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Garment District fights rezoning

Garment District Map

For a quarter-century, New York’s Gar­ment Dis­trict has enjoyed its own tai­lored zon­ing code. The code restricts land­lords from con­vert­ing manufacturer-rented build­ings into offices fetch­ing higher rents, and essen­tially keeps the indus­try alive in its cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion. Com­prised of whole­salers, man­u­fac­tur­ers, tai­lors, and design­ers both local and inter­na­tional, the Gar­ment Dis­trict has long been the core of the New York fash­ion scene, which is a dom­i­nant part of the global fash­ion industry.

In a more pros­per­ous time, the Gar­ment Dis­trict pro­duced cloth­ing for most of the coun­try, and with that, pro­vided an equally sub­stan­tial num­ber of jobs. Immi­grants and self-starters alike found oppor­tu­nity in the crowded side streets south of Time Square that amounted to a buzzing net­work of shops and factories.

Today, the story is largely the same. Fed by three major design schools, it is con­sid­ered the Sil­i­con Val­ley of the fash­ion world. How­ever, cheaper wages abroad in places like China and Latin Amer­ica have lured many man­u­fac­tur­ers overseas–a move not uncom­mon in any man­u­fac­tur­ing, but one that now threat­ens the New York fash­ion scene as devel­op­ers look to replace vacan­cies with offices.

The Bloomberg Admin­is­tra­tion is cur­rently review­ing a plan to adjust the district’s zon­ing code to enable fur­ther commercial-zoned devel­op­ment. Since the last change enacted in 1987, land­lords have been required to keep a 1:1 ratio of garment-related indus­try and other busi­ness in their build­ings. Now, faced with eco­nomic pres­sures, the Bloomberg Admin­is­tra­tion has pro­posed a new 1:6 ratio: one part man­u­fac­tur­ing to six parts busi­ness. This would decrease fashion-related work space by some 7 mil­lion square feet.Indus­try work­ers argue that the cur­rent allot­ted area is still nec­es­sary to meet needs for show­rooms, stor­age, and man­u­fac­tur­ing. Although the num­ber is decreas­ing, there are still approx­i­mately seven thou­sand garment-related jobs in the dis­trict, many employ­ing recent immi­grants. The Design Trust for Pub­lic Space, a New York City-based think tank, has com­piled argu­ments for pre­serv­ing the dis­trict from the pres­sures of New York real estate at madein​mid​town​.org.

They protest that on a national level, the Gar­ment Dis­trict rep­re­sents one of the last remain­ing enclaves of U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing for con­sumer goods. This local­ized econ­omy has been declared by many as a valu­able, dis­tinc­tive piece of the city, and that by out­sourc­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, it will take away the prox­im­ity fac­tor that makes the Gar­ment Dis­trict work. Not only can this cut pro­duc­tion time, but as fuel prices soar, ship­ping costs off­set the advan­tage of cheap, over­seas labor. The clus­ter­ing of these busi­nesses cre­ates a unique envi­ron­ment of com­pe­ti­tion and efficiency.

The Design Trust for Pub­lic Space‘s report quoted New York-based designer Yeohlee Teng, who main­tains that “You’re talk­ing about an ecosys­tem and an inter­de­pen­dency. It’s like a coral reef: you don’t know how the reef will sur­vive and what it will do if cer­tain ele­ments are removed.”

(Image: Made in Midtown)

A little bit of everything: walking through Fort Greene

On your next jour­ney around New York City, hop on the G train and dis­cover Fort Greene. This Brook­lyn neigh­bor­hood brings a mix­ture of old and new. From eco-friendly restau­rants and cof­fee shops to con­tem­po­rary art gal­leries, dance stu­dios, and his­tor­i­cal the­aters, Fort Greene pro­vides a diver­sity of art, cul­ture, and good food to its res­i­dents and visitors.

