08/31/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/1EF95AMPxV/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Two decades ago, Downtown Brooklyn was well connected but underpopulated, a combination that drew armies of fresh college graduates, quintupling the population. “It’s hard to believe how thoroughly and quickly the skyline has been remade in that time — and how shoddily,” architecture critic Justin Davidson writes. “Then, it seemed that this wedge of land could become a showcase of the era’s best high-rise architecture, just as lower Manhattan was in the early 20th century and midtown was 50 years later. Skyscrapers could have made a historic but dilapidated neighborhood more varied and richly layered. Instead, almost all the developers who built it out opted for a style you might call Consensus Clunkism.”
The area has birthed 22,000 new apartments in the past 20 years, making it an inspiration for a strained housing supply. Architecturally, though, it’s one of the city’s great missed opportunities. Vast expanses of aluminum panels and budget glass, slabs that look like they were drawn with a hacksaw, façades checkered with air conditioners, stretches of dead street frontage — the whole neighborhood looks like a first draft. Now that the area is no longer one enormous construction zone, we can see that it’s become the Olive Garden of New York real estate.
Revisit Davidson’s 2025 piece on how Downtown Brooklyn has become a showcase of millennial architectural mediocrity: https://nymag.visitlink.me/kt8_Fd
