Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan

by Rem Koolhaas

  BARRACKS

  But as early as 1899 the patronizing puritanism of the Urbanism of Good Intentions is exposed by more acute observers, who perceive the genius of Coney’s phantasmagoric transformation.

  “The places of Amusement [on Coney]…are liberally patronized by those who constitute what we call‘ the masses,' meaning thereby persons whom the humanitarians and reformers would like to house in whitewashed barracks, and who possess a sense of the picturesque that I commend to the careful consideration of their would-be benefactors….

  “Just now a good many of these reformists and humanitarians and representatives of what they themselves usually term the ‘better element’ are crying aloud to have the most picturesque and popular summer resort on the continent turned into a public park….

  “The enthusiasm with which this proposition has been seconded and approved by everybody who does not know anything about the subject whatever, leads me to fear that our municipal authorities, who are notoriously prone to lend an ear to the clamor of ignorance, may succeed in establishing this park on a site where nothing higher than a currant bush will grow….

  “The masses love Coney Island as it is, and although they will probably bear with dumb resignation any attempt to transform it into a region of asphalt walks and patches of scorched ‘keep off the grass’ sward, they will certainly turn their backs upon it in its new form and seek their summer recreation elsewhere….”31

  The debate about the park is a confrontation between the reformist urbanism of healthy activities and the hedonistic urbanism of pleasure. It is also a rehearsal of the later showdowns between Modern Architecture and the architecture of Manhattanism.

  For the coming century, the battle lines are drawn.

  BLOB

  Oblivious to the contest for the middle, literally rising above the conflict between mechanical and natural surfaces, is the circular silhouette of a phantom structure that proves—if nothing else—Coney’s continuing fertility as a breeding ground for revolutionary architectural prototypes. Early in 1906 advertisements appear in New York papers announcing “a ground floor chance to share profits” in “the largest steel structure ever erected…the greatest amusement enterprise in the whole world…the best real estate venture,”32 the Globe Tower. It will cost $1,500,000 to erect. The public is urged to invest. The stock will pay 100 percent interest annually.

  The most voluminous building ever proposed in the history of mankind, it combines in a single gestalt the opposites—needle and sphere—that have been the extremes of Manhattan’s formal vocabulary ever since the Latting Observatory and the balloon of the Crystal Palace were juxtaposed in 1853.

  It is impossible for a globe to be a tower.

  A sketch illustrating the ad—of a skyline dominated by a blob—reveals the Globe Tower’s concept: the sphere is to be so colossal that simply by resting on the earth it can claim—through the height of its enormous diameter—also to be a tower, for it is at least “three times as high as the Flatiron building, the present marvel of New York.”

  SPHERE

  The sphere appears throughout Western architectural history, generally coinciding with revolutionary moments. To the European Enlightenment it was a simulacrum of the world, a secular counterpart to the cathedral: typically, it was a monument and, in its entirety, hollow.

  Appearance of the Globe Tower advertisement in the New York Herald, May 6, 1906.

  Globe Tower, second version, with exploded exterior. From the top: Roof Gardens; layer of theaters; revolving restaurant; ballroom; chambres séparées; Africa, one of the continent/circuses lobbies; entrances; etc. Special gravity elevator connects interior with underground metropolitan arteries.

  It is the American genius of Samuel Friede, inventor of the Globe Tower, to exploit the Platonic solid in a series of strictly pragmatic steps.

  For him the globe, ruthlessly subdivided into floors, is simply a source of unlimited square footage. The larger it is, the more immense these interior planes; since the Globe itself will need only a single, negligible point of contact with the earth, the smallest possible site will support the largest reclaimable territory. As revealed to investors, the tower’s blueprints show a gigantic steel planet that has crashed onto a replica of the Eiffel Tower, the whole “designed to be 700 feet high, the largest building in the world with enormous elevators carrying visitors to the different floors.”33

  SOCLES

  A total of eight socles will support the Globe Tower. Otherwise the hovering monument will not directly interfere with life on earth, except where its specially designed gravity elevators penetrate the earth’s crust to connect the interior of the sphere with the interior of the earth. Underground will be a multilevel interchange of various modes of transport: a combination of parking garage, subway and railway station with a branch going out to the sea as a pier for boats. As a program, the Globe Tower is an agglomeration of Steeplechase, Luna Park and Dreamland, all swallowed up in a single interior volume, stacked on consecutive floors, the whole parked on a small corner of Steeplechase that Friede has leased from Tilyou.

  STATIONS

  The capacity of the Globe Tower is 50,000 people at one time. Every 50 feet of its height is a station consisting of a main attraction embedded in subsidiary amusement facilities.

  150 feet above the ground: “a Pedestal Roof Garden with popular price restaurant, continuous vaudeville theater, roller skating rink, bowling alley, slot machines, etc.”

  250 feet above the ground: “the Aerial Hippodrome, seating 5,000 people…largest Hippodrome in the world, with four large circus rings and four immense animal cages”—incarcerating a vast number of species of wild animals—“giving continuous performances.” Each ring represents a continent: a world inside the world. The circus is ringed by “automatic telescopes, automatic opera glasses, slot machines, a miniature railroad….”

