27 East 79th Street, renderings courtesy of Adellco

The Upper East Side‘s 79th Street, stretching between Madison and Fifth Avenues, remains known for its architecturally beautiful 19th and early 20th-century homes. Now, as CityRealty learned, the stretch of street will soon gain its first condominium at 27 East 79th Street, also the block’s first new building in 40 years. The Parisian-inspired, 15-story building will have interiors designed by Cabinet Albert Pinto, whose trademark style mixes old-world luxury with modern design. The firm’s previous clients include the French President and royal families of Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Albert Pinto’s team, run by Linda Pinto, will be working with local firm, HTO Architects.

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The Bay Ridge Avenue train station that was once a dark and dreary stop along the R line has completed its six-month renovations, the MTA announced Friday. The 102-year-old station was closed in April so the agency could bring it into the modern age with countdown clocks at all three entrances, Wi-Fi, digital displays, USB ports and an enhanced security system.

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Jackson Heights, Queens, is an affordable neighborhood with lots going for it. There’s a central transit hub, great restaurants, and loads of beautiful pre-war buildings. This co-op, at 35-27 80th Street, is well known in the neighborhood as the Greystones, an early 1900s building that’s part of the Jackson Heights Historic District. This one-bedroom apartment for sale, asking $388,500, is a classic pre-war pad with some modern details like open shelving and a renovated eat-in kitchen. The apartment last sold in 2010 for $260,000.

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A self-driving vehicle, photo via GM

General Motors will bring a fleet of self-driving cars to a 5-square-mile section of lower Manhattan early next year, becoming the first company to deploy autonomous cars in New York City. As the Wall Street Journal learned, in partnership with driverless-car developer Cruise Automation, GM’s testing will include an engineer in the driver’s seat to monitor the performance and a second person in the passenger seat. In May, Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state began accepting applications from companies interested in autonomous technologies in New York. GM and Cruise’s planned testing will become the first time Level 4 autonomous vehicles will be tested in NYC, getting a head start on making the Big Apple a hub for self-driving cars.

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Renderings courtesy Adjaye Associates

One of the reasons for Ghanaian British architect David Adjaye’s rise to international fame is his work on renowned museums, from Washington D.C.’s National Museum of African American History and Culture to Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art to the recently released plans for the Studio Museum in Harlem. And he’ll now add to that list, again in NYC, but this time the project is a bit on the lighter side. The Architect’s Newspaper reveals Adjaye Associates‘ renderings for SPYSCAPE, a spy museum and interactive experience that will open at 250 West 55th Street in December. Spread over two floors in the office building, the exhibitions will be divided among individually designed pavilions, each one exploring one of the seven themes of spying. This format, according to the firm’s Associate Director Lucy Tilley, allowed them to “challenge the traditional museum typology with a design that straddles the physical and digital worlds.”

More details and renderings ahead

Photo courtesy of Robert Scoble on Flickr

Amazon’s nationwide competition to find a home for its second headquarters draws to a close this week, with pitches from stakeholders due Thursday. While New York City meets most of the requirements the tech giant listed for its HQ2– a population of at least 1 million people, proximity to an international airport, mass transit access and talented workforce–business costs in the city would be sky-high. However, as Crain’s reported, even if Amazon does not set up shop in NYC, politicians and developers have been preparing for a comparably-sized company to move in for over a decade. The failure of the city to win the 2012 Olympics bid back in 2005 actually turned into a success, allowing apartments to rise in Brooklyn where sports stadiums never did.

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6sqft has reported previously on the increasing alarm caused by New York City’s future skyline and its growing army of skyscrapers-to-be, with community groups expressing deep concern about the shadows cast across the city’s parks by the tall towers. The Municipal Art Society (MAS) has been leading the pack when it comes to thorough analysis of the issue, which they see as having its roots not only in the sheer height of the new buildings but in a lack of regulation of how and where they rise in the larger context of the city. This “accidental skyline” effect reflects the fact that New York City currently has no restrictions on the shadows a tower may cast–the city doesn’t limit height, it only regulates FAR (floor area ratio). At this week’s MAS Summit for New York City, the organization released its third Accidental Skyline report, calling for immediate reform in light of an unprecedented boom in as-of-right–and seemingly out-of-scale–development. MAS president Elizabeth Goldstein said, “New York doesn’t have to settle for an ‘accidental skyline.’”

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Rendering via MAQE

One of New York’s best-known office buildings will get a major restoration. According to Curbed, Equitable Building owner Silverstein Properties plans to spend $50 million to return the Financial District building to its former glory, restoring many design elements that were on display when it first opened in 1915. Beyer Blinder Belle will oversee the reno, which includes the restoration of the entrance, a new lighting system with hanging bronze fixtures, a new reception desk, and a granite accent wall.

For those unfamiliar with the Equitable Building, it actually played a huge role in the city’s current zoning laws. The H-shaped tower, which takes up the entire block on Broadway between Pine and Cedar Streets, caused a scandal when it opened due to the long shadows it cast on nearby streets, leading the city to establish the first-ever zoning laws to regulate the height of future tall buildings.

Read about the restoration details

CityRealty previously reported on the highly anticipated–and visually unique–skyscraper rising at 180 East 88th Street. Developers DDG want the 50-story condominium tower to stand apart from the sea of glass towers rising on the Upper East Side, and renderings show that the building’s design is indeed a breathtaking departure from the average both inside and out, from herringbone-patterned brickwork to each unit’s herringbone floors imported from Austria. As an example of the project’s unmatched level of individuality and attention to detail, DDG is working with a series of artists, including the renowned stucco artist Jan Hooss, who is creating an intricate plasterwork installation above the fireplace that will anchor the building’s lobby. Based in Stuttgart, Germany, the artist has worked with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie at Chateau Miraval. DDG CEO Joseph McMillan told CityRealty, “We wanted something unique and different for this building which is why we went with stucco art.”

Watch a video of the artist describing his work for Brad Pitt and for the new building