This larger trend1 in American cities dates at least to the 1980s, and now serves almost as a default mode in districts where the goal is to retain the pre-existing character while encouraging growth at a scale more dense than before. That’s what makes the three along Broadway worth a visit: As fresh examples within an easy 10-minute walk of each other, they offer a crash course in both the strengths and limitations of such structural nostalgia.

We’ll start at the north end, where the six-story Assembly complex shows how dubious the exercise can be. 

The new building’s 127 apartments rise from behind the L-shaped corner of a former automobile dealership that was built in 1917, when cars were transitioning from fads to essentials in American life. Now there are six stories of generic infill in boilerplate modernism and a skeletal ground-floor frame in white stucco.

The pairing might as well be an accident: The dark modern bulk has nothing in common with its white ground-floor facade. Nor is there the spark of a provocative juxtaposition as with — to use a high-culture example — the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, where Daniel Libeskind’s tilted blue cube careens out from the rugged brick walls that date to 1907.

Adding boredom to banality, what was saved in the design by BDE for developer Lowe is so-so at best. It’s OK, but the details of the cornice and columns are skimpy, tile ornamentation long gone. As for the large openings that showcased the four-wheel ware, they’re now filled by conventional storefront windows. 

Four-word review: What was the point?

Compare this to the scene two blocks to the south, where a taut stack of 107 apartments called Broadstone Axis pop up behind a one-time garage and showroom that dates to 1916.

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• 1. Three large residential projects that have opened since the depths of the pandemic on Broadway between 24th and 30th streets are adorned with outer walls that date back more than a century. Not really historic preservation, what’s on display is an architectural sleight-of-hand known as facadism — or, put another way, using scraps of sculptural history to maintain stage sets on an urban scale.