At this time, the most classical architect in America and perhaps the world is none other than Richard Meier. Surely this arch-Modernist, who doesn’t have a vernacular bone in his body, would never be caught dead fluting a pilaster, dentilating an architrave, rusticating a base, or engaging in any other of those postmodern tricks so dear to a goodly percentage of the profession.

Yet modernism at its best comes closer to classicism at its best than does any slavish re-enactment of the latter, and Mr. Meier’s new building at 165 Charles Street, together with the Perry Street Towers he completed two years ago, just to the north, calls for the sort of formalist analysis usually reserved for comparisons between, say, the Parthenon and the Hephaesteum in Athens. Which is to say that, in structures so closely matched, the slightest difference takes on a critical importance.

The two Perry Street Towers are nearly identical (and for the sake of this discussion, I will treat them as such). Although they are importantly different from 165 Charles Street, a 16-story structure with 31 units, they are so close in style and massing that an unsuspecting viewer might well suppose that the three buildings were intended as a self-contained triad.

I have heard reports, however, that Mr. Meier, who designed only the exterior shells of the Perry Street Towers, was somewhat dissatisfied with elements of their detailing. In interviews, he has lamented the dread imposition of “value engineering” – in other words, cost-cutting measures that invariably cheapen the finished product.

On Charles Street he has taken matters into his own hands. The free flowing interiors are done up in that pale, white minimalism that has become Mr. Meier’s signature style and that graces everything from the living rooms and bedrooms to the Gaggenau stoves and the Zuma bathtubs. The building also boasts climate-controlled wine cellars, a pool and fitness center, and a 35-seat screening room.

As for the exteriors, though they are impressive on Perry Street, they are even better on Charles. Just as the columnar width of the Hephaesteum and the regularity of its triglyphs fall just short of the brittle energy that distinguishes the same elements in the Parthenon, so 165 Charles Street causes us to see, through its slightly finer detailing, something ungainly in its twinned forebears to the north.

The balconies on the two earlier buildings, open to the south and west, created an asymmetry that reflected Mr. Meier’s brief flirtation with Deconstructivism. On Charles Street, however, symmetry is triumphantly restored to the facade – though at the price of glazing and the closing off of the balconies to the west. The result is that 165 Charles Street cultivates an air of consistency throughout, while the two earlier towers seem, within the context of their modernist sobriety, to court variety.

Will the inhabitants be willing to sacrifice openness for the sake of artistic integrity? Probably.

At the same time, the frame-like, superimposed grid that covers most of the riverside facades on Perry Street dissolves on Charles Street into pure curtain wall. Were they not set cheek-by-jowl with the Charles Street tower, we might never realize the comparative thickness, even heaviness, that characterizes the vertical elements of the earlier buildings.

The only emphatic element of the new facade is a grooved delineation that runs down the middle from the summit to the base and boldly asserts the structure’s resurgent symmetry. At the same time, the band of white that crowns the Charles Street penthouse is broader and thinner than the ones on Perry Street, a minute adjustment that greatly enhances the feeling of sheerness and openness in the newer building.

If you have leafed through the real estate pages of late, you may have seen an ad for 165 Charles Street, together with an image of the architect, who recently turned 70, leaning back with an air of curious and daring imbalance. He smiles under his signature white mane – as pale as the curtain walls and I-beams of his most classic structures. The ad reads: “Pure Richard Meier Privileges.” This is one of the rare instances in New York of residential real estate exploiting the fame of the architect as a marketing device.

Now as everyone in the five boroughs knows, real estate is the silly obsession of New Yorkers of every stripe, especially when it comes to trophy buildings like these, conspicuous not only for their river views and elegance but also for their commodity value. (And in case anyone cares, the Perry Street Towers already domicile the likes of Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman, as well as other celebrities who, though worthy, don’t come from Australia.)

But there is an interesting difference between the rabid appetite for an apartment in, say, the Dakota, and for one in a Richard Meier tower. In the first instance, you are purchasing a piece of the history of New York. In the second, a piece of the history of architecture itself, of Western culture, is up for sale.

This sort of thing is becoming ever more common in New York. New high-rises designed by Robert Stern, Michael Graves, and Philip Johnson are already up, while others by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates and Richard Gluckman are approaching completion. But the real games will begin when Santiago Calatrava’s 90-story modular concatenation at 80 South Street starts to rise up against the skyline. The clamorous drive to get in will be something to see.

Though the spectacle will be as dismaying for those of a philosophic turn as it will be entertaining for everyone else, on balance it is a good thing for Gotham. Even if most projects do not achieve the pyrotechnics of Mr. Calatrava or the Apollonian perfection of Richard Meier, there is a sense that Manhattan, for the first time in almost 100 years, is beginning to build residential towers of real distinction.