The Glass and the Gray

For some buildings, it is not enough to just be ugly. They must impose their ugliness on beautiful places. Not content with the greater crime of gentrification, they are determined to add aesthetic degradation to their rap sheet. New York is full of such offenders: a row of pristine brownstones comes to an abrupt end at a pebblecrete police station on the Upper West Side; a lone duplexed brick house stands between glass-walled apartment buildings in Prospect Heights.

The best and worst of New York converge at the point where the 1 train emerges from underground and rises over Broadway. There’s something thrilling about aboveground rail in subway cities. Maybe it’s the electricity of trespass; maybe it’s just relief at having cell signal again. In any case, the train’s skyward ascent has given a magical aura to the neighborhood around the 125th Street station, a place I’ve only ever seen as picture postcards through subway windows on my commute home to Washington Heights.

But what makes this place special is not magic. It’s history. The rail bridge, the pre-war apar…