Can Turning Office Towers Into Apartments Save Downtowns?

One day in December, I went to the financial district and joined Berman in the stark white lobby of 55 Broad Street, a thirty-story former office tower that was built in 1967 by Emery Roth & Sons. Berman has started converting it into five hundred and seventy-one apartments, many of them studios aimed at professionals just out of college. Scaffolding surrounded the bottom of the tower, imprisoning a Starbucks by the entrance. Berman dresses to understated effect. He wore a quiet-luxury ensemble—unzipped Brunello Cucinelli vest, Loro Piana sweater, John Lobb shoes—and carried nothing in his hands but his phone.