One Police Plaza, an ugly-as-fuck love song to Brutalism architecture, had replaced the former headquarters of the NYPD—a gorgeous Renaissance Revival structure from the turn of the century—in the ’70s, a decade where everything once beautiful was left to die. The monochromatic, minimalist structure of thirteen stories sat wedged between Park Row and Pearl Street on the lower end of the island—a turd that the entire neighborhood complained about as if it were an Olympic sport.
