The building. (Courtesy openbuildings.com)

The Wall Street Journal reports that Sperone Westwater has joined a fight to stop the construction of a hotel just behind its Norman Foster-designed building on the Bowery.

The 25-story hotel would rob the gallery of its sky view out the back.

From the story:

The gallery has hired Albert Butzel, an environmental lawyer who led the legal fight to stop the huge Westway highway project in the 1980s.

...

[Gallery co-owner Angela Westwater] said the proposed structure as now planned would cast shadows across the Sara D. Roosevelt Park on Chrystie Street and tower over the famous stacked boxes of the New Museum that opened half a block away in 2007. The back of the building would end about 30 feet away from the floor-to-ceiling picture windows at the rear of the gallery.

"This neighborhood has become a kind of destination for architectural distinction," she said. "The hotel is out of context with the Lower East Side."