The New York Times Book of New York

by The New York Times

New York has official landmarks, designated by a city commission established in the 1960’s after the old Pennsylvania Station was demolished—a Gilded Age marvel, preservationists said, even if it had grown shabby since World War II. Now New York has more than 400 buildings with landmark status and more than 25 neighborhoods that have been named “historic districts,” with restrictions on changes inside and out. New Yorkers worried not only about losing their old buildings, they worried about how their new buildings would change the skyline. The Time Warner Center was scaled down after preservationists including Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis complained that its shadow would darken Central Park.

  Central Park is 870 acres of grass and ball fields and curving paths and unobtrusive stone bridges, a giant green rectangular carpet in the middle of Manhattan that was laid out before there were neighborhoods to surround it. And it’s just one park—the city has more than 1,700 in all, from “vest-pocket” parks sandwiched between midtown office buildings to parks that cover thousands of acres. The architects behind Central Park also designed Prospect Park and Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn and Morningside Park in Manhattan. The century-old New York Public Library backs up to Bryant Park, where you can lounge through your lunch hour on a warm day.

  In the 1970’s, the quarter-mile-high towers of the World Trade Center soared over Lower Manhattan. Some critics groused that they were unbearably plain-looking. The architectural guidebook writer Francis Morrone said the best thing about them was was the view from the top, “the only high vantage points in New York from which the World Trade Center itself is not visible.” But the twin towers captivated tourists and stunt men, who provided the romance and drama the architects had left out. The mountain climber George Willig clawed his way up one tower; the tightrope walker Philippe Petit danced from one to the other.

  And then, on a bright morning in September 2001, they were gone. They collapsed less than two hours after terrorists took aim with hijacked airliners. From the emptiness at ground zero, the Woolworth Building a few blocks away once again looked tall.

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  A Baker’s Dozen of Masterpieces

  By PAUL GOLDBERGER | July 31, 1987

  The Woolworth building, built in 1913, is one of the oldest skyscrapers in the city.

  THE FIRST TEMPTATION FOR THE ARCHITECture buff in New York City is to track down the latest things, be they good or bad: the office towers and apartment blocks of Battery Park City, for example, or the glitzy office buildings of the East 50’s. But as the new buildings often physically overwhelm the old, a fixation on the most au courant architecture can overshadow the classic structures of the city, those works of architecture that, though they be neither the biggest nor the newest, remain the greatest, the works that transform our vision of what architecture and the city can be.

  A baker’s dozen of such structures follows. It is a particular irony that the two greatest works of architecture in New York are not buildings at all—Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge. The park came first, an esthetic, engineering and social achievement of monumental proportions.

  And if the bridge is not so completely a symbol of New York as the Eiffel Tower is of Paris, it deserves to be. The Gothic towers, once the tallest thing on the skyline, are true gateways, harking back to 19th-century New York; the soaring roadway carries the city into the present, and beckons it onward still.

  Here are the others of this baker’s dozen of great New York structures:

  HAUGHWOUT BUILDING, 488 Broadway, at Broome Street.

  DAKOTA, Central Park West and 72nd Street.

  UNIVERSITY CLUB, One West 54th Street, at Fifth Avenue.

  WOOLWORTH BUILDING, 233 Broadway, between Park Place and Barclay Street.

  GRAND CENTRAL TERMINAL, 42nd Street at Park Avenue.

  CHRYSLER BUILDING, 405 Lexington Avenue, at 42nd Street.

  ROCKEFELLER CENTER, Fifth and Avenue of the Americas, from West 48th to West 51st Streets.

  SEAGRAM BUILDING, 375 Park Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets.

  GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM, 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street.

  FORD FOUNDATION, 320 East 43rd Street, between First and Second Avenues.

  BATTERY PARK CITY, Battery Place, Chambers Street and outward from West Street.

  Hey, New York, Tear Down These Walls

  By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF | September 28, 2008

  EVEN THE MOST MAJESTIC CITIES ARE pockmarked with horrors. There are countless dreadful buildings in New York; only a few (thankfully) have a traumatic effect on the city. So here’s what I propose. Why not refocus our energies on knocking down the structures that not only fail to bring us joy, but actually bring us down?

  I toyed with mentioning the AT&T Building (now the Sony Building) on my list of buildings that should be removed. I’ve disliked it since 1984, when it appeared (in miniature) cradled in the arms of its architect, Philip Johnson, on the cover of Time magazine. Its farcical Chippendale top was an instant hit, and a generation of architects grew up believing that any tower, no matter how cheap and badly designed, could be defended if you added a pretty fillip to the roof. Yet Johnson’s building also represents a turning point in architectural history. And I eventually came to the conclusion that destroying it would be cultural censorship.

  So my list will not include affronts that are merely aesthetic. Tearing down the following buildings would make room for the spirit to breathe again and open up new imaginative possibilities:

  MADISON SQUARE GARDEN AND PENNSYLVANIA STATION—The demolition of McKim, Mead & White’s monumental Pennsylvania Station in 1964 remains one of the greatest crimes in American architectural history. What replaced it is one of the city’s most dehumanizing spaces.

  TRUMP PLACE—You may find his Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue gaudy, but doesn’t its cockiness makes you grin? So how to explain Trump Place, a cheap, miserable residential complex on the Upper West Side that is as glamorous as a toll plaza.

  JACOB K. JAVITS CONVENTION CENTER—The black glass exterior gives it the air of a gigantic mausoleum.

  ANNENBERG BUILDING, MOUNT SINAI MEDICAL CENTER—This towering structure, clad in rusted Cor-Ten steel, looks like either a military fortress or the headquarters of a sinister spy agency. But what’s more disturbing is the tower’s savage effect on its surroundings.

  There are countless dreadful buildings in New York; only a few (thankfully) have a traumatic effect on the city.

  375 PEARL STREET—The New York Telephone Company (now Verizon) tower at 375 Pearl Street is a unique kind of horror. Seen from the Brooklyn Bridge, it blots out one of the world’s greatest urban vistas, and each time I cross the East River, I want to throw my cell phone at it.

  ASTOR PLACE—Gwathmey Siegel’s luxury residential tower makes obvious reference to one of the masterpieces of early Modernism, Mies van der Rohe’s unbuilt 1922 Glass Skyscraper project. His vision was slender and refined. Gwathmey’s tower is squat and clumsy.

  2 COLUMBUS CIRCLE—Edward Durell Stone’s building, which opened as the Gallery of Modern Art in 1964, incited one of the most bitter preservation battles in recent memory. But the cowardly New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission never rendered a verdict. If the city had chosen to preserve it, a historical landmark would still be intact. If the building had been torn down, a talented architect might have had the opportunity to create a new masterpiece. Instead we get the kind of wishy-washy design solution that is apt to please no one.

  FAMOUS BUILDINGS

  New Peaks in Tall Manhattan’s Range

  By H. I. BROCK | February 9, 1930

  THE TOWER OF BABEL IS STILL A-BUILDING in spite of the confusion of tongues and the diffusion of scientific information to the effect that the original aspiration of tower builders—setting up a scaling ladder to high heaven—is an unrealizable dream. But at the moment our skyline has two screeching high notes, each an office building.

  The Chrysler Building, stabbing up out of the tall thicket of new architecture that hedges about the Gra
nd Central Station, is almost matched by the Bank of the Manhattan Company’s bid for first skyscraping honors, shooting out of the heart of the downtown acropolis of finance and giving that group a higher ascent than the Woolworth tower.

  The Chrysler Building outdoes even the Eiffel Tower and thus robs Paris of world primacy in man-made structures upward bound. The Bank of the Manhattan Company’s entry, which falls short by 105 feet (according to the official figures), must still yield place to France’s entry, but overtops everything else of the sort in the world—except the Chrysler Building. That veteran local recordholder, the Woolworth tower, is left all of 133 feet below.

  Thus the old and the new combine to make and remake New York in its latest image, which is a city humped like a camel. The city’s two humps are below Central Park and these two buildings are the sharp points on the humps. Very sharp points they are. You can see both of them with great effect from the Jersey side of the Hudson on a clear day. Or—again on a clear day—you can see both humps from the Queensboro Bridge. And a grand sweep it is—the camel being viewed off the port quarter aft, as it were. If you wish to carry out the simile and remember that you are speaking of a ship of the desert the two tallest towers may do duty as horns of the saddle.

  Which Is The Mightiest Of the High?

  By DAVID W. DUNLAP | September 1, 2005

  HAPPY 75TH BIRTHDAY, CHRYSLER BUILDING. New Yorkers in the know think you’re the best.

  One hundred architects, brokers, builders, critics, developers, engineers, historians, lawyers, officials, owners, planners and scholars were asked this summer by the Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan to choose their 10 favorites among 25 existing towers, from the Park Row Building (1899) to the Time Warner Center (2004).

  Ninety of them named William Van Alen’s Chrysler Building of 1930, which, despite or perhaps because of its ebullient eccentricity, may come as close as any to expressing New York’s cloud-piercing ambitions.

  The surprising runner-up was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building of 1958, which is the antithesis of Chrysler: cool, tranquil, rectangular and restrained. What they have in common is that both express the spirit of their times, Chrysler playing a jazz-age flapper to Seagram’s man in the gray flannel suit.

  “These are irreconcilable choices if you try to evaluate them by one single system,” said Carol Willis, the director of the Skyscraper Museum. Rather, she said, the voting showed that people judge some skyscrapers emotionally, others rationally.

  Ms. Willis’s own favorite, the Empire State Building, tied with Lever House, behind the Flatiron and Woolworth Buildings. The most recently built of the Top 10 was Eero Saarinen’s CBS Building of 1964.

  How It Sparkled in the Skyline

  By ELAINE LOUIE | May 26, 2005

  EVEN IF THEY WALK PAST IT EVERY DAY, MOST people know the Chrysler Building as a symbol on the skyline, a cocktail shaker of style. But for these artists and critics, it’s a personal landmark. Here’s how it affected them.

  SARAH JESSICA PARKER, Actress When my husband and I were courting, we used to walk everywhere, from Battery Park to the Chrysler Building, and we went into the lobby, quite late at night, many, many times—summer nights and cold nights. The Empire State Building symbolized what I think we wanted in coming to New York: to be New Yorkers and to thrive in the city. The Chrysler Building was this magnificent piece of art.

  ROBERT A. M. STERN, Architect Dean of the Yale School of Architecture; an author of a book series that began with “New York 1900” and will include “New York 2000,” to be published next year.

  The Chrysler Building caught the exuberance and the spirit of the 1920’s in a way that no other building in the world has. Chrysler built it, and he had the showrooms in it, he embellished the outside with symbols that were explicit with his hubcaps, his radiator hood ornaments. When Chrysler moved out, Texaco moved in. But they couldn’t change the name of the building to Texaco. It’s Chrysler inside and out.

  RON CHERNOW, Author Wrote “Alexander Hamilton” (Penguin Press, 2004) and “Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller Sr.” (Random House, 1998).

  What’s fascinating and consistent about the Empire State Building, the Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building is that they were conceived during the giddiest part of the 1920’s boom and were completed during the bust, and they embody the dizzying hopes of the 1920’s and reflect the dismal reality of the 1930’s, the Depression and the collapse of the Manhattan real estate market.

  CARL SPIELVOGEL Chairman, Carl Spielvogel Enterprises, a global investment manager; former chairman, Backer Spielvogel Bates Worldwide, which rented Floors 12 to 24 from 1983 to 1995.

  There was never a day when I walked into the building that I didn’t have what I call a rush. There was a great feeling getting into an elevator. They’re patterned wood and metal.

  DOROTHY TWINING GLOBUS Curator of exhibitions, Museum of Arts and Design.

  This was 1969. My father had an office in the Chrysler Building. He was undercover with the C.I.A. I came up from Swarthmore one day to meet him for dinner. I was supposed to meet him at the Chrysler Building. I knew it was on 42nd Street, but I couldn’t find it, because I only knew it from the skyline. I’d never seen the bottom.

  The Empire State Building Wins The Race to the Top

  May 2, 1931

  COMPLETION OF THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDing marks the attainment of a new record in building height which is likely to stand for many years, in the opinion of leading builders and real estate men.