Recently, I had the priv­i­lege to take part in a tour pro­vided by the Nat­u­rally Occur­ring Cul­tural Districts-NY, an orga­ni­za­tion bring­ing cul­tural lead­ers as well as lead­ers of the com­mu­nity together to revi­tal­ize New York City from our neigh­bor­hoods, and the Urban Bush Women through the neigh­bor­hood of Fort Greene with guide Maria Bur­man. Maria is a mem­ber of the Nat­u­rally Occur­ring Cul­tural Dis­tricts as well as the Direc­tor of Edu­ca­tion and Com­mu­nity Engage­ment for the Urban Bush Women, an all-female dance com­pany that height­ens aware­ness of social issues through dance. For 25 years, the Urban Bush Women has served by being able aspire as well as strengthen the com­mu­nity through pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion in social jus­tice, gain­ing new audi­ences, and pro­vid­ing dance instruc­tion to the young and the young at heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While strolling along past Fort Greene’s unique brown­stone homes, our group had the chance stop and indulge in one of the tasti­est and most pop­u­lar treats Fort Greene had to offer–the Corn and Cuban. A neigh­bor­hood favorite, the Corn and Cuban is a sweet and spicy fla­vored corn on the cob served at the Habana Out­post, an eco-friendly, Mexican-American restaurant.

Designed in a picnic-in-the-park set­ting, Habana Out­post main­tains its restau­rant sus­tain­ably by pro­vid­ing solar power, a rain­wa­ter col­lec­tion sys­tem, and com­post and recy­cle sta­tions. Habana Out­post also plays an active role in the com­mu­nity by pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tional pro­grams that focus on urban envi­ron­men­tal­ism in Brook­lyn. Habana Out­post will be serv­ing its last Corn and Cuban of the year at the restaurant’s annual Hal­loween party, Octo­ber 28th, and will not open back up until April 2013.

Our next stop on the tour brought us to Mos­hood, a cloth­ing store ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing clothes that rep­re­sents local design­ers of the African Dias­pora. Mos­hood also hosts out­door fash­ion shows show­cas­ing their pieces.

Our next stop, the Museum of Con­tem­po­rary African Dias­pora Art, or MoCADA, shows work that rep­re­sents the social and polit­i­cal issues of the African Dias­pora. Estab­lished in 2006, MoCADA has con­tin­ued to pro­vide fel­low­ship and intern­ship pro­grams to aspir­ing artists as well as tours and edu­ca­tional pro­grams to the public.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Brook­lyn Acad­emy of Music, or BAM, is one of Fort Greene’s land­marks. For 150 years, BAM has brought drama, dance, and opera to its Brook­lyn residents.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last but not least, our final des­ti­na­tion took us to Cumbe Cen­ter for African and Dias­pora Dance.  This dance stu­dio pro­vides instruc­tion in dance, per­cus­sion, and fit­ness derived from the African Dias­pora. Cum­bre also serves as a great part of the com­mu­nity in expos­ing oth­ers to per­for­mance tech­niques com­ing for the African Diaspora.

Fort Greene con­tributes to the Brook­lyn com­mu­nity a strong foun­da­tion of social and polit­i­cal aware­ness that is expressed through the neighborhood’s thriv­ing cen­ters of per­form­ing and visual arts.

For more infor­ma­tion on vis­it­ing and learn­ing about other com­mu­ni­ties in Brook­lyn as well as other towns in New York City, visit the Munic­i­pal Art Soci­ety.

Pho­tos: Karen Hill

Is it “natural”?

Man­hat­tan– then and now.  Photo Credit– The Welikia Project (www​.welikia​.org)

As cities grow greener and the urban frame­work works to max­i­mize its envi­ron­men­tal gifts like water­ways and parks, cer­tain ques­tions must be asked. Cities in their begin­nings were founded in nat­u­rally advan­ta­geous places such as near water­ways, har­bors, and fer­tile val­leys among oth­ers. Today how­ever, the most nat­u­rally gifted cities have fallen behind those places where human inge­nu­ity has fos­tered a desire to con­stantly rein­vent the urban fab­ric such that the once pow­er­ful con­nec­tion between the city and nature has been bro­ken. Mod­ern con­sumers in urban areas choose largely to ignore where their pro­duce, meats, con­struc­tion mate­ri­als, and other non-urban items come from. Fur­ther­more, we also largely choose to ignore the fact that what we per­ceive as “nat­ural,” or from nature, is quite often the prod­uct of human beings.

