The Copper

The Copper is two copper-clad towers at 626 First Avenue — the west tower rising 48 stories, the east tower 41 — designed inside and out by SHoP Architects and joined, 300 feet above the street, by a three-story skybridge. It is the first structure of its kind built in New York in more than eighty years, and it is not a decoration. It is an amenity floor, holding a 75-foot indoor lap pool, a hot tub, a double-height fitness center with a climbing wall, and a residents’ lounge and bar looking out over the East River and the Empire State Building.