Street wall

The street wall is the wall or portion of a building that faces the street. In contextual districts it is a regulated object: rules prescribe where it must stand relative to the street line and how high it must rise — commonly with a minimum as well as a maximum — before any portion of the building may step back. The aligned, continuous frontages of New York's avenues are street-wall regulation made visible: separate owners complying with the same instructions.

Street-wall rules are the front line of the contextual philosophy, which treats the street as a room whose walls deserve consistency. Tower-on-a-base regimes borrow the device, requiring a conforming base beneath towers so the pedestrian's streetscape survives the skyline's ambitions.