NYC3: From the Past into the Future

Everyday as we walked around New York we saw signs of construction. At one point we even debated the ratio of blocks that had scaffolding (to protect pedestrians from construction) to those that didn’t. At least on the major north-south avenues, I think we decided it was something like 1-to-1. Slightly less on residential streets, but the crosstown streets in midtown and downtown might have an even more skewed ratio.

All of this is to say that the skyline of Manhattan (and Brooklyn, and Queens, etc.) is constantly changing. There are examples of beautiful architecture from the past couple of centuries all over the place, but one of the things Jessica and I most enjoyed was following the guidance of a book of walking tours focused on “new” architecture in New York (“new” being from the past 15 years or so). Not only did we learn about some of the political and economic influences on new construction, but we also started to develop a bit more of a critical eye towards these modern buildings, and perhaps appreciated them more than we would have otherwise. Most of all, it was just a fun way to guide our walks and get us to different parts of the city that we might not otherwise have seen.

_{(And here’s where I owe an apology to my parents who saw my skill at math and my love of legos and building with blocks and kept encouraging me to be an architect. Somehow, that encouragement never stuck. Oh well.)}

Our first walking tour led us along 57th Street from river to river, along what is sometimes called “Billionaire’s Row.” This was the tour that helped us serendipitously land seats at John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight (see NYC1). Of course, being New York, there was always something odd to see along the way. Today it was a giraffe eating someone’s plants. Well, some odd artistic representation of such. Not sure what to call it. It’s not a mural exactly. Seemed like an odd decoration choice for midtown.

Anyhow, as we worked our way westward across 57th we came across some fascinating buildings. First up was Aalto 57, with its odd curvacious slit that expands up the middle of the tower, giving it an appearance almost like an inverted vase or something. Here we began our education in the ways of the tallest structures in midtown. You see, New York has rules limiting the height of buildings: they’re supposed to not exceed a certain floor space to building footprint area ratio. But…if the developers own the space around the buildings in question, they can transfer some of that floor-area from shorter neighboring buildings over to the taller projects. In the case of Aalto 57, they also got some extra credit for constructing new fancy public school buildings on the same block.

Further along 57th, Hearst Tower (just south of Columbus Circle) got away with some oversized construction in another unique manner. On this one, you can see the old Hearst building that forms the base of the tower. That building was historic, so needed to be preserved, but also it had originally been planned as a skyscraper and had never been built up, so the architects dug out those old building plans to convince the city that they had the right to build upwards.

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Between Aalto 57 and Hearst Tower lie the “supertalls.” Like Aalto 57, they needed to use all sorts of legal tricks to be allowed to build upwards. One thing a lot of buildings in the area use to increase their allowable floor-area ratio is POPS. POPS is short hand for Privately Owned Public Space. These are usually either interior or exterior courtyards, usually with benches, tables, maybe a sculpture or fountain, etc. New York cuts developers some slack on the height limits if they dedicate some space to be available to all New Yorkers.

Additionally, some of these supertalls get away with increased height by not actually using all of that height for living space. In the case of 432 Park Ave., if you look closely you’ll see that about every ten floors there’s a two-floor gap. This is where a lot of the building mechanics are stored and the openings actually help with wind stability. And 111 W 57th gets away with a taller appearance by adding 300 feet or so of “feathering” at the top. This is useless space, but again helps with stability and makes the building “look cool.” (You can also see some weird helicopter- or cannon-like structure on top of this one. After seeing those all over and being baffled about why it looked like buildings in New York were ready to go to war with one another, we finally learned that these are weighted structures that are also meant to help tall buildings adjust to pressures from wind.) And the last of the supertalls, “Central Park Tower,” I actually particularly liked because it has a good quarter of its floor space hovering over nothing. Over time I came to realize that I particularly liked these sorts of cantilevered floor structures on buildings. I guess I like the idea of defying gravity a bit.

_{(And maybe I just like all these skyscrapers because they make the city feel like a giant glassy version of the canyons I love out west…hmmm…)}

Heading further downtown, one of the buildings that stuck out from many different views of the city is known as “The Jenga Building.” Again, I liked the cantilevered parts at both the top and bottom, and the reflective sculpture (by the same artist who did the one in Chicago, who happens to live in the building) is a nice touch. But, notice that the building actually isn’t that unique for the middle chunk of floors–the ones that are less noticeable from either up close or far afield.