The terms “first nature” and “sec­ond nature” were first coined by William Cronon in his sem­i­nal work on Chicago, Nature’s Metrop­o­lis. Cronon uses “first nature” to define the purely nat­ural aspects of cities, espe­cially those god-given advan­tages that give some cities a leg up on oth­ers. A prime exam­ple of this is New York’s deep, one-of-a-kind har­bor. “Sec­ond nature,” how­ever, is used to describe those advan­tages that humans have cre­ated within the urban frame­work. Pub­lic trans­porta­tion, street sys­tems, and, most impor­tantly, parks, are all “sec­ond nature” advan­tages in cities.

Take a moment to think about this. Many things that we con­sider most nat­ural about our cities and our coun­try (the green­belts, the park sys­tems, the green grass of the sub­urbs) would not exist in the true sense of “first nature.” In fact, the orig­i­nal grid plan for New York included one large park that was laid out so that the city would not totally over­ride the nat­ural state of Man­hat­tan Island. That park, which was then mil­i­tary parade ground, would ulti­mately become Tomp­kins Square Park (and its cur­rent iter­a­tion is far from “first nature”). As the city grew out­ward towards uptown, it took “sec­ond nature” human efforts by city offi­cials and urban land­scape archi­tects Fredrick Law Olm­stead and Carl Vaux to cre­ate, rather than nec­es­sar­ily pre­serve, green­ery in the form of Cen­tral and Prospect Parks.

While these parks impart a sys­tem of “nat­ural beauty,” it is impor­tant to remem­ber that they are as much the prod­uct of human inge­nu­ity as they are prod­ucts of nature. The tall leafy trees were care­fully planted, the grass prop­erly main­tained at con­sid­er­able cost, the man­made lakes (yes, they are not all nat­ural) and count­less other land­scap­ing fea­tures were all designed to give New York and its res­i­dents yet another advan­tage, another way of solid­i­fy­ing the city’s place at the top of the urban hier­ar­chy. Even the sub­urbs, which rep­re­sent a com­pro­mise between rural and urban, were care­fully laid out and land­scaped. Cer­tainly New York City, and Man­hat­tan in par­tic­u­lar, has changed greatly since its true “first nature” hey­day in the early 17th cen­tury at the begin­ning of the Dutch set­tle­ment era. Because of this, we can­not truly con­sider today’s pock­ets of urban green­ery as being the same “first nature” as the orig­i­nal Man­hat­tan Island.

What’s “nat­ural” about urban parks? This photo shows the con­struc­tion of Prospect Park in Brook­lyn. Photo Credit– Olm­stead and America’s Urban Parks (http://​the​olm​st​edle​gacy​.word​press​.com)

It’s a rad­i­cal way of rethink­ing nature and the envi­ron­ment within cities. Is any­thing in the urban frame­work still truly “first nature”? Obvi­ously there are some pock­ets where mother nature shines through in her true form across all five bor­oughs, but the over­all lack of true “first nature” fea­tures in cities forces us to recon­sider what we think of as nat­ural within the urban land­scape. In fact, some of the only places left largely untouched directly by man are in dan­ger of pol­lu­tion from the sec­ond­hand effects of urban­iza­tion. We must rec­og­nize that the things that we con­sider lit­tle oases of green­ery are not nat­ural. Rather, they are human prod­ucts of an era in which small islands of nature could be actively placed within cities to make the urban habi­tat more liv­able. Fur­ther­more, this real­iza­tion forces us to rethink how we explore “nature” in an urban context.

