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"The result is a pitiful compendium of watered-down mannerisms that are supposed to maintain the integrity of the avenue," she wrote of a building on Fifth Avenue, "but speak more clearly of the inflation of costs and the impoverishment of crafts in our time."

"It does not help," she continued of a building nearby, "that the moldings look like sliced-off Tootsie Rolls."

These two descriptions came from the same article, "The 'Pathetic Fallacy,' or Wishful Thinking at Work," published in The Times in February 1979. In it, Ms. Huxtable appraised two buildings on Fifth Avenue that were new at the time, 800 Fifth Avenue and 1001 Fifth Avenue, and she found them both to be pretty dreadful.

Both towered above their older, more dignified neighbors, while making unconvincing references to prewar materials and details, Ms. Huxtable said, like a smarmy tip of the hat. Thirty years later, it appears that both buildings have aged much as her criticism suggested they would. They might be moneymakers, but they are still, it is generally agreed, awful to look at.

"You can see why she was so upset," Jorge Otero-Pailos, an associate professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, said of 800 Fifth Avenue. "All you have to do is look at the building."

Take 1001 Fifth Avenue — a 23-story building with a facade designed by Johnson/Burgee, firm of the famed architect Philip Johnson — which stands opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Solid lines of black bay windows stretch along its length, dark gashes slicing through its limestone facade. (It is on this facade that Ms. Huxtable's Tootsie Roll moldings reside.)

Perhaps the most unusual element is at the top, where the limestone facade extends beyond the roof for an additional story or so, just a lonely slab visibly propped up from behind, which lends it the look of a budget movie set, or perhaps a toupee.

"This sort of thing does not age well," said Peter Pennoyer, of Peter Pennoyer Architects.

Apparently, buyers agree. Compared with most of the universe, the prices found at 1001 Fifth Avenue are frighteningly expensive. But compared with its Fifth Avenue neighbors, mostly prewar co-ops on one of the most extravagant stretches of the city, 1001 Fifth has not appreciated especially well.

According to Jonathan Miller, president of the Miller Samuel appraisal firm, the average sale price last year for a one-bedroom apartment on Fifth Avenue between 77th and 86th Streets was $3.56 million, while the average three-bedroom sold for $6.375 million.

But in December, a three-bedroom apartment on the 16th floor of 1001 Fifth Avenue, which came with Central Park views, was taken off the market after languishing for a year at sale prices hovering around $4 million. The last sale in the building, according to the Web site StreetEasy, was a three-bedroom on the 22nd floor that sold for $4.5 million in 2011.

"The prices are less, and the sales are much, much more difficult there," said Kathryn Steinberg, a managing director at Brown Harris Stevens, comparing 1001 with its neighbors. "It's not a coveted building."

The views, however, can be spectacular, and even Ms. Huxtable had some more positive things to say about the entrance. And the infrequency with which apartments come up for sale can be a sign that people do not want to leave a building.

"I have amazing views of the West Side, the park and the reservoir," said Anne Camuto, a 19th-floor resident who bought an apartment at 1001 Fifth Avenue when the building was brand new. But the interior architecture of the building, however, she described as "pretty cheap."

That said, Ms. Camuto loves her apartment, and she likes the facade well enough, greatly preferring it to the brick buildings that are its contemporaries, she said. Though she isn't entirely sure about the top.

"There's no reason architecturally for there to be that kind of facade," Ms. Camuto said. The architect, she continued, "was definitely making a statement."

The statement made by 800 Fifth Avenue, designed by Ulrich Franzen & Associates, is even more pronounced. Or, as Ms. Huxtable described the effect: "If there is any achievement here, it is making the bland grotesque."