In 1986, a New York zoning activist made a startling discovery: A newly constructed building was over a dozen floors too high. What followed was one of the strangest outcomes in the history of big-city housing.
By Michael Waters, The Hustle Animation: Zachary Crockett
In the fall of 1992, residents of the Upper East Side of Manhattan could not escape the sense that they were witnessing history.
For the first time as far back as city officials could remember, a building was shrinking itself down in size.
Laurence Ginsberg, who ran the real estate company Algin Management, intended the newly erected 108 East 96th Street to be a home for high-earning renters who wanted to live by Central Park. It would have a 24-hour concierge, a fitness center, a sun deck, and marble bathrooms.
There was just one problem: The building was too tall.
Ginsberg had built 108 E. 96th — now called The Parkview — to contain 31 floors. But the site he had picked, it turned out, was zoned for buildings no more than 19 floors tall. The Parkview was a dozen stories over the mark.
After a five-year legal battle, in which Algin Management begged the city, including then-Mayor Ed Koch, for forgiveness, New York imposed the maximum penalty: Ginsberg was going to need to chop off the top 12 floors of his new residential building.
As winter melted into spring, Upper East Siders gathered outside The Parkview to watch, bit by bit, as construction crews decapitated the building. Dust filled the air. From the outside, it did not look like much — a tangle of mesh and wires
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