The next time you go to a park, con­sider the human input required to main­tain it, the care­ful plan­ning of its undu­lat­ing path­ways and changes in ele­va­tion, the pres­ence of thick green grass. This acknowl­edge­ment of the human ele­ment in “sec­ond nature” green­ery does not nec­es­sar­ily have to decrease your enjoy­ment of such spaces. Instead, we must be cog­nizant of the fact that when we canoe down the Bronx River, our abil­ity to do so is not nec­es­sar­ily a “first nature” abil­ity, but rather the prod­uct of tremen­dous human inge­nu­ity to restore, pro­tect and main­tain a quasi– “first nature” state. When we revel in the long bike path and the breeze bik­ing down River­side Park, we must remem­ber that it took tremen­dous human effort for that pos­si­bil­ity even to occur.

While we can­not and should not for­get Mother Nature, it would be a dis­ser­vice to urban envi­ron­men­tal­ists past, present, and future to assume that these nat­ural ele­ments were sim­ply the prod­ucts of “first nature”.  To ignore the human ele­ment would be to for­get how far we’ve come in mak­ing our cities organic and more con­nected to nature, and sim­i­larly to for­get our tremen­dous abil­ity to con­tinue this trend towards a brighter, greener urban future.

Here is a photo of the con­struc­tion of the “nat­ural” beauty of Cen­tral Park in Man­hat­tan. Photo Credit– The Bow­ery Boys (http://​the​bow​ery​boys​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​7​/​p​o​d​c​a​s​t​-​c​r​e​a​t​i​o​n​-​o​f​-​c​e​n​t​r​a​l​-​p​a​r​k​.​h​tml)

Inter­est­ing links on the topic of NYC’s first and sec­ond nature states:

To see what New York City’s parks looked like before they became the islands of green that we know them as today, peruse the “Before They Were Parks” web­site pro­vided by the Depart­ment of Parks and Recreation.

If you would like to explore Man­hat­tan Island in its orig­i­nal “first nature” state at the time of the ini­tial Dutch set­tle­ment, check out The Welikia Project, or pick up a copy of Welikia Direc­tor Dr. Eric C. Sanderson’s book Man­hatta: A Nat­ural His­tory of New York City.

Enjoy Dr. Sanderson’s inter­view with City Atlas as well!

Locating the Sacred: a new Asian American arts festival

The Locat­ing the Sacred Fes­ti­val is a series of New York City events that show­case a range of Asian Amer­i­can artists, from dancers and musi­cians to writ­ers and thinkers, who use art to explore what con­sti­tutes the sacred with goals of bring­ing com­mu­ni­ties together. The fes­ti­val invites all New York­ers to explore self and city by cel­e­brat­ing the diverse ways that art and com­mu­nity can inspire and are inspired by the sacred.

The pro­gram begins on Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 12 and con­cludes on Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 23, and will be held at var­i­ous loca­tions through­out the five bor­oughs. The fes­ti­val is a tes­ta­ment to the rich­ness of New York City while also an oppor­tu­nity to step away from its com­plex­i­ties and pace to enjoy a moment of cre­ative reflection.

Orga­nized by the Asian Amer­i­can Arts Alliance, which has a 30-year-old his­tory of pro­vid­ing a respect­ful and nur­tur­ing space for Asian Amer­i­can artists, Locat­ing the Sacred Fes­ti­val is in its sec­ond year. Though young, it shows great poten­tial to gen­er­ate a sus­tain­able medi­a­tion of what remains sacred in the ever-dynamic and ever-diverse lives of New York City.

For more infor­ma­tion, see locat​ingth​e​sa​cred​.org

 

Take a tour of New York…from the nineteenth century

Ever won­der what it was like to stroll through Cen­tral Park back when Sheep’s Meadow still had sheep graz­ing on it? Or to go for a dip at the beach when a woman show­ing a bit of ankle was cause to raise some eye­brows? The Arse­nal Gallery in Cen­tral Park is host­ing an exhibit of 68 pho­tographs cel­e­brat­ing the New York City parks sys­tem between 1890 and 1940. The pho­tos, which are part of the Museum of the City of New York’s archive, are a trea­sure trove of can­did shots from a bygone era; the nascent years of the sys­tem of New York Parks and Recre­ation that we know and love today.

