Plus: 1 Seaport, a.k.a. 161 Maiden Lane—a six-hundred-and-seventy-foot, half-built luxury condo skyscraper in lower Manhattan—has been tilted at least three inches to the north since 2018.

When the colorful former fashion retailer Irvine Sellar sought to develop a skyscraper near London Bridge in 1999, the backlash was intense. His critics were obsessed with, among other things ...