And one of the most interesting tours led us around the area by the redeveloped World Trade Center. Obviously, we weren’t part of the tragedy in New York — 9-11 was actually the day that we arrived for our first stint of living in California — but seeing the area as it is now, with parks, memorials, buildings, and a giant new tower (quite beautiful) was pretty fascinating. This tour was organized around the idea of a car-free section of Manhattan — not that it’s actually car-free, but there are quite a number of tunnels, skyways, arcades, and promenades that connect various parts of the area, so over a two or three hour walk, we barely crossed any streets, and rarely contended with traffic.

Our tour took us through a variety of different places — a few of which are mentioned in other posts (previous and forthcoming) — but the center of the tour was the crazy new “Oculus Center,” a mall and transit hub shaped something like a cathedral or the skeleton of a whale, the 9-11 Memorial, and the World Trade Center site itself. The Oculus Center was perhaps the most artistic mall I’ve been in, and was a pleasant area to walk through. I think the exterior is pretty nuts, but kinda cool in the way it stands out from both the older and newer buildings surrounding it in the financial district. Meanwhile, the new buildings of the World Trade Center, particularly One World Trade Center dominate the sky. 1WTC is actually quite beautiful in its simplicity. It rises at a slight angle, a bit like a pyramid, from a square base to a square top, but that top is offset by 45 degrees, so the building is actually composed of eight triangular sides. It was visible from all over the city, and quite striking at its symbolic height of 1776 feet.

Meanwhile, in the square surrounded by the Oculus and the various new WTC buildings, lies the 9-11 memorial. We didn’t go to the museum part, but the two pools, inscribed with the names of the victims from that day, are pretty powerful. The title, “Reflecting Absence,” does a good job conveying what the space is all about. Meanwhile, in the adjacent “Liberty Park,” the ruined structure of Fritz Koenig’s “Sphere” — a statue that was in front of the pre-2001 WTC — gives a sense of the destruction from that day.

Our guidebook also had us zipping up and down the G train in Brooklyn to see a few different areas. Some of the interesting buildings from that tour:

• 300 Ashland has a subtle pinwheel of shades if you look carefully from it’s central point (not all obvious in my photo.)
• 461 Dean was built using modular construction. Each of the little units was built whole offsite and welded together when they arrived here. It was meant to be a great proof of this as an architectural technique. It was a giant logistical mess instead. This led to my favorite quote from our guidebook, when it explained that, as this project continued, FullStack Modular bought the building because they “see promise in modular construction even though this project didn’t reveal any.”
• The Barclays Center has some interesting shapes, but is greatly scaled-down arena from the original plan. One interesting feature is that it’s actually sunk fairly deep in the ground, so it doesn’t tower over the area like other similar arenas.
• At the Pratt Institute, we saw two old buildings that have been joined together with a very modern set of walkways. I liked the melding of different eras there.
• And in Williamsburg we saw some very odd buildings, but the only one I really appreciated was the one at 25 Kent which features giant glass walls juxtaposed with red brick and an odd step-pyramid-like construction.

One of the most pleasant walks took us along the Highline and in the area around it. If you don’t know, the Highline is a park, about a mile long, that’s built along the former tracks of a long-defunct elevated train line. I’ll talk about the Highline as a park and a space more in another post (it’s great!), but as far as architecture around there, there were quite a number of odd and interesting buildings.

I’ll start with my least favorite. Truly one of the ugliest (actually, two of the ugliest) structures I’ve seen, this apartment building has giant bulbous windows that are divided in the middle between two floors (hard to see in the photo). Really, this is just weird looking shit. But, great location!

Three nearby buildings display a set of more tasteful, elegant, and whimsical designs that I quite appreciated, especially in contrast. One has a cool split level design with gorgeous balconies and a great garden with sculptures–all somewhat reminiscent of the Jetsons for some reason. Another was built in such a way that it leans and hovers out over the Highline itself, with each apartment a unique shape and the glass painted in such a way as to display where internal supports are constructed to keep the structure from falling over onto the walkway. And a third has simple and elegant rounded corners, aesthetically pleasing windows, and a nice set of interspersed garden balconies. All far better examples of what the bulbous-UFO-building architects could have done.

One of the weirdest buildings we saw in this area was this monstrosity that is part of the set of skyscrapers at Hudson Yards (the north end of the Highline). But the main thing to note here is that this entire chunk of building is on wheels! It actually can roll back into the neighboring skyscraper to create an outdoor performance space or close it inside. I’d love to see that in action…

But, probably my favorite find in the area was this black and white building. It turns out that the choice to cut the black part of the building off at fewer stories than the white part wasn’t purely aesthetic–it was because it exists in a different zoning district! So, the architects leaned into that and chose the two-tone color scheme to delineate the two districts, with the black part in one area and the white in the next district over.

A block away from the Highline, two neighboring buildings both used windows in interesting ways. On the left you see one with uniquely arranged rectangular windows of various shapes and colors. The entry way (lower left) is loosely enclosed by another set of these windows with a set of gaps in them and actually has trees floating above the walkway in a sort of greenhouse-feeling space. On the right, Frank Gehry’s IAC building is all strange curves and angles, with each of the windows frosted more at the bottom and less towards the top. It creates an interesting striated pattern and glows nicely in the evening.

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Up near Lincoln Center were another pair of buildings with interesting windows: the Juilliard School had windows specially designed to fit the shape of the building, with odd corners and bends, and the nearby Lincoln Square Synagogue has five floors of softly glowing windows representing the five books of the Torah.

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A handful of other buildings that stood out over our time in New York:

• The American Copper Buildings: twin towers with odd angles and a wedged-in walkway 20-or-so stories up.
• The Hunter’s Point Library, with its fantastical set of windows providing a sequence of cutout views of the interior (which was also lovely).
• Also in Hunter’s Point, a set of apartments that had to be built such that the giant old Pepsi-Cola sign could be preserved. (Why exactly is that a historic landmark?)
• An art studio along the Bowery with a giant red elevator that can be moved to change the way the gallery spaces are shaped, either creating a high-ceilinged hall at the bottom or a series of smaller rooms higher up.

Now, I know I’ve been babbling on about the various bits of “new” architecture we saw. Those were very cool. But, New York also has just an enormous variety of styles, having been a center of immigration, trade, and innovation for a few centuries now. I was kind of blown away by the the wide range of types of buildings that people live in. You saw some of the wackier new apartments above, but here’s just a smattering of other styles: old tenement buildings, public housing projects of the mid-20th century, and the ubiquitous brownstones (Upper West Side, Harlem, all over Brooklyn, etc.). We saw a couple of really wacky new places too. The one shown here on Bond Street was incredibly unique, though I have mixed feelings on the artistry (I love the etched copper, not sure about the crazy fence-thingy), and the one on Franklin Street does an interesting mix of fitting in with the neighbors’ red brick look and being absolutely odd, but ultimately I think I like the boldness of the moon-windows which give the residents views up or down the street.

And, of course there was also a ton to enjoy about some of the grand old buildings of New York. Here’s just a few of my favorites…

I also enjoyed all the little architectural and design details on some of these old places. I particularly liked a lot of the art deco-ish stylings from earlier in the 20th century, but also liked some of the other sculptural works that adorned some of the beautiful and hideous buildings we came across…

And discussing the architecture of New York wouldn’t be complete without mentioning what’s below ground. No, not the subway. I’ll talk about the subway in another post. But so many of the businesses are built with basements that are accessed primarily from the sidewalk. That makes being a phone-wielding tourist a major life hazard while walking around the city. But, the fact that there are no back alleys for deliveries makes New York a fascinating place to watch how commerce really happens, where you can see all the ins and outs of business that are usually hidden from view in smaller towns and suburban settings.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a great architectural mystery. Actually, not a mystery. More of an irony? Or just something so obvious as to be ridiculous? Anyhow…Why is the police precinct here a freakin’ castle?!?! (Shaking my head.)

That’s all for now. More to come…

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(OK. One more thing. I just discovered that the John Oliver short video that was filmed while we were in-studio is up now. It’s about Snack Video Games. It’s pretty hilarious. Enjoy.)