Urban Review in New York City
I arrived in NYC on Wednesday morning. This, my second visit to the “Big Apple”, is much different than my first. October 2001 was such an odd time in NYC with body recovery still on-going at the WTC site.
In the two days I’ve been here I have managed to take over 800 pictures. Being cheap I took the city bus from Laguardia airport through Harlem along 125th Street. Wow, Harlem has some great architect and the streets were full of people.
I took the subway from 116th and Broadway to Columbus Circle on the edge of Central Park. Having just seen the CBS story on 2 Columbus Circle (pictured, right) I had to see the fuss for myself. I’ve said before that I am an urbanist, not a preservationist. This is yet another example. This building is terrible in the urban environment. It is not welcoming at all. The new owners want to either raze or reskin the building. Sure it was designed by noted architect Edward Durrell Stone. Must we save failures simply because it’s architect was famous?
So what are my other thoughts? The subway system is great. The grid is very walkable although the sidewalk experience varies substantially depending upon the adjacent building. The new MOMA is an architectural masterpiece but the sidewalk experience on the 54th Street side is dismal. The main entrance on 53rd Street is much more interesting.
The free Staten Island Ferry gives you great views of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Highly recommended if you are in NYC. I’m here with one of my best friends that lives in Seattle. We are staying with friends of mine on Staten Island in their lovely 19th Century 3-story victorian home.
Yesterday I got to take in the Brooklyn Bridge and several Brooklyn neighborhoods, including the spectacular Brooklyn Heights. St. Louis should be so lucky as to be as urban as Brooklyn. We also walked around the East Village and the ‘projects’ in Alphabet City (so named because of the lettered streets). While the projects we walked through were poorly designed from an urban perspective they were clean and well maintained.
One of the best experiences was taking a pedicab from Central Park to the ultimate in excess — Trump Tower. The young Parisian peddled us through major traffic with ease. At one point a taxi was so close I could have reached over the side and touched it. I sensed the taxi and pedicab drivers have a mutual respect for each other.
Today it is onto Hell’s Kitchen, Chelsea, Tribeca and SoHo. We are spending the night in Manhattan this evening so it should be fun staying out late (if my feet will hold up). I hope to explore some more of the boroughs between now and Sunday, the Bronx in particular.
NYC has its banal blocks but it has so much visual excitement. I’ll take the eclectic mix of the East Village over the more polished areas any day. Urban life is simply more interesting when it is not so sterile and predicable.
– Steve
Uh oh…
Sounds like another St. Louisan is about to be tempted to become another ex-St. Louisan…
RB
Why no mention of the Century Building?
Don’t you find those Midtown Manhattan blocks ridiculously long? I found them to be intolerably long, making those long blocks west of Grand in St. Louis seem almost good.
As for Two Columbus Circle, I love it as a document of sculptural modernism and as an exercise in cast concrete design. I don’t think that I _walked_ around it while in New York — and that’s the only real measure of the urban. So I’ll hold judgment and trust yours for now.
At any rate, everyone here knows that a better work of Stone’s is even closer to demolition than Two Columbus Circle — with less than half the moaning from national preservation groups.
As Steve’s travel mate, I stood at the foot of 2 Columbus Circle with him and couldn’t believe that there is such a fuss to save this building. It is truly dismal, unforgiving to the pedestrian scale, and serves only as an unusable “historic albatross” to an otherwise vivacious urban area. I am both an urbanist AND a preservationist; and I feel there is some great ’50’s and ’60’s architecture out there that is very much worth saving; but I don’t feel that this building is in that category. This is one of those buildings which looks interesting in photos, and might be of some academic interest to some, but it does not work in its actual urban context and should be replaced by something that beter serves its urban environment.
This is good to know. Not only is Steven Patterson the arbiter of good taste and the value determinist of modern architecture, so is Richard Kenney. Do you two charge to make these decisions for various municipalities? Should we check with you two on each demo decision? Demo on Century, bad. Demo on prefab home in Dogtown, bad. Demo on 2 Columbus Circle, good. Thanks for enlightening us, the plebes!
Personally, I don’t care if they keep 2 Columbus or not. I don’t like it, but New York is the same with it or without it. I don’t think losing 2 Columbus would tear at the fabric of its neighborhood like losing the Century Building did to downtown St. Louis. Keeping 2 Columbus won’t enhance its neighborhood in the way that saving and renovating the Century Building would have. I have a feeling that if they replace 2 Columbus, they will building something that will enhance its neighborhood far more than the new Century garage will enhance downtown STL. Just my 2cents – from another plebe.
Response to “Heh”: Visit the buildings, instead of just viewing photos (or seeing a Sunday morning special on TV). I’ve visited the Century Building, and now I’ve visited the Columbus Circle Building. The difference in theory? Common sense. The 2 Columbus Circle Building doesn’t work in its environment and never really did. The Century Building DID work in its environment for many decades until its demise, and could have worked again if it hadn’t been demolished. The Century Building interacted with its urban environment, instead of walling it off and ignoring it like the 2 Columbus Circle Building does.
I’m a New Yorker, a preservationist and an urbanite who watched the ex-Huntington Hartford Museum go up at 2 Columbus Circle and visited its galleries once they were complete.
The galleries were pretty good, as I recall; but the building is a joke that stopped being funny about 40 years ago.
The demolition of the Century is a bona fide loss; the demolition of 2 Columbus Circle (the sooner the better) is an opportunity.
Ah, good to know. Steve, Richard and Dan are now the arbiters of good taste when it comes to demolition. The list grows. By way of hypothetical: if an NYC preservation group feels that this building is worthy of saving, would you oppose their efforts? If you so you are freaking (and I’d like to use another word) hypocrites.
[REPLY – I’m hardly a hypocrite. I’ve stated numerous times I am not a preservationist but an urbanist. I argue in favor of saving some buildings in the name of urbanism. In the case of 2 Columbus Square the current building is not going to be replaced with a 1-story McDonald’s with drive through. Most likely the building will be retained just reskinned. The size is fine and the shape matches the lot exactly. The real issue is how does it relate to the community.
Clearly you are not able to distinquish between a beautiful building that adds to an urban environment and a tragic building like a parking garage or nearly windowless box. – SLP]
Wow, I’m a member of an elite club! “The Arbiters of Good Taste in America”. NEAT! And all it took was having my own opinion about something!
There’s quite a few more arbitors of good taste out there. Everyone I know was oppossed to the Century demolition, but everyone I have shown a pic of this building to does not care for it in it’s current form. So it’s not just Steve, Rich, Dan, etc., it’s most people with a good sense of style and place.
[REPLY – Thanks Matt but I liked being singled out as special… -SLP]