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High Rise: How 1,000 Men and Women Worked Around the Clock for Five Years and Lost $200 Million Building a Skyscraper
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- GenresNonfictionArchitecture
384 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 22, 2021
The best book I have read about the real estate industry in New York.
October 21, 2021
5 stars might be a bit of a stretch but I loved this detailed, snarky walk-through of the development of 1540 Broadway. I'd place it with books like "The Soul of a New Machine," where the author gives you an insider's view of an industry and the various incentives and stresses that the people working on a project respond to. This book also does pretty well as a "Real Estate Development 101" course.
June 17, 2013
High Rise is a brilliantly funny book, particularly if you have ever been involved in real estate in anyway, or if you have ever lived in Manhattan and wondered about the buildings. Jerry Adler manages to capture the complicated nuances of the financial and legal structures of real estate development as well as the relationships between the people involved and how all the physical structures and logistical challenges influence the seemly simple task of erecting a building.
Adler's style is casual and informative balancing exposition with storytelling in way that keeps you completely engaged.
Adler's style is casual and informative balancing exposition with storytelling in way that keeps you completely engaged.
March 26, 2025
This book was part of a series of books that focused on the story of individual buildings in the 1980s skyscraper boom, including "Skyscraper" and "Building in the Age of Money." To my mind, this is by far the best one. Although the author probably makes the participants a little wittier than they are in reality, and has an absolutely maddening tendency to refer to all characters by their first name, which is doubly difficult in this character-heavy book, I haven't read anything else that gives such a panoramic perspective of what it takes, or took, to build in New York City.
The book foces on Bruce Eichner, a former city prosecutor who emerged out of nowhere to be one of the most successful developers in the 1980s. When the Loews corporation was looking to sell it's headquarters on Times Square right as the area was being redevelopment, Eichner (or Bruce in the argot of the book), bought it up as well as a bunch of other nearby properties to create a major mixed retail/office development. The book focuses on a few major struggles to build what became the Bertelsman building. The first deals with financing. As the book shows, getting first the land loan, from European-American Bank, and then the construction loan, from Citibank, was a struggle made more daunting by the fact that Eichner refused to put up his own money. Citibank only promised the cash after Eichner agreed to give out the lower floors to the Hahn company as a massive atrium and mall retail project. Eichner got a series of letters of credit that he used as collateral to borrow the money to put in the "equity." In the end, however, the downfall, of the project was the inability to get a permanent mortgage to close out the construciton loan. This itself was the result of the inability of both Hahn and the Gordon brokerage company to find retail and office tenants in the early 1990s office downturn.
The next biggest struggle concerned the city. The project had to buy up a bunch of Floor-Area-Ratio air rights to extend the project upwards, including from the nearby Lyceum Theater, but the city had also declared the whole area a protected zone for Broadway performances so the Theather itself couldn't be touched. The city could noodle over the most minute details of the zoning plan, inspections for the excavation, and, especially the deadline to complete a foundation by 1987 to get special bonus FAR rights that had been decreed by the city six years earlier (after the city turned Eichner down, claiming his foundation wasn't finished, he won the rights on appeal.) The next major battle is with the architects, Skimore, Ownings, and Merrill, technically headed by David Childs but in this project managed by a young Audrey Matlock, who created the distinctive "spire" and "prow" of the building. Of course the architects also created an expensive and elaborate plan that is whittled down bit by bit by the exigencies of "value engineering," or, as SOM called it, cost-cutting. Finally, the book details the battle over actual construction, from the powder monkeys who blow up the Manhattan Schist (but who have to take account of both the shaky Lyceum foundation and even delays during piano concerts) to the construction manager, Turner Construction, that has to manage an infinitude of subcontractors and powerful unions, from marble-setters and stone-setters (interior and exterior) to steamfitters and steel connectors, as well a managing the costs of everything from the steel itself (up to $1,800 a ton by the end of project) to the fabricators at Lehigh steel who assemble the basic frameworks off site.
Although the book can be circuitious, it is also perceptive, funny, fascinating and illuminating. Most of all, it makes one wonder why anyone would embark on the treacherous seas of New York City development.
