The Whitney, Downtown’s Newest Cool Kid

With their original plans of a towering uptown expansion bitterly (if unsuccesfully) opposed by Upper East Side preservationists, the Whitney Museum (most recently home to a Buckminster Fuller exhibition) instead is setting its sights downtown -- specifically at Washington and Gansevoort Streets in the Meatpacking District. To raise $60 million towards the Renzo Piano-designed satellite, the museum is reportedly exploring the possibility of selling off a quintet of townhouses near 74th and 75th Streets. A museum spokesman adds that any potential revenue from the sale would not exclusively fund the off-site annex, but "will contribute toward a much larger fundraising effort that is already underway." The site reassignment reduces the cost of expansion dramatically. The satellite, like much of the architecture in the neighborhood, will be low-rise but sprawling at about 50,000 square feet of gallery space.