  300 feet above the ground: in the globe’s equatorial zone are concentrated “the Main Hall, the Largest Ballroom in the world, and a moving restaurant enclosed in glass….” A revolving strip 25 feet wide carries “tables, kitchens and patrons around the outer edge of the Tower to give the effect of eating in an airborne dining car” with “a continuous panoramic view of Coney Island, the Ocean, the Countryside and Greater New York.”

  To stimulate continuous (24-hour) use of the Globe Tower by its 50,000 temporary inhabitants, the middle zone also contains a hotel floor, with small, luxuriously equipped, padded suites, rooms and cubicles.

  Connecting the facilities of the main station are a “circular exhibition hall, candy devices, slot machines, toy devices, shows of various kinds, goods manufactured where spectators can see the operation and purchase the goods as souvenirs.”

  350 feet above the ground: Aerial Palm Garden.

  Implicit in Friede’s horizontal arrangement is a social stratification; ascent in the Globe coincides with increased refinement and elegance of the facilities.

  “Higher up there will be a more expensive restaurant with tables scattered in a palm garden with cascades of running water screened from each other by shrubbery artistically arranged on the Italian Garden plan.” Friede hints at his ambition to collect a specimen of every plant known to man: the restaurant as Eden.

  500 feet above the ground: Observatory Platform, “containing automatic telescopes, souvenir stand and various small concessions, highest platform in Greater New York.”

  600 feet above the ground: United States Weather Observation Bureau and Wireless Telegraph Station, “highest observation platform in the United States, equipped with modern weather recording devices, wireless telegraph, etc., surmounted with the largest revolving searchlight in the world.

  “Thousands of electric lights make the building a gigantic tower of fire at night.”

  DISCREPANCY

  Because it simply is not of this world, the Globe Tower can do
without its predecessors’ metaphorical stratagems of discontinuity. The first single building to claim the status of resort—“the most popular resort in the whole world”—it has severed all connections with nature; the immensity of its interior precludes any reference to external reality.

  The full theoretical ramifications of Friede’s quantum leap can best be illustrated mathematically: assuming that the Globe Tower’s diameter is 500 feet, assuming further that its floors are spaced 15 feet apart,

  then the formula of its total square footage,

  (h = 15’ height, n = number of floors + 1),

  gives a total of 5,000,000 square feet.

  Assuming a total of 1,000 square feet as the surface consumed by the eight socles, then the proportion,

  The Globe Tower can reproduce that part of the world it occupies 5,000 times.

  In light of this colossal discrepancy, the Globe Tower must be seen as the essence of the idea of Skyscraper, the most extreme and explicit manifestation of the Skyscraper’s potential to reproduce the earth and to create other worlds.

  FOUNDATION

  The first advertisements mention that “work on the foundations of the Friede Globe Tower has been started by the Raymond Concrete Pile Co. of Chicago, and will be completed in 90 days according to contract, when the steel structural work will be rushed to completion.”

  As the future landing points of the as yet free-floating planet, the socles are invested with a special mystique.

  On May 26, 1906, “the cornerstone laying will be the event of the day at the Island, and will be celebrated with band concerts, fireworks and oratory…. In years to come it will be stated with pride that‘ I was there when the cornerstone was laid.

  There is a rush of investors at the Globe Tower Co. office built next to the first socle.

  At the end of the 1906 season the foundations are still incomplete. Investors become anxious. Another cornerstone ceremony marks the beginning of the 1907 season; another socle is completed “and a few steel girders…raised on [the socles] as preliminary work on the Tower.” By 1908 it is clear that the most impressive architectural project ever conceived is a fraud.

  Tilyou is stuck with the abortive supports that now obstruct the expansion. of Steeplechase. “On account of the sandy formation at Coney…long concrete spiles were sunk to a depth of 35 feet. Eight of these spiles, were grouped together and a solid concrete piece about 3 feet thick was placed on top to hold them together…. About 30 of these bases were sunk on the property…. These concrete foundations are massive and it is believed that they can be removed only by liberal use of dynamite.”34

  FIRE

  At the end of his proto-socialist-realist diatribe, Gorky unveils an alternative solution to Coney that is more imaginative than the artificial resurrection of nature advocated by the “better element.” “The soul is seized with a desire for a living, beautiful fire, a sublime fire, which should free the people from the slavery of a varied boredom.”35

  In May 1911 the lighting system in the devils that decorate the facade of Dreamland’s End of the World short-circuits. Sparks start a fire that is fanned by a strong sea wind.

  Dreamland burns.

  Only weeks before a superior fire-fighting apparatus has been installed; the ground has been dug up once more, to add new water mains and hydrants. But somehow the new ducts have not been connected with the Atlantic, inexhaustible fire extinguisher. In shock, the fire fighters of Fighting the Flames are first to desert their dormitories and the confines of Dreamland.

  As real fire fighters arrive on the scene, they find no more pressure in the system than “in a garden hose.”

