Entries tagged with “architecture” from Patell and Waterman's History of New York

If you've been digging Alex's downtown then-and-now photos, check out these archival images from Harlem -- paired with what's (not) there now. [Harlem Bespoke]

Parks Department calls for volunteers on Saturday to clean up and help preserve the old New York State Pavilion in Queens. Meanwhile, Queens Crap readers raise their eyebrows. [HDC Newsstand; Queens Crap]

Or you can spend the weekend on one or more Brooklyn gallery tours. [Bed-Stuy Blog]

Brooklyn bonus from Brooks! "FYI, there is still room for a few more on the Nov. 29, Thanksgiving weekend walking tour of Carroll Gardens West/Columbia Heights Waterfront District. Please let me know if you'd like to join us." [Lost New York]

Or you can get ready for Thanksgiving by giving thanks with "Native American Circle" on the Harlem River. [Bronx Mama]

And plan ahead for a post-Thanksgiving tour of historic Richmond Town with the Staten Island Historical Society [NYC Arts]

Photo of the old Corn Exchange Building from Harlem Bespoke: "This was the section that was largely visible from the Metro North platform for the last 100 years until the city demolished it in the past six weeks."

Thanks to Bowery Boogie for posting this today. It's the life cycle of a single block on Eldridge, between Rivington and Stanton:


See a slower version here, which will also allow you to progress one year at a time or to click on individual buildings for more info. The artist, a Seattle-based web designer and writer named Zac van Schouwen, explains the project's origins:

Awhile back, I was trying to find out the history of a building that my great-great-grandfather had lived in -- an old five-story tenement on Eldridge Street in Manhattan. With some help from Christopher Gray's guide to researching New York City buildings, I discovered that the building had been erected in 1834, on the site of an old house. It was demolished in the 1940s; its lot later held a garage, then a housing project.

My mystery was solved, but the project had piqued my interest anyway. I decided to try a more mammoth task, compiling a complete record of the life cycle of a single city block. That's what I've presented here. Beginning in the 1780s with James Delancey's farm, and ending with the present public housing structures, erected in 1985, this is a record of eight generations of buildings on two-thirds of an acre. (There is a brief gap from about 1802 to 1808, during which I've made educated guesses as to the state of construction.)

Clicking on any building here will give you more details about its history. The tenement that sparked this interest, #218, is a good place to start. My great-great-grandfather lived there in 1860. Keep an eye on it in 1922. Enjoy!

My favorite part is the fire-escapes that pop up in the early twentieth century. 1978 is the saddest year of all.

Over the last few weeks I've been snapping photos of Frank Gehry's Woolworth-blocking Beekman Tower from various vantage points. As the final floors go up it's clear just how dramatically the building will dominate the downtown skyline. From all sides it seems omni-present -- it's much more centrally situated than the Twin Towers were, if not nearly so tall. Downtown it seems to pop up everywhere, looming over every intersection. Here's what it will look like when it's done:



I'll post my photos later. For now I wanted the excuse to link something our sometime commenter, The Modesto Kid, sent me a while back. It's a piece from the Architectural League of New York's blog, Urban Omnibus, about a sort-of social networking site called STACKD,

a new site that helps people in Manhattan office buildings get in touch - for business or beers. In so doing, his project connects such themes as excess capacity, the spatial and local implications of social media and the singular opportunities presented by Manhattan's built environment. What's more, STACKD just might provide a powerful tool for architects, planners, developers and even management consultants to interpret how we use space and how we can use it more flexibly and more efficiently.

STACKD's developer explains some of its aims:

Clearly, resource sharing requires an open attitude and the desire to change established conventions. However, with coworking communities emerging throughout New York City, sharing resources between multiple floors may not be far behind. As we continue to work on STACKD and as it expands to other buildings, perhaps it can play a role in making the city and its use of space more legible. Architectural typologies could adapt to contemporary needs and business cycles. The first step is seeing what is happening. One of the biggest challenges with large amounts of information is making sense of it all. As visual creatures, we're equipped with sophisticated interpretative capabilities that yield insights at a glance far more readily than confronted with purely quantitative information. With the right interface and mapping capabilities we could gain a more fine-grained understanding of what kinds of activities are performed in what parts of the city.

The ostensible agenda is to keep resource networking as local and efficient as possible. A worthy end, to be sure. One wonders, will social networking sites for residential towers like Gehry's (which will house almost 1000 units in its soaring 76 stories) be far behind, a possible way to ameliorate the anonymity -- even the suburbanization -- of life so far removed from the streets?

Image from worldarchitecturenews.com

Last spring I noted here that, from the Brooklyn side, the Woolworth Building would soon be eclipsed by Frank Gehry's rapidly rising, aluminum-clad Beekman Tower. Then things got a little tense when the economy bottomed out and rumors were afloat that the building would be capped at roughly half its projected 76-story height. It would have looked like a late-breaking, tin-foiled addition to Southbridge Towers, a sad little monument to the recession. And as much as I worried that the original design looked like something ready-made for the next Spidey sequel, I cringed at the thought of a little Manhattan twin for that nasty tin-foil building on the DUMBO side of the Manhattan Bridge.

But soon enough, the cranes got higher and floors started piling up once again, and the other morning on my bridge run I noticed that Woolworth had officially vanished as far as Brooklyn is concerned -- for the first time in almost a century.

One of the things I like most about the moral orientation of David Freeland's new book Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville is its simultaneous focus on the lost and the found of living in the contemporary city. Most of the vanished forms of leisure he writes about require the archival efforts of a historian, to be sure, but they more often than not have left traces on the city -- architectural details or styles, fading signage, place names -- that even an observant amateur could spot and become curious about. Above all, it's the impulse toward curious observation that Freeland hopes to model and foster. (You'll see what I mean if you make it to the final session of our Lost New York conference next month, when Freeland will engage in conversation with another inveterate observer and urban theorist, Marshall Berman.)

To the end of fostering curiosity about traces of the lost city, Freeland has launched an interactive history installation he's calling "You Are Here." As he describes it on his blog, Gotham Lost and Found:

Throughout Manhattan I've put up 9 (with a bonus 10th to follow) dinner-plate sized signs, each on the surface of a building that once played a key role in the evolution of our entertainment culture.  When you find a "You Are Here" sign, simply text in the specified code to the number given on the sign - you'll receive an instant message back, telling you some interesting fact about where you are and why this building is important.  Think of it as my historian's fantasy - I'm putting up plaques on buildings that should have them, but don't.

These impromptu plaques might simply catch the eye of the curious and result in some spontaneous educating, but for those willing to play his game, he's devised a bit of a scavenger hunt, complete with rhyming clues:

#1 is south of Canal, along Elizabeth: you'll know the plot is getting thick, when you reach a site of russet brick.

#2 sits on twisting Doyers, above hidden foyers.

#3 lies east of Cooper Square; great Yiddish names once gathered there.

#4 captured New York scenes, in a building along Broadway in the lower teens.

#5 is on Second Avenue, in the East Village: where stars once ate, sushi takes the plate.

#6: They say old 28th sounded like a Tin Pan; see it now, while you still can.

#7: in the 130s east of 7th, the stars of swing would sing.

#8: On 135th, 'neath a 60s-styled wall, sat a great Harlem theater, accepting to all.

#9: Near the spot where Duffy stands, the food was served with invisible hands.

I'll provide a bonus clue for our readers. That's not the first time the name Duffy has appeared on this site.

Freeland writes about each of these locations in his book in great detail. Sure, you could pick up the book and use it as a guide on your quest to find his plaques. But he's also holding out, as a carrot to get you to hunt, the prize of a signed copy, plus a pass to the Museum of the City of New York, for the first five people to send in all the answers. Onward toward the production of cultural memory!

From the Department of Lost Literary Landmarks ...

Bowery Boogie continues to report on the dramatic demolition of the historic Provincetown Playhouse. The site looks like an ancient ruin, and as BB notes, it's hard to pick out what's left among the rubble:



It's hard to know what to think about this situation. Apparently the facade of the first floor and the four interior walls of the original theater are the only thing to remain in the new structure, which from the outside will look much like the old building, with the addition of lots of south-facing windows and a penthouse situated on a sizable set-back. You've got to admit that occupants of south-side rooms will be happy for a little sunlight, but then again, there's a clear pattern of disregard for community sentiment that's no secret to folks in or out of the institution I work for, and plenty of people inside and out are unhappy about that fact.

CB2 helped get the concession from NYU to scale back the size of the new building and keep parts of the original structure. Landmarks had determined that the building had been altered too significantly in the last half century or so for the building to warrant historic preservation. It's true that the post-1940s renovation of the building was pretty horrendous: I always found it kind of sad that Off-Broadway's birthplace looked like a cheaply erected post-War elementary school. But I'm also not sure that token gestures toward preservation -- keeping parts of a facade and a few lousy bricks here and there -- are much better than wholescale redevelopment. (Actually, I take it back: I think the Poe House [right] is probably better than no house.)

I'm less equivocal about the loss of Frank O'Hara's longtime residence at 791 Broadway and the apparent lack out outcry on its behalf. Jeremiah brought it to my attention, and I don't really know of anyone else who's even bothered to notice its imminent doom.    

Just one day after I posted my lament for Woolworth's eclipse, Curbed spent the day fielding, disseminating, and updating rumors that Gehry's Beekman Tower was going to be capped at its current height.

It's not clear yet what the full story is. Apparently a permit had been sought for a concrete "roof," which some tipsters interpreted as a signal that the tower had topped out early, but the Tribeca Trib is reporting that the permit was simply for the first of three planned setbacks (forming a terrace from which the building will continue its ascent).



I suppose time will tell, but I'm not sure which I feel worse about -- a garish 76-story silver rocketship, or one that gets cut off half way up, nipping in the bud Gehry's stab at the skyline, a permanent memorial not just to Bloomberg's developmania but to the recession.

P.S. Can we call a moratorium on the nickname FiDi for the Financial District? It sounds like a brand of dog food.

For weeks I've been meaning to take a camera out on the Brooklyn Bridge and snap a couple shots of something I've noticed on my morning bridge runs: The Woolworth Building is gradually being eclipsed by Frank Gehry's new Beekman Tower. Soon Woolworth's gothic spire will be no longer visible from most spots on the Bridge, for the first time in its almost 100 years of existence.

See what I mean?

While we're on the topic of unique NYC architecture from the 19th century, I'll throw out a link to the blog Colonnade Row -- the only blog I follow that purports to be written by a dog (in this case, little Kirby Carnegie, an opinionated bulldog "trying to make sense of things around me!").

The blog is written from -- and named after -- the remaining marble Greek Revival row houses on Lafayette Street below Astor Place, across the street from the Public Theater. Recently Kirby offered up what I think is the best "25 things" post ever, a list of odds and ends about the building he lives in. The list includes:

1. When it rains, the people on the top floor of my building have to throw a nylon tarp over the front of the building to prevent water from seeping in their windows and rotting their ceiling.

2.  The fireplaces in the rear apartments began to crumble from inside a few years ago and had to be sealed. They're now unable to be used.

3.  It is unlikely that the facade of the Colonnade will ever be restored.  The limestone that was used was of poor quality and pollution and age have rendered them beyond help.  Also, the two parties that own the buildings will never be able to agree (or afford) the cost.

4.  There are four separate townhouses in the remaining Colonnade, although most people think it looks like one.  Originally there were nine.  There is no connecting passage from within the buildings to each other although the front balcony does run uninterrupted.

You can find the rest here.

The post prompted me to dig around online to find out a little bit more about the buildings' history. A couple tidbits, especially ones that relate to my recent entries here:

For one, Colonnade Row, when it opened in the early 1830s was named La Grange Terrace, after Lafayette's estate in France. It was originally built as part of the gentrification of Bowery-bordered neighborhoods. (The timeframe coincides as well with the gentrification of Washington Square, which has some important Greek Revival remnants of its own.)

John Jacob Astor lived in La Grange Terrace as an old man; the Public Theater inhabits a building he originally erected as the Astor Library in 1854; the Astor Place Opera House, roughly where the Starbucks is now, was erected in 1847. When Lafayette Place, as the street was formerly known, was first cut from Art Street (now Astor Place) to Great Jones Street in 1826--shortly following General Lafayette's return tour of America in 1824-25--it reduced the size of Vauxhall Gardens by half. Lafayette Place was protected from traffic by virtue of its small size--it was only two blocks long--and the nine townhouses that made up Colonnade Row took up almost the entire length of the west side of the street between Art and 4th.

"Built of marble quarried by convict labor from Sing Sing prison," as Eric Homberger notes in Mrs. Astor's New York, "'Colonnade Row' was the grandest of all the nineteenth-century attempts to reproduce the upper-class townhouses and aristocratic neighborhoods of London and Paris."

Famous residents, over time, included Astors, Vanderbilts, Morgans, Delanos (including FDR's maternal grandparents), Washington Irving, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Julia Gardiner, who married the sitting U.S. President James Tyler in 1844. Charles Dickens stayed there during his trip to New York in 1842. Schermerhorns, mentioned in yesterday's post, lived in the neighborhood.

There's a great picture and map of the neighborhood in Homberger's book. I've flagged the relevant pages here. The photo above comes from nyc-architecture.com.