The 93-story Brooklyn Tower is the borough’s tallest structure, and a bold new standard for grimdark architecture.
Photo: Max Touhey, courtesy of SHoP Architects
Downtown Brooklyn Gets the Gotham City Treatment
Two new skyscrapers, Brooklyn Tower and 100 Flatbush, point to the soaring Art Deco architecture of the 1930s.
On an overcast day, the delicate pointed crown of the Brooklyn Tower is invisible in the clouds, as if a vengeful enemy has shrouded its superlative vantage in smoke. Nonetheless, over the low-rise flatlands that comprise most of the borough, the jagged edges rising along the dark shaft are present and unmistakable.
The Batman building, the Tower of Sauron — the nicknames write themselves. And why not? Better this than another squared-off tower that simply fiddles with the ratio of white solid to blue glass. Maybe I should hate it for its bigness, its blackness, its thrust — but I don’t. Skylines need punctuation. The designers of the Brooklyn Tower, SHoP Architects, threw everything at this to make it an exclamation point.