 

While it’s fas­ci­nat­ing to see how much has changed; cloth­ing, auto­mo­biles, demo­graph­ics and eth­nic­i­ties, it’s some­times even more inter­est­ing to find the things that remain the same. Like going through old fam­ily pho­tographs and see­ing a grand­par­ent when they were in their teens or twen­ties, the old build­ings and other land­marks that we pass with insou­ciant famil­iar­ity today look more vibrant, and full of promise in these mono­chrome cap­tures. They stare defi­antly back, har­bin­gers of change, the sole famil­iar fea­ture in an alien land­scape about to be trans­formed by the ineluctable march of progress.

 

The pho­tographs of human sub­jects are no less impres­sive and thought pro­vok­ing. The cloth­ing may change, the peo­ple may change, the land­scape itself may change, but the pur­suits of the human heart are eter­nal and repeat­ing from one gen­er­a­tion to the next. The turn of a shoul­der, a woman’s smile, the unbri­dled exu­ber­ance of chil­dren at play; these things will never change.

The exhibit is on dis­play until August 30, 2012.

Click here for more information.

Why New York has the most valuable muck in the world

As progress on the much-delayed Sec­ond Avenue sub­way line creeps along, one ques­tion has undoubt­edly occurred to the many New York­ers who wit­ness the queues of dump trucks arriv­ing and depart­ing every day: “What do they do with all the rocks and dirt that are exca­vated from the site?”

Col­lo­qui­ally known as muck, hun­dreds of thou­sands of pounds of this stuff are to be exca­vated by project’s end. To give an idea of the scale of the project, just the planned 72nd Street sta­tion alone, which is being exca­vated from solid rock, is esti­mated to yield  375,000 cubic yards of muck. This amounts to 40 to 70 truck­loads a day, with each truck hav­ing a car­ry­ing capac­ity of about 20 tons. What does the city do with all this stuff? Well, as it hap­pens they can do quite a bit with it.

In fact, the New York that we know and love today is the result of gen­er­a­tions of recy­cled muck being put to good use.

New York is a city known world-wide for its ver­ti­cal expan­sion. The fact that Man­hat­tan is an island, and that its bor­ders were reached gen­er­a­tions ago, means that the city has no where to expand but up. Well, actu­ally this isn’t entirely true. It might sur­prise some peo­ple to learn that the island of Man­hat­tan has itself expanded to accom­mo­date the demands of an ever increas­ing pop­u­la­tion and this expan­sion was made pos­si­ble by using the muck from mas­sive con­struc­tion projects like our sub­way system.

For exam­ple, from 1896 all the way through to 1964, his­toric Ellis Island was con­tin­u­ally expanded by land­fill. What used to be a tiny five acre island now mea­sures thirty-two acres, due pri­mar­ily to the muck from the con­struc­tion of the let­tered sub­way lines in the 1930′s.

Governor’s Island, orig­i­nally 90 acres, was enlarged to its cur­rent 172 acres by muck from the con­struc­tion of the Lex­ing­ton Avenue sub­way line deposited on its south­ern end in the early 1900′s. The exca­va­tion for the foun­da­tion of the World Trade Cen­ter cre­ated enough land­fill to not only expand Bat­tery Park fur­ther into the har­bor, but also cre­ate all of the land now known as Bat­tery Park City, one of the most expen­sive and highly devel­oped res­i­den­tial dis­tricts in the city, bring­ing in mil­lions in tax rev­enue from land that was lit­er­ally cre­ated from noth­ing. Land­fill is even used in build­ing great mon­u­ments and works of art through­out the city. The Cathe­dral of St. John the Divine on the Upper West Side of Man­hat­tan is largely built from rock exca­vated from the con­struc­tion of the #1 line in 1904.

