All the while the value of the property — 9,500 square feet including two below-ground floors, a manually operated elevator and a roof deck — kept rising.
The unlighted, below-ground floors and the scattered structures in whose shadow the crews labor are not just the last vestiges of an office complex.
They reached the first vehicle one floor below ground level and removed it.
Trained dogs made it to the second car, which was two floors below ground level, and it was determined "there were no humans" inside, Lieutenant Lindner said.
The atrium would allow subway and rail passengers several floors below ground level to see skyscrapers towering overhead in all directions, including any new towers built on the site.
Laurie Frey, a member of the Community Education Council in District 3, said that as a liaison to P.S. 191 on West 61st Street, she was relieved because under the plan that had been considered, half a playground would have been destroyed and children would have been attending classes on two floors below ground level in the new building.
Three of those plans extend the void down several floors below ground level, while one excavates to the bedrock not only the tower footprints but also most of the seven-acre bathtub, the area within the slurry walls that holds back the waters of the Hudson River.
The preliminary designs include a soaring glass atrium that would allow subway and rail passengers to see skyscrapers towering overhead from several floors below ground level, enabling them to orient themselves to where they are in the downtown landscape almost as soon as they step off the trains.
A woman escorted us three to the vault five floors below ground level, heavy steel and glass redolent of one of the Diehard movies, and then to a room much like one for conferences.
With two above ground floors and one below ground level, the center has a total of of space.
