The bidding war for the dirtiest hotel in America is about to come to an end with the winning bid expected to be around US$180 million. "It's the dirtiest, and best located hotel in New York City," Lawrence Wolfe, who has been handling the sale for the seller, told. "It was under-managed and neglected." The 600-room Hotel Carter, just off New York's Times Square on West 43rd Street, was a three-time "winner" of Tripadvisor's dirtiest hotel in America survey. Recent guests said the problems are far from fixed. "The location's great, but there's no hot water in the shower, " one guest exiting the hotel told CNBC. Her room rate? Just over US$ 200 for the night, she said. First opened in the 1930s as the Hotel Dixie, the Carter recently has been tied up as the estate of the former owner is settled. In recent years it has been in the news for code violations as well as a homicide. The sale, expected in the US$ 180 million range, will be followed by a full-gut renovation that will cost US$ 100 million to US$ 125 million, Wolfe said. It hasn't yet been determined if the hotel will close during renovations or if it will undergo construction in phases. When it reopens, it will remain an independent hotel, he said.

The first skyscraper at lower Manhattan's World Trade Center opened with two days of ceremonies to mark the renewal of the area after its destruction by terrorists in September 11, 2001. The 72-story 4 World Trade Center with total area 214 thousand square meters is 298 meters high. Fumihiko Maki, the tower's Pritzker Prize-winning architect began towers construction in 2006. Project developer Silverstein Properties invested about US$ 1.67 billion in this project. Today the only tenants 4 World Trade tower are two government agencies that committed to the project in 2006 to help jump-start rebuilding at Ground Zero. The new complex of 7 skyscrapers is situated on the area where Twin Towers were destroyed. The total area of new complex named "World Trade Center", which includes 6 towers, a museum and a memorial complex, opened in September 2011, is 6.5 hectares. "World Trade Center 7" was built as early as 2006, but it is outside of so called "Ground Zero". The central tower of this complex is "One World Trade Center", which main construction was already finished and opening ceremony will be held in 2014.

Eero Saarinen's famous JFK terminal at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York is a masterpiece of contemporary architecture, but as a flight terminal, the building has fallen a bit behind the times. Largely unoccupied since 2001, the iconic building has left many wondering what would become of it. Recently, hotelier Andre Balazs announced that he would be turning the 1960s terminal into a hotel and changing the name from the TWA Flight Center to the Standard, Flight Center. The new hotel would include a conference center, meeting facilities, retail space, a spa and a flight museum to honor the building's heritage and will become a part of the Standard Hotel family. Balazs is still waiting for final approval from Port Authority, who contacted him about the opportunity, and there is no timeline in place as of right now. "The Port Authority is committed to preserving the essence of (Saarinen's) iconic design and to continuing to work with (Balazs Properties) on a plan to transform the historic TWA Flight Center into a one-of-a-kind hotel and conference center in the heart of JFK's central terminal area," said Pat Foye. It will be exciting to see what becomes of the historic space.

Here's the skinny on the city's narrowest town house: It just sold for a fat US$ 3.25 million. The historic, three-story home at 75 1/2 Bedford St. - near Sixth Avenue and Houston Street - weighs in at an underfed 92 square meters. A tape measure would only stretch to a cinched-in 2.54 meters wide in the widest rooms - narrow enough for the lankiest Knick to nearly touch two side walls at once. It's where Edna St. Vincent Millay penned her Pulitzer Prize-winning "Ballad of the Harp-Weaver," in 1923-24. It's Millay who famously coined the phrase, "My candle burns at both ends," suggesting that the poet would have had to orient any such candle longitudinally while working long hours at the address. Other celebrities who have traipsed - carefully - through the gaunt flat are actor Cary Grant, and, before him, John Barrymore. Anthropologist Margaret Meade also lived there, as did popular children's-book writer Ann McGovern, author of "Stone Soup." After moving out, McGovern wrote "Mr. Skinner's Skinny House," a picture book about a man who moves into the thinnest house in the city and then struggles to find a roommate. "For seven years, I lived in the narrowest house in New York. It was only eight and a half feet wide!" McGovern said in a Q-and-A on her Web site, annmcgovern.com. "It's known as the Edna St. Vincent Millay House." "Once I saw a man who was standing in front of the house with arms outstretched," she said. "'Hey,' he said. 'I'm as big as a house,' and he was." Living in her "doll house," as she called it, McGovern said she'd begun noodling about the sorts of characters who could never live in a house so narrow, including an actor who plays Pinocchio - one of the characters in "Mr. Skinner's Skinny House". The latest buyer is George Gund, according to city property records. Although thin, the home's worth has expanded over the years. It was purchased in 1994 for US$ 270 thousnad by architectural preservationist Christopher Dubs. He sold the home in 2000 to Steven Balsamo for a cool US$1.6 million. Then, three years ago, the home sold for US$2.175 million through Corcoran broker Alex Nicholas. That buyer never moved in, instead sinking more money into the place by renovating it top to bottom - the kitchen trapdoor, leading to the basement "recreation room," has been retained. Built in 1873, the three-bedroom home also features floor-to-ceiling French doors opening to a tree-shaded. The inside is more light and airy than its width would suggest thanks to a third-floor skylight and oversized windows. The gussying up allowed it to rent for a healthy US$ 14 thousand a month. It then went back on the market at an overly optimistic US$ 4.3 million. By last year, the asking price had whittled away to US$ 3.495. The thinnest house in the world built between two tower blocks in Warsaw, Poland. The house measures 1.2 meters at its widest point and 71 centimeters at its narrowest. The building has been designed by Jakub Szczesny.

One World Trade Center in New York has become the world's third-tallest building after topping out at a height of 541 meters. A 124-meter steel spire was installed on May 10, pushing the skyscraper's height to 1776 feet - a number commemorating the year of America's independence. One World Trade Center is now the tallest structure in the USA and the Western Hemisphere, although there is debate over whether the spire is actually a removable antenna - a vital distinction in measuring buildings. Built at a cost of US$ 3.9 billion, the tower also has the distinction of being the most expensive office building in the world. Previously known as the Freedom Tower, the building is located in the northwest corner of the site where the former World Trade Center towers were destroyed in the 11 September 2001 attacks. On March 30, 2009, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey confirmed that the building will be known by its legal name, One World Trade Center, rather than the colloquial name, Freedom Tower. Originally designed by Daniel Libeskind - the architect behind the master plan for the entire Ground Zero site - the tower underwent numerous revisions before US firm SOM was brought in to oversee its design. Following the destruction of the original World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, there was much debate regarding the future of the World Trade Center site. Proposals began almost immediately, and by 2003, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation organized a competition to determine how to use the site. Public rejection of the first round of designs, the "Preliminary Design Concepts," led to a second, more open competition in December 2002, in which a design by Daniel Libeskind was selected. A final design for the One World Trade Center was formally unveiled on June 28, 2005. On April 26, 2006, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey approved a conceptual framework that enabled foundation construction to begin, and a formal agreement was drafted on the following day. Although the symbolic cornerstone of One World Trade Center was laid in a ceremony on July 4, 2004, tower's construction began in May 2006 with a formal ceremony that took place when the first construction team arrived. The building's topping out occurred on August 31, 2012, and was completed on May 2, 2013. The tower will officially open when the installation of podium glass and interior construction are completed in late 2013 or early 2014. When finally completed, it will offer 241 thousand square meters of commercial office space as well as observation decks, TV broadcasting facilities and restaurants.