Are These NYC's 10 Great Buildings to See?

Buildings, clockwise from upper left corner: Prada Store Soho, American Museum of Natural History's Rose Center, Hearst Building, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Morgan Library expansion, Apple Store Soho, Conde Nast Building, and Seagram Building; in the center, Grand Central Terminal interior and the Chrysler Building

The Chrysler Building. The Seagram Building. The Apple Store Soho? The Center for Architecture's executive director Rick Bell made a list of 10 great buildings to see in New York City (presumably for tourists) and spoke to the AP about it. The list spans two boroughs, a classic skyscraper, a beloved transportation hub, and retail stores, and some landmarks are deliberately left off (like the Empire State Building which everyone knows about):

• Conde Nast Building, for its "environmentally correct" design by Fox & Fowle.
• Brooklyn Museum, for the modern entry pavilion and plaza, designed by James Polshek, against its Beaux Arts facade; the AP writes the addition makes makes the museum "inviting and accessible, a suitable centerpiece for Brooklyn's burgeoning hipster art scene."
• Prada New York in Soho, designed by Rem Koolhaas, for the way it "displays the merchandise, it doesn't sell it."
• Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, designed by James Polshek.

• Apple Store Soho, designed by Ronnette Riley and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, with Apple's creative team, for putting the high-teching gadgeteria in an old post office.
• Grand Central Terminal, designed by Reed & Stern and Warren & Wetmore and restored by Beyer, Blinder & Belle.
• Morgan Library Expansion, designed by Renzo Piano, for his modern addition linked to the 1906 mansion-turned-library.
• Chrysler Building, designed by William Van Alen. "Bell thinks it should be" as well known as the Empire State Building.
• Hearst Tower, designed by Sir Norman Foster, for the "diagonal gridwork and see-through glass panels, with no vertical supporting columns."
• Seagram Building, deigned by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson (design architects) and Kahn & Jacobs (associate architects); Bell says, "It was this building that transformed our skyline.