PRESERVATION COMMISSION REJECTS ROSEN’S “KUNSTHALLE”

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission resoundingly rejected a proposal yesterday to build a thirty-story glass tower designed by Norman Foster atop a 1949 building on Madison Avenue, reports the New York Times‘ Sewell Chan. The battle over the proposed tower has attracted prominent combatants on each side. The writer Tom Wolfe vehemently criticized the project, while artists like Jeff Koons supported the building’s owner, Aby Rosen, a real estate executive and art collector. In discussions about the project last October, Rosen noted that the tower would contain a “Kunsthalle,” devoting twenty-four thousand square feet in its base to an exhibition space for contemporary art.