A Canopy as Social Cathedral, New York

One of the best new works of architecture in New York isn’t a flashy skyscraper or museum but a fairly modest structure, an angular glass canopy over an obscure but busy pedestrian street called North End Way, in the shadow of One World Trade Center no less.

The canopy designed by Preston Scott Cohen covers North End Way, a pedestrian alley in Battery Park City.

The angular glass canopy, commissioned by Goldman Sachs for its headquarters, elevates a gap between two buildings into something almost as inspired as the nave of a Gothic cathedral.

Designed by Preston Scott Cohen, the canopy covers 11,000 square feet of an easement in Battery Park City; effectively, North End Way is a north-south passageway or alley, lined with shops and restaurants. Part of what makes this a notable public space is the quality of construction: the granite sidewalk, the lighting, the stainless-steel and glass storefronts, the street furniture. Goldman Sachs, whose headquarters at 200 West Street backs onto North End Way, owns and developed the arcade, which is zoned for public use. But it’s the canopy, which Goldman also commissioned, that formally elevates what is really just a gap between two buildings into something almost as inspired as the nave of a great Gothic cathedral.

It is composed of three tilting, jagged triangles. Picture giant shards of glass. They filter light gracefully through enameled panes, the light shifting with the passing day. The longest triangle is Mr. Cohen’s big statement: It slices the arcade, which bends toward the south end, along the diagonal. That sweeping diagonal brings together what could otherwise be — precisely because North End Way isn’t straight — a disjointed space. Stretching the length of the easement, the diagonal provides counterpoint to the regular beat of the canopy’s steel ribbing and the modules of 200 West’s facade.

This all may sound complicated, but there’s an elegant simplicity to the three triangles slung from the same long wall. Those glass planes explode outward, upward and downward from the horizontal line where the canopy connects to 200 West. The tension between that steady horizontal and the fun-house effects of the triangles is what gives North End Way its architectural drama.

The arcade belongs to an informal network of pedestrian circulation on the West Side of Manhattan, which includes the riverfront paths and parks, among them the High Line. It’s kind of an inside-out High Line. People walk the length of the High Line to go from one spot to another but also just to be up there and look around; they pause in the arcade too, because the canopy makes it a destination.