 

So with such an illus­tri­ous pedi­gree of prof­it­ing by reap­pro­pri­a­tion one would expect noth­ing less from today’s mod­ern engi­neers and city plan­ners. Unfor­tu­nately that doesn’t seem to be quite the case. Or at least not on the same scale as past projects.

There are actu­ally three major rail projects under way in the City right now: the Sec­ond Avenue sub­way line, the LIRR tun­nel under the East River, and the exten­sion of the 7 line to the far West Side. By their com­ple­tion these projects will have pro­duced hun­dreds of thou­sands, if not mil­lions of tons of muck, which has to be dis­posed of somewhere.

In the case of the LIRR tun­nel some of this muck was used to con­struct the land­scap­ing in Brook­lyn Bridge Park. Though the project is ongo­ing, the parts that have been com­pleted are an amaz­ing tes­ta­ment to the power of dynamic urban design.  In the case of the Sec­ond Avenue sub­way line, some of it is being used in the con­struc­tion of the new Ferry Point Golf Course in the Bronx. Both of these projects add eco­nomic value to the city’s real-estate, gen­er­ate rev­enue through busi­ness and taxes, and pro­vide much needed pub­lic space for rest and recre­ation. Not to men­tion the aes­thetic value that care­fully designed green space with its rolling hills and mean­der­ing paths adds to the aus­tere rec­ti­lin­ear­ity of the city’s landscape.

Some of the muck is also crushed and sold for fur­ther use as build­ing mate­r­ial in con­struc­tion and land­scap­ing, but the city does not directly profit from this busi­ness, as it is all con­ducted by pri­vate enter­prise. Dis­ap­point­ingly, it doesn’t seem as if any of the muck is being used to add to the over­all land mass of the city and it’s envi­rons, as in the past, but it is being used for land recla­ma­tion in some sites in NY and NJ in addi­tion to the above men­tioned build­ing mate­r­ial. None of it is actu­ally wast­ing away in a land­fill. But con­sid­er­ing New York’s suc­cess­ful his­tory of recy­cling pre­cious exca­va­tion mate­r­ial, maybe new uses will be found before this round of dig­ging is through.

Olmsted’s Homesteads

It was 190 years ago yes­ter­day, April 26 1822, that Fred­er­ick Law Olm­sted was born in Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut. Though he held many titles over a long and event­ful life, includ­ing farmer, jour­nal­ist, and pub­lic admin­is­tra­tor, he is most well-known as the United States’ fore­most land­scape archi­tect and of course, the designer of our beloved Cen­tral Park.

Olmsted’s career as a land­scape archi­tect sur­pris­ingly began with Cen­tral Park in 1857. It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine Man­hat­tan with­out Cen­tral Park, yet pub­lic parks were some­what of an inno­va­tion in Amer­i­can cities at the time and their true value is still being spec­u­lated on today.

 

In 1865 Olm­sted and his part­ner Calvert Vaux embarked on their sec­ond col­lab­o­ra­tion design­ing Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. As rev­o­lu­tion­ary a design as was Cen­tral Park, Olm­sted con­sid­ered Prospect Park to be his mas­ter­piece; the most ele­gant syn­the­sis of his key ideals of the pas­toral and the pic­turesque in land­scape design.

 

The social impact of these two projects alone can­not be over­stated. On a local level they pro­vided New York, and what was then the city of Brook­lyn, both of which were grow­ing at a phe­nom­e­nal rate, with much desired, and much needed green space within a dense and intensely oppres­sive urban­iza­tion. The parks were an oasis from the crowds, noises, and smells of these 19th cen­tury indus­trial cities. They were also a bold exper­i­ment in social egal­i­tar­i­an­ism. Designed with the lofti­est goals in mind, and cost­ing exor­bi­tant amounts of money to build, the parks were there to be used by all; from the wealth­i­est socialites to the poor­est immigrants.