  Fireboats are kept at a distance by the heat. Only Lilliputia’s midget fire fighters—confronted with the real thing after ±2,500 false alarms—put up a real fight against the holocaust; they save a small piece of their Nuremberg—the fire station—but otherwise their actions are hopeless. The most pathetic victims of the disaster are the “educated” animals that now become victims of their unlearning of instinct; waiting for their teachers’ permission, they escape too late, if at all. Elephants, hippos, horses, gorillas run amok, “enveloped in flames.” Lions roam the streets in murderous panic, finally free to kill each other on their way to safety: “Sultan…roared along Surf Avenue, eyes bloodshot, flanks torn and bleeding, mane afire….”36 For many years after the holocaust, surviving animals are sighted on Coney, deep in Brooklyn even, still performing their former tricks….

  In three hours Dreamland burns to the ground.

  END

  In the end, Dreamland has succeeded so well in cutting itself loose from the world that Manhattan’s newspapers refuse to believe in the authenticity of the final disaster even as their editors see its flames and smoke from their office windows.

  They suspect it is one more catastrophe staged by Reynolds to attract attention: the news is printed only after a 24-hour delay.

  In an objective postmortem Reynolds admits that the burning of Dreamland is only the formalization of its earlier decline. “The promoters of Dreamland sought to appeal to a highly developed sense of the artistic…but it did not take long for them to discover that Coney Island was scarcely the place for that sort of thing…. Architectural beauty was virtually lost upon the great majority, of visitors…. From year to year Dreamland was popularized, its original design abandoned.” The disaster concludes Reynolds’ preoccupation with Manhattan’s prototype. He surrenders the gay battlefield of the Reality Shortage to the Urbanism of Good Intentions—“the City should take the land and turn it into a Public Park”—and shifts his energies to Manhattan itself.

  JOY

  Follows a period of unsettlement.

  In 1914 Luna Park too goes up in flames.

  Dreamland becomes a parking lot.

  Steeplechase survives, its attractions more debased with every new season.

  Manhattan itself has become the theater of architectural invention. Only with the Palace of Joy (1919) does Coney generate another breakthrough, resolving the apparent irreconcilability of density and dignity that has so upset its enemies. The palace shifts the emphasis in solving the Problem of Pleasure away from the compulsive production of passive entertainment to constructive arrangements of human activity.

  The Palace of Joy is a pier, modified to become a condenser of social intercourse: two parallel walls contain an endless number of rooms and other private accommodations that define a linear public realm.

  “The Palace of Joy…will contain the largest enclosed swimming pool in the world; will contain salt water from the Atlantic Ocean and will be open year round.

  “A mammoth Dance Hall and Skating Rink…operated in connection with the Swimming Pool” are planned for the end of the pier.

  “The equipment will include Russian, Turkish and Salt Water Baths; there will be 2,000 Private Bath Houses and 500 Private Rooms with 2,000 lockers to accommodate those who wish to stay overnight.”38Ballroom inside the locker room: an American Versailles for the People. The Public at the core of the Private—a theoretical inversion that will make Manhattan’s inhabitants a population of houseguests.

  But the Palace of Joy fails to materialize.

  The beach reverts to its earliest condition: overcrowded arena of the dictatorship of the proletariat, “monstrous safety valve of the world’s most highly charged metropolis.”39

  CONQUEST

  The final conquest and definitive eradication of Coney’s original urbanism are assured in 1938 when Commissioner Robert Moses brings beach and boardwalk under the jurisdiction of the Parks Department, ultimate vehicle of the Urbanism of Good Intentions. For Moses, the anti-Reynolds, Coney becomes—again—a testing ground for strategies intended ultimately for Manhattan.

  “Engrossed in dreams of lawn-flanked parkways and trim tennis courts,”40 he considers the thin strip of oceanfront under his control
as merely the base for an offensive that will gradually replace Coney’s street grid with innocuous vegetation. The first block to fall is the site of Dreamland, where he establishes the new New York Aquarium in 1957.

  It is a modern structure, an incarnation of the “whitewashed barracks,” painfully cheerful in the upward sweep of its concrete roofline, implanted in a vast lawn.

  “Its lines are trim and clean.”41

  The aquarium is a Modernist revenge of the conscious upon the unconscious: its fish—“inhabitants of the deep”—are forced to spend the rest of their lives in a sanatorium.

  When he is finished, Moses has turned 50 percent of Coney’s surface into parks.

  Mother island to the bitter end, Coney Island has become the model for a modern Manhattan of Grass.

  Madelon Vriesendorp, Apres l’amour.

  The Double Life of Utopia: The Skyscraper

  There is no easy way from the earth to the stars….

  —Text on Medalists’ Society Medal, 1933

  And finally, in the very last episode, the Tower of Babel suddenly appears and some strongmen actually finish it under a song of new hope, and as they complete the top, the Ruler (of the Olympus, probably) runs off making a fool of himself while Mankind, suddenly understanding everything, finally takes its rightful place and right away begins its new life with new insights into everything….