of course, but also to the city for a conspicuous and sensitive site, one in which any new building would inflict an unusually heavy urban burden.

The new complex (nearly completed) replaces a *very* odd set of four-story buildings that used to house S. Klein on the Square, a women's discount store. It will include: (1) retail shops along the sidewalk, an important part of the territory for people living and working in the area; (2) eight floors of office space, also typical of the 19th-century square; and (3) market-rate apartments. The appearance of expensive housing in Union Square clearly responds to the pressure of rising residential costs in nearby SoHo and Greenwich Village.

To minimize the bulk of the complex's 675 apartments, the architects disposed the units in four towers, set back from the square to cast as little shadow as possible on the park and to leave open a view of Warren & Wetmore's clock tower on the Con Edison building, a neighborhood landmark.

The style of Zeckendorf Towers, which might be loosely described as Postmodern, represents a recognizable change for such Modernists as Davis and Brody. But Union Square, home in its day to the nouveau riche, Broadway theaters, and Andy Warhol, is no stranger to fashion. G. A.