Archicritics

The aesthetic debate over the West Village's midcentury O'Toole Building rages on with the news that North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health Care System is slated to make over the 1963 structure into a $110 million modern health-care center. Neighbors still hate it ("It looks like the building is encircled by giant false teeth") but writer Tom Stoelker praises its "muscular overhangs punched with half-portholes suggest[ing] Kerouac swagger tempered by Lichtenstein zing." Historical aside: architect Albert C. Ledner's other National Maritime Union-commissioned building in Manhattan is the similarly portholed though less-controversial Maritime Hotel on Ninth Avenue. [WSJ]