The book foces on Bruce Eichner, a former city prosecutor who emerged out of nowhere to be one of the most successful developers in the 1980s. When the Loews corporation was looking to sell it's headquarters on Times Square right as the area was being redevelopment, Eichner (or Bruce in the argot of the book), bought it up as well as a bunch of other nearby properties to create a major mixed retail/office development. The book focuses on a few major struggles to build what became the Bertelsman building. The first deals with financing. As the book shows, getting first the land loan, from European-American Bank, and then the construction loan, from Citibank, was a struggle made more daunting by the fact that Eichner refused to put up his own money. Citibank only promised the cash after Eichner agreed to give out the lower floors to the Hahn company as a massive atrium and mall retail project. Eichner got a series of letters of credit that he used as collateral to borrow the money to put in the "equity." In the end, however, the downfall, of the project was the inability to get a permanent mortgage to close out the construciton loan. This itself was the result of the inability of both Hahn and the Gordon brokerage company to find retail and office tenants in the early 1990s office downturn.
The next biggest struggle concerned the city. The project had to buy up a bunch of Floor-Area-Ratio air rights to extend the project upwards, including from the nearby Lyceum Theater, but the city had also declared the whole area a protected zone for Broadway performances so the Theather itself couldn't be touched. The city could noodle over the most minute details of the zoning plan, inspections for the excavation, and, especially the deadline to complete a foundation by 1987 to get special bonus FAR rights that had been decreed by the city six years earlier (after the city turned Eichner down, claiming his foundation wasn't finished, he won the rights on appeal.) The next major battle is with the architects, Skimore, Ownings, and Merrill, technically headed by David Childs but in this project managed by a young Audrey Matlock, who created the distinctive "spire" and "prow" of the building. Of course the architects also created an expensive and elaborate plan that is whittled down bit by bit by the exigencies of "value engineering," or, as SOM called it, cost-cutting. Finally, the book details the battle over actual construction, from the powder monkeys who blow up the Manhattan Schist (but who have to take account of both the shaky Lyceum foundation and even delays during piano concerts) to the construction manager, Turner Construction, that has to manage an infinitude of subcontractors and powerful unions, from marble-setters and stone-setters (interior and exterior) to steamfitters and steel connectors, as well a managing the costs of everything from the steel itself (up to $1,800 a ton by the end of project) to the fabricators at Lehigh steel who assemble the basic frameworks off site.
Although the book can be circuitious, it is also perceptive, funny, fascinating and illuminating. Most of all, it makes one wonder why anyone would embark on the treacherous seas of New York City development.
July 18, 2023
I enjoyed this book a lot...so much so that I reread it after about 10 years and the second time was as enjoyable as the first. I think the most interesting thing about this story is how it illustrates just how difficult it is to build anything in Manhattan, much less a high rise tower. As the title suggests, it is very difficult and even harder to do it in a way that makes financial sense. Add in how the economic tides of a city can turn a sure-fire fortune-making project into a financially disastrous money pit and you have a financial tragedy of the ages.
The whole thing seemed at first like a slam-dunk. Build a high-rise residential tower that sits right on Broadway at Times Square. Who wouldn't pay way too much money to have such a prestigious address? But as the plan developed, it morphed into something entirely different. Instead of overpriced apartments, it became a premium office tower. Unable to resist the draw of an entrance on the corner of Times Square, the designers also decided to add a theater and multi-floor upscale mall to ensure retail revenue. Once that was in motion, an eccentric retail space designer was brought on along with his over-the-top vision of an entirely new shopping experience that he called "Whiz Bang" and consisted of many unfeasible or impossible ideas such as having the street level open to the sidewalks ("how are we going to heat that?"), having entire walls made of moving sculptures and live video projected by extremely expensive and unproven lasers as well as having glass escalators and wildly themed sections throughout. It was to be Disney World and Rodeo Drive wrapped up in a glass box on Times Square with a million or so square feet of office space above it.
