Kips Bay Plaza
333 East 30th Street
330 East 33rd Street

Architect: I. M. Pei

Builder: William Zeckendorf

Built: 1962

Kips Bay Plaza was built as a middle-income urban renewal project whose rents have long since exceeded middle-income limits. It was one of the first projects of the heavily-built fifties and sixties to treat the construction of an apartment house as a design problem rather than merely an exercise in maximizing the financial return by minimizing the project cost. As an early example of exposed cast-in-place concrete, extensive experiments were made to determine the best means of erecting the structure. The results are a pair of dramatically handsome buildings sharing a sympathetically landscaped site with a professional building and a small shopping center. The southerly building was erected first and served as a proving ground; several design elements were changed when the northerly unit was built. The floor plans are distinctive, providing large, square living rooms and good closet space. The bathrooms and kitchens are windowless, however, a defect which is partially offset by floor-to-ceiling doors which lend a slight air of additional spaciousness.