A Diamond For the Empire State Building

The Empire State Building in New York opened 75 years ago today. It's a special anniversary, because not only is it the diamond anniversary (note to Brits - I know a sixtieth anniversary is a diamond for you, but here it's a seventy-fifth!), it reminds New Yorkers that their most cherished - and once again, as of the late morning of September 11, 2001, their tallest - skyscraper still stands in the aftermath of the attack on New York nearly five years ago and the war against al-Qaeda that has followed.

Meanwhile, work on the so-called Freedom Tower - when, upon completion, will be the tallest building in the world - has finally begun. While the Empire State Building was loved and the World Trade Center towers were gradually accepted, I see nothing but scorn and derision ahead for the Freedom Tower. Its jaded, edgy glass design is spectacularly ludicrous, and its narrowing top floors - with a needle-like spire on top - will give people in the upper stories a bad case of vertigo. I don't expect it to be attacked by terrorists, though. I predict it will be torn down before then, possibly by 2020, because it will be so ugly to look at and so expensive to operate (energy crisis and all that rot) that there'll be no alternative.