  Opening of the new structure, which rises 1,250 feet above Fifth Avenue, has brought to an end, for the time being at least, a friendly contest for skyscraper honors, which during the last two years has resulted in a frequent revision of height records.

  For 17 years the Woolworth Building, with its 60 stories towering 792 feet above lower Broadway, held the distinction of being the tallest Manhattan structure.

  But early last year, almost simultaneously, the giant steel skeletons of the Chrysler Building and of the Bank of the Manhattan Company at 40 Wall Street were lifted skyward. From original plans it had appeared that the bank edifice would look down upon every other building, but a revision in the Chrysler design providing for a needle spire which reached up to 1,046 feet gave the palm for a while to the automotive manufacturer’s project.

  The record was not destined to hold for long, however. Even then the framework of the Empire State Building was being pushed upward with a new height as its goal, 1,050 feet. The bare margin of four feet was stretched to 204 feet when ex-Governor Alfred E. Smith announced that a 200-foot dirigible-mooring mast would cap his structure. Thus, within less than two years, the Woolworth Building record has been surpassed three times.

  That Inseparable Trio: Girl, Ape, Skyscraper

  By CARYN JAMES | August 15, 2004

  OF ALL THE TRIBUTES TO FAY WRAY, WHO died last week at 96, the sweetest did not come from a person but from a building. The Empire State Building turned off its lights in her honor for one night, and its Web site mourned her under the romantic headline, “King Kong’s Beauty Dies.” This wasn’t grandstanding, but the recognition of a deep and genuine tie between Wray and the building that helped make her famous.

  In the 1933 film, it may have been the ape who was called “the eighth wonder of the world,” but at the time the Empire State Building seemed equally wondrous. It was only two years old and still the tallest building in the world when Kong climbed its side and Wray was forever typecast as the screaming blonde in the gorilla’s hand. And that ape carrying off the woman he loved didn’t take her just anywhere. The film was enacting the conflict between Kong’s primitive passions and the high-tech future that the skyscraper symbolized.

  When Kong reaches the top of the Empire State Building, he towers over any structure on Earth, but in the end he is no match for the men with guns who shoot at him from biplanes. Civilization wins, yet there is something noble about Kong’s passion. He has carried his love t
o such heights that the Empire State Building is almost a third player in a peculiar but touching ménage à trois.

  Wray herself seemed to recognize as much. As she said in her autobiography, “On the Other Hand,” published when she was 81, “Each time I arrive in New York and see the skyline and the exquisite beauty of the Empire State Building, my heart beats a little faster.”

  Romance on the Observation Deck

  By EMILY VASQUEZ | July 13, 2006

  Iraqi war veteran Sgt. David Aloonso, kisses his new bride Natalie Malloy, right, on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

  MIDNIGHT AT THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. Gone are the long lines, the strollers and the tour bus crowds. Instead, at 1,050 feet, with rain clouds colored pink, romance abounds.

  With the lights of Wall Street glimmering in the distance, Kevin Livingston, 28, of Queens, takes advantage of the setting.

  He turns to Charlotte Harrison, 27, who is also from Queens and who has been dating him for three weeks. “Will you be my girlfriend?” he asks. Then he declares that even New York City’s lights have nothing on her.

  On the east deck another couple, more serious, are locked in a tight embrace.

  Yes, she has just whispered. Yes, of course she will be his wife.

  The couple, Aisha, 25, and Imran, 32, who would give only their first names, met on Naseeb.com, a Muslim social networking site. Six months’ worth of e-mail messages later—Aisha from Montreal, Imran from London—they made plans to meet for the first time in New York.

  Now, atop the Empire State Building, they share their first kiss, and Imran whispers the proposal.

  When many of the city’s most popular attractions—the Statue of Liberty, the Bronx Zoo—have been closed for hours, the Empire State still beckons. Three nights a week, it does not close until 2 a.m. The platform becomes a lovers’ lane for couples in search of a late-night view. Their idea, of course, is nothing new—from “An Affair to Remember” to “Sleepless in Seattle,” the platform has been a classic stage.