Photo courtesy of Oppenheim Architecture + Design via Curbed



Remember that massive, 40-story Williamsburg hotel we were talking about a few months back? The one by the old bank building? Well, it may not yet have official financing or city approval, but it does now have mock-ups, which have been released by design firm Oppenheim A+D.

Loosely titled the “Williamsburghotel” (huh), the ultra-tall (440-feet), ultra-narrow (16 feet wide at its thinnest), 86,000 square foot hotel is, hypothetically, intended to somehow fit in with the much lower, much older architecture that surrounds it. Per Oppenheim’s website: “[T]he building expresses itself as three dramatically proportioned, rectilinear volumes of varied height and materiality. Soaring high above the neighborhood, the hotel becomes the third pillar of the bridge, while serving as an archetypical tower to the domed basilica of the historical bank […] The slender building becomes a beacon upon entering Brooklyn via car or train, yet scales down towards the street.”

Seems like an elaborate way to justify plopping this sort of building down in the middle of a neighborhood that couldn’t be more different, but I guess we’ll leave the aesthetic judgments up to you (and judgments on whether or not this will ever even become a reality up to the city).

Follow Virginia K. Smith on Twitter @vksmith.