When architects come up with plans for new buildings, we hardly believe that part of their plan is to make people say, “wow, that is the ugliest building I’ve ever seen.” However, sometimes it’s an inevitable fact that can’t be avoided.
And alas, with each “ugly” building erected in a city, locals and tourists are the ones who have to pay the price. (Hence why many cities rely on the use of billboards to cover up urban decay and otherwise architectural eyesores).
Last year, in January 2023, Buildworld decided they wanted to figure out exactly which buildings around the world are the ugliest. And so they did some digging on Twitter to find out, judged by trustworthy Twitter users, which buildings around the world are, at the end of the day, just downright ugly.
After creating a long list of buildings around the world that are often said to be ugly, Buildworld sought out all the tweets that commented on the building’s appearance in a negative way, eventually coming up with a percentage of tweets that were negative about each building’s design.
And, judging by the 19.93% of negative tweets about this particular building, NYC’s Verizon building is the third ugliest building in the U.S.
Not to be confused with the Verizon Building on West Street, the Verizon on Pearl Street has long been a ‘doer-upper’ without ever becoming an acceptable sight for New York’s eyes. When an investment firm bought the much-maligned 1975 telephone exchange in 2007, a reporter told the CEO: “Mr Pariser, you have a challenge cut out for you — turning a GE dishwasher into an office building.” The firm failed to meet the challenge and re-sold it for a fraction of its intended price.
As for the ugliest building in the U.S., that title was given to Washington D.C.’s J. Edgar Hoover Building with 37.84% negative tweets (We wonder how our friends over in D.C. feel about that!)
Boston City Hall in Boston came in second, with 25.03% negative tweets (Which means we’ll have to check in with our Boston friends as well to see how they feel!)
The full ranking can be found below:
Thankfully, we have a ton of other buildings around the city that are pretty damn gorgeous, like these.
And, don’t forget two of the most beautiful streets in the world are here in NYC as well!