Rooftop houses cute or crap?

EIGHT stories above Broadway, on the southeast corner of 97th Street, construction is near completion on three little houses that sit atop a turn-of-the-century apartment building.

Tan in color, they have jaunty oval windows and tiny gabled roofs. On a recent morning, workers in hard hats scurried about porches resembling those in a community of hillside tract houses.

Little Boxes, Far From the Hillside

Doron Rice, an architect who was holding a large pair of barbells, peered out the window. “You want my opinion?” he said, “It’s out of context. It’s not the same materials, and it’s not the same scale. It looks like it was dropped here from somewhere in Long Island.”

But Ms. Gavilanes found the penthouses alluring. “I would get a car,” she said, “and put it out in the driveway. And then I’d add a white picket fence, and AstroTurf. Maybe have a golden retriever playing in the yard.”