Through all of these changes, the basic building architecture was completed, the lot was cleared of old buildings, and the work of digging out the foundation for the new building started. There were constant problems that were made worse by corrupt union officials and politicians who refused to be bribed while others refused not to and preservationists that opposed pretty much anything that was proposed. The lot that they had purchased had a historic theater next to it which was always in danger of collapsing from the charges that were required to blast out rock from the basement levels and the builder had to hire expensive geologists to monitor the theater and halt blasting if it registered too high on their seismic equipment. With the site entirely boxed in by busy streets, the only way to get the blasted rock out of the hole was to lift it one dump-truck load at a time with a crane parked high above on a side street. The edge of the hole was shockingly close to an active subway tunnel and and had to be reinforced to prevent the tunnel from collapsing. After many months of "construction", all that had been built was a 60 foot deep hole in the ground half the size of a city block.
From there, it got progressively worse. The design of the building grew more and more elaborate and as a result, the builder incurred more and more debt to realize these changes. When the core of the building was finally in place, they suddenly realized that the massive footers that were required to hold the building up and allow it to flex in the wind without crumbling took up huge sections of the planned retail space and made for irregular floor plans that the retail designer found to be unacceptable. To make matters even worse, between the time construction started and was completed, the office real estate market tanked (largely due to many other builders deciding to build out similarly large office towers at the same time) and they were unable to secure any large office space leases up front. This in turn caused the banks that were financing the construction to get nervous about their huge financial exposure on the project and withhold construction money until additional funding could be obtained.
Thus the higher the building grew, the lower its prospects sank. Towards the end of construction, progress ground to a near standstill because the construction companies who had already done millions of dollars worth of work were having trouble getting paid for it and pulled their crews off until the outstanding charges were settled. Without additional funding, this was not likely to happen any time soon, certainly not before the planned completion date. As news spread of the real estate meltdown in Manhattan office spaces, the new building literally became its poster child when it was featured on the front page of prominent New York papers in a story of how the occupancy rate of existing offices was historically low even as massive new amounts of office space were opening up in new high rises with no one to rent them.
As a result of these financial pressures, the "whiz bang" was scaled back to a more affordable but much less innovative traditional shopping mall design which lacked the draw that was supposed to lure people off the street of Times Square and into the high-end shops and eateries. Times Square building code, contrary to common sense, actually required any building built there to have huge billboards on the lower floors of the building, which had the advantage of generating advertising revenue but had the disastrous effect of completely blocking the views of Times Square that were to be one of the main selling points of its office space. Instead, prospective tenants of those floors would have to stare at the backs of giant billboards which blocked daylight from the sheer glass siding that was intended to give it an open, bright feel. The farther along they got, the less what they built was like what they set out to build.
In the end, the company building this amazing new tower was forced into bankruptcy before the building was even occupied and it sat empty for some time as the banks sorted out what to do with it. It was eventually sold (at a loss over over $200 Million) and was finally put into use.
Needless to say, this is not a feel-good story. It is a series of disasters, unexpected expenses, failed expectations, and professional failures that could probably be rewritten as a textbook on how not to develop real estate in New York. Despite that though, the author has done a great job of keeping the reader engaged and invested in the story without revealing too much too soon. As a result, even as the handwriting was on the wall (literally, it turned out as the empty building began collecting graffiti) and it was obvious that things were not going to miraculously turn out OK, I found myself hoping that some last-minute savior would step in and make it all good. That didn't happen, and the disappointment that was felt by the people who had invested years of hard work into making this dream into a very large reality was shared with me, the reader. Maybe not the most desirable ending, but certainly the most realistic.
The whole thing seemed at first like a slam-dunk. Build a high-rise residential tower that sits right on Broadway at Times Square. Who wouldn't pay way too much money to have such a prestigious address? But as the plan developed, it morphed into something entirely different. Instead of overpriced apartments, it became a premium office tower. Unable to resist the draw of an entrance on the corner of Times Square, the designers also decided to add a theater and multi-floor upscale mall to ensure retail revenue. Once that was in motion, an eccentric retail space designer was brought on along with his over-the-top vision of an entirely new shopping experience that he called "Whiz Bang" and consisted of many unfeasible or impossible ideas such as having the street level open to the sidewalks ("how are we going to heat that?"), having entire walls made of moving sculptures and live video projected by extremely expensive and unproven lasers as well as having glass escalators and wildly themed sections throughout. It was to be Disney World and Rodeo Drive wrapped up in a glass box on Times Square with a million or so square feet of office space above it.
