No narcissistic, freestanding glass boxes. The empha Sls would be on the totality of the ensemble. though the project has been criticized for its retro aesthetic, as its Adelines seemed to play into the hands of the postmodernists' historical eclecticism, Eckstut insisted the point was rather to offer the sort of comfortable apartmenthouse model that had been proven to work in the past and that would put New Yorkers at ease. The guidelines, he argues, might just as easily have stimulated originality as inhibited it. As it happened, the participating architects chose to produce safe buildings that seemed like knockoffs of the past. "I wasn't really seeking great architecture," Eckstut admitted to me. "I like doing background buildings." The case for the background building, which doesn't show off or demand attention but fits in, in a neighborly fashion, with the rest of the street, springs from the valid notion that great cities are not necessarily the product of sublime architecture, but of certain basic, anonymously repeated building types. Still, a city with nothing but background buildings would be sad, missing out on a chance to shine. The final guideline the BPC master plan had up its sleeve was that no one architect could impose his vision on the whole; each would get only one building to design, thereby ensuring a partitextured diversity that would suggest, albeit in speededup form, the incremental way New York streets had traditionally gotten built. The state legislature approved the master plan. It was familiar, people could picture it, and at the same time it was a very sophisticated urban design-architectproof, in a sense. Even an ugly building would function adequately as part of the overall pattern. One of the side effects of Battery Park City was the momentary ascension of the oncelowly urban designer over the architect. A new star was born. Shortly after, a collision of egos led to the Cooper, Eckstut design firm splitting up, and in the "divorce settlement," Cooper was given the northern sector of Battery Park City to oversee, and Eckstut the southern, residential end. More than twenty years later, with most of that residential complex built, it is striking to see how much of Cooper, Eckstut's guidelines have been translated into reality without significant dilution. For instance, the buildings closest to the water had been drawn in at a lower scale, to avoid blocking out the sunlight of the buildings behind them, and so they stand today. Sunlight and river views-some of the most spectacular in the city-have been maximized for each structure. The goal of having a van f building types, fivestory townhouses and thirtystory apartment buildings dovetail smoothly, has been realized without fuss. Rector Place, the ensemble of grand apartment buildings around a civilized park rectangle, works, up to a point.