Kips Bay Towers (Kips Bay Plaza)

The project grew out of the "NYU-Bellevue Title I" plan, issued in 1953 to house New York University staff near its medical center. The first developer could not raise the financing; Robert Moses then invited William Zeckendorf to take over, and in 1957 Zeckendorf gave the design to his own architect, I. M. Pei, in place of the firm S. J. Kessler & Sons; the condominium nonetheless still lists the firm among the complex's architects, alongside Pei and Freed. James Ingo Freed, hired by Pei in 1956, became the lead designer of the complex, which was completed in 1965.

In a 1960 article on cast-in-place concrete, Edward L. Friedman, who headed the firm's research, called Kips Bay Plaza, then nearly finished, a "prototype" and the soon-to-be-built Society Hill scheme in Philadelphia a "refinement". Pei wanted to place a Picasso in the courtyard, but Zeckendorf, his client, did not see it as essential to the program; in the end Pei chose trees.

The complex won an Honor Award for residential design from the U.S. Federal Housing Administration in 1964, an Honor Award for urban renewal design from the U.S. Urban Renewal Administration the same year, and the City Club of New York's Albert S. Bard Award in 1965.

The two towers are Brutalist and built of concrete. Their structure allowed Pei to give every apartment tall ceilings, ample rooms and large windows, so that daylight reaches almost every room. The towers slide in opposite directions, one to the east and one to the west, and a continuous entrance arcade runs along the foot of the facades. Between them lies a three-acre park, originally planted with forty London plane trees, joined by evergreens and weeping willows.

The two towers make up a residential condominium on a seven-acre property, with the park at its center.

These are private apartment buildings, and the park between the two towers is private too. The complex stands on the west side of First Avenue, in full view of the university's medical center, and runs to Second Avenue, between 30th and 33rd Streets.