Through all of these changes, the basic building architecture was completed, the lot was cleared of old buildings, and the work of digging out the foundation for the new building started. There were constant problems that were made worse by corrupt union officials and politicians who refused to be bribed while others refused not to and preservationists that opposed pretty much anything that was proposed. The lot that they had purchased had a historic theater next to it which was always in danger of collapsing from the charges that were required to blast out rock from the basement levels and the builder had to hire expensive geologists to monitor the theater and halt blasting if it registered too high on their seismic equipment. With the site entirely boxed in by busy streets, the only way to get the blasted rock out of the hole was to lift it one dump-truck load at a time with a crane parked high above on a side street. The edge of the hole was shockingly close to an active subway tunnel and and had to be reinforced to prevent the tunnel from collapsing. After many months of "construction", all that had been built was a 60 foot deep hole in the ground half the size of a city block.
From there, it got progressively worse. The design of the building grew more and more elaborate and as a result, the builder incurred more and more debt to realize these changes. When the core of the building was finally in place, they suddenly realized that the massive footers that were required to hold the building up and allow it to flex in the wind without crumbling took up huge sections of the planned retail space and made for irregular floor plans that the retail designer found to be unacceptable. To make matters even worse, between the time construction started and was completed, the office real estate market tanked (largely due to many other builders deciding to build out similarly large office towers at the same time) and they were unable to secure any large office space leases up front. This in turn caused the banks that were financing the construction to get nervous about their huge financial exposure on the project and withhold construction money until additional funding could be obtained.
Thus the higher the building grew, the lower its prospects sank. Towards the end of construction, progress ground to a near standstill because the construction companies who had already done millions of dollars worth of work were having trouble getting paid for it and pulled their crews off until the outstanding charges were settled. Without additional funding, this was not likely to happen any time soon, certainly not before the planned completion date. As news spread of the real estate meltdown in Manhattan office spaces, the new building literally became its poster child when it was featured on the front page of prominent New York papers in a story of how the occupancy rate of existing offices was historically low even as massive new amounts of office space were opening up in new high rises with no one to rent them.
As a result of these financial pressures, the "whiz bang" was scaled back to a more affordable but much less innovative traditional shopping mall design which lacked the draw that was supposed to lure people off the street of Times Square and into the high-end shops and eateries. Times Square building code, contrary to common sense, actually required any building built there to have huge billboards on the lower floors of the building, which had the advantage of generating advertising revenue but had the disastrous effect of completely blocking the views of Times Square that were to be one of the main selling points of its office space. Instead, prospective tenants of those floors would have to stare at the backs of giant billboards which blocked daylight from the sheer glass siding that was intended to give it an open, bright feel. The farther along they got, the less what they built was like what they set out to build.
In the end, the company building this amazing new tower was forced into bankruptcy before the building was even occupied and it sat empty for some time as the banks sorted out what to do with it. It was eventually sold (at a loss over over $200 Million) and was finally put into use.
Needless to say, this is not a feel-good story. It is a series of disasters, unexpected expenses, failed expectations, and professional failures that could probably be rewritten as a textbook on how not to develop real estate in New York. Despite that though, the author has done a great job of keeping the reader engaged and invested in the story without revealing too much too soon. As a result, even as the handwriting was on the wall (literally, it turned out as the empty building began collecting graffiti) and it was obvious that things were not going to miraculously turn out OK, I found myself hoping that some last-minute savior would step in and make it all good. That didn't happen, and the disappointment that was felt by the people who had invested years of hard work into making this dream into a very large reality was shared with me, the reader. Maybe not the most desirable ending, but certainly the most realistic.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2025
I had such a hard time finding this book but it was well worth the hunt. Great insight into all stages of getting a major skyscraper built, from getting financial backing, to city permits, to the steel trusses and beyond. Also a wonderful insight into a time when NY real estate was waking up from the ashes of the 70s to become the dynamic city it is today.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews