These Luxury Towers Have A Bridge In The Sky—With a Pool In It

Workers have almost completed mounting the copper paneling on the American Copper Buildings (née 626 First Avenue), the new tilting, two-towered development on Manhattan’s East Side, but their most striking feature—a three-story, 100-foot-long skybridge—is still open to the elements. On Tuesday, a Bloomberg photographer (and a laughably heights-averse reporter) had the chance to take the construction elevator up to the buildings' 29th, and then 49th floors, to get a first look.

The towers, which were designed by SHoP Architects (also known for Brooklyn’s love-it-or-hate-it Barclays Center) and developed by the luxury mega-developer JDS Development Group, will be made up entirely of rental units ranging from studios to three-bedrooms. The distinctive copper cladding is reminiscent of the weathering steel on the Barclays Center, which quickly turned rust-colored. Similarly, the buildings' copper, currently shiny, will soon age, coloring the buildings a vibrant green; on Tuesday's visit, the panels that had been on the building longest were already well on their way.