 

These two exper­i­ments proved to be so suc­cess­ful, and the social ben­e­fits so far out­weighed the mon­e­tary costs that it soon became de rigueur for any up-and-coming Amer­i­can city to have one. By the end of his life, Olm­sted had had hun­dreds of com­mis­sions for parks and green spaces through­out the US. Through his mas­ter­ful designs, his tire­less efforts as a social com­men­ta­tor, and his role as New York’s parks com­mis­sioner, the idea of pub­lic parks as a social neces­sity slowly started to spread and become part of this country’s national consciousness.

The issue of pub­lic spaces is still hotly debated today. New York and Brook­lyn were still nascent cities at the time their great parks were con­structed. Cen­tral Park and Prospect Park were pruned from the wilder­ness. Any new green spaces today must, of neces­sity, be carved from the accre­tion of two cen­turies of urban­iza­tion. Build­ings and homes must be razed and highly valu­able (and tax­able) prop­erty must be taken and put aside for the pub­lic good; deci­sions fraught with eco­nomic and polit­i­cal com­pli­ca­tions. How­ever, the value of our city’s parks is unde­ni­able. And a city with­out them is incon­ceiv­able. It’s yet another point of pride for all New York­ers that our city was the prov­ing ground for a con­cept, indeed, a social move­ment, that would prove to be so essen­tial to suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able urban life.

(If you’ve got some time on your hands, I highly rec­om­mend this excel­lent Chan­nel Thir­teen video on the his­tory of Olm­sted and New York’s Parks).

Who is the Architect of the Century?

 

“Archi­tect of the Cen­tury” was the head­line report­ing the award­ing of the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Archi­tects’ Cen­ten­nial Medal to Ralph Walker in 1957. Though no such claim could ever be incon­testable, Walker’s many con­tri­bu­tions to the archi­tec­tural pro­fes­sion, and sky­scraper design in par­tic­u­lar, are widely recognized.

An exhibit at 212 West 18th street (for­merly belong­ing to the New York Tele­phone Com­pany, but in light of recent remod­el­ing and mar­ket­ing as a mul­ti­pur­pose high rise, now known as the Walker Build­ing) high­lights select works from his career. Though few out­side the indus­try are famil­iar with his name, undoubt­edly mil­lions of New York­ers have seen his build­ings at one time or another.

The one-room exhibit cov­ers the period of Walker’s life from 1917 to 1959 and four major works within that period: the Barclay-Vesey Build­ing, the Irv­ing Trust Build­ing, his designs for the 1933 worlds fair in Chicago, and of course, Walker Tower.

If you can look past the shame­less self-promotion of an exhibit whose fea­tured archi­tect designed the very build­ing hous­ing the exhibit and whose lux­ury apart­ments (coin­ci­den­tally) go on sale this spring, you’ll enjoy a quaint and highly infor­ma­tive expe­ri­ence that includes period pho­tographs, movies and sound clips, some actual art deco fit­tings from his build­ings, and in the case of Walker Tower, an amaz­ing inter­ac­tive phys­i­cal model where touch screen con­trols oper­ate the lights in spe­cific apart­ments up for sale this spring. The expe­ri­ence is greatly aug­mented by one of the bet­ter tour guides I’ve had the plea­sure of lis­ten­ing to, being both highly infor­ma­tive and extremely recep­tive to vis­i­tors’ questions.

 

So who was Ralph Walker and why should you care? Well, he is one of the archi­tects whose body of work is highly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a bygone era. He’s one of the icons of early sky­craper design, rep­re­sent­ing a gilded age in which vast sums were spent on the opu­lence of both the facade and espe­cially the inte­ri­ors of sky­scap­ers. (The stock mar­ket crash of 1929 curbed such dis­plays of wealth). Early in the emer­gence of this new build­ing typol­ogy sky­scrap­ers were called cathe­drals of com­merce. A more apt nomen­cla­ture based on their entry­ways might be mon­u­ments to mammon.

It’s a shame that many of these build­ings now have restricted access in the wake of 9/11 since many of their lob­bies are truly exquis­ite works of art that deserve to be admired and not just glanced at in pass­ing between the street and the ele­va­tor banks.

Walker’s Barclay-Vesey Build­ing was actu­ally dam­aged by the attacks, but has since been repaired. How­ever, in addi­tion to this dis­tinc­tion it is also con­sid­ered the first art deco sky­scraper ever built, and it is one of the first build­ings to really take advan­tage of the 1916 New York zon­ing ordi­nance, which placed lim­its on a building’s height in rela­tion to its dis­tance from the street in an attempt to make the city more hab­it­able by allow­ing more sun­light to hit pedestrians.

Many of Walker’s build­ings (not men­tioned in the exhibit, but eas­ily spot­ted in their nat­ural habi­tat by walk­ing the streets of New York) are notable for their mas­sive bulk and huge foot­print, often occu­py­ing an entire city block and look­ing more like a small moun­tain than a con­struct of man. Con­struc­tion on this scale is almost unheard of in New York today, partly because it’s rare for any devel­oper to be able to seize an entire city block, but also because Walker did a lot of work for the New York Telephone

Com­pany whose build­ings had spe­cial require­ments for the tons of mechan­i­cal equip­ment and legions of switch­board oper­a­tors that needed to be housed within their bulk.

Sky­scrap­ers are an Amer­i­can inno­va­tion and no city in Amer­ica is more famous for its sky­scrap­ers than New York. From the Flat­iron to the Free­dom Tower our his­tory is pre­served in our build­ings. Exhibits like this one remind us not just of how our build­ings have evolved, but also of the socioe­co­nomic con­di­tions dri­ving that evo­lu­tion. They are a win­dow into our past and from hab­it­abil­ity issues to eco­nomic down­turns, they remind us that while the archi­tec­ture has changed it has all been in ser­vice to the same issues that con­cern us today.

Admis­sion is free, but by appoint­ment only. Call 212–335-1800 to make an appoint­ment or visit ralph​walk​erex​hibit​.com.

 

 

Explore The History Of Your City With The Urban Memory Project

Founded in 2005 by edu­ca­tor Rebecca Kru­coff and play­wright Ain Gor­don, the Urban Mem­ory Project asks res­i­dents to explore the vital rela­tion­ship between their per­sonal his­to­ries and their city’s his­tory, prepar­ing the next gen­er­a­tion to be the voice of its own story. Par­tic­i­pants study issues and recent changes to the built envi­ron­ment in neigh­bor­hoods in tran­si­tion and present their find­ings in pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tions of pho­tog­ra­phy, oral his­tory, research and writing.

“The project part­ners with a high school his­tory or human­i­ties teacher to co-plan and co-teach a rig­or­ous civics course for six to 20 weeks. Stu­dents research and doc­u­ment their chang­ing city with photo-walks, text-based sem­i­nar dis­cus­sions, inter­views with com­mu­nity mem­bers, and exhi­bi­tions to for­mally present their work back to the com­mu­nity. Through­out the course, stu­dents grap­ple with the ques­tion of what serves the community’s greater good.”

For more details on the Urban Mem­ory Project, check out their web­site.

Reclaimed Urban Space in the East Village

The East Vil­lage com­mu­nity has a new mem­ber – the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) is open­ing up in the his­toric C-Squat building’s store­front on Avenue C. The mis­sion of the museum is to “pre­serve his­tory and pro­mote schol­ar­ship of grass­roots urban space activism by research­ing and archiv­ing efforts to cre­ate com­mu­nity spaces.”

Accord­ing to their web­site, “This small, inno­v­a­tive his­tory museum and liv­ing archive will high­light how East Vil­lage com­mu­nity mem­bers and grass­roots orga­ni­za­tions stepped up and helped trans­form aban­doned build­ings and vacant lots into vibrant com­mu­nity spaces and thriv­ing com­mu­nity gardens.”

Although MoