“Tracey Towers utilizes the air rights over a storage yard for subway trains, simultaneously eliminating a Twentieth Century eyesore and creating a man-made plateau within the New York City area which gives a sense of community and identity. One tower is over the tracks, the other one on virgin territory, placing the entrances to the two towers at different elevations. The platform is used for parking, townhouses, recreational facilities and the contemporary phenomenon of a garden with air space under it. The form of the towers derives from the varied sizes of the apartment units and the curvilinear forms dictated by the site and automobile movement.”
Paul Rudolph in Moholy-Nagy, Sibyl. The Architecture of Paul Rudolph. New York: Praeger, 1970. p. 220.
“In Tracey Towers, the exterior walls are not curved for structural reasons at all, but because the site plan and traffic movement dictated an easing of the corners. They are also curved in order to lead the eye around the towers, thereby emphasizing their three-dimensionality. They are also curved because they give a heightened sense of security to the occupants of a very high building, and one looks out and sees these walls, which seem like huge columns, closely rising from the ground. However, they are not columns, but walls, but they are read as columns, which is as intended for psychological reasons.
The geometry of the car is curvilinear and is, in this case, related to the rectilinear organization of the building itself. It is the result of two dissimilar elements coming together.”
Cook, John Wesley. Conversations with Architects : Philip Johnson, Kevin Roche, Paul Rudolph, Bertrand Goldberg, Morris Lapidus, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore, Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown. New York: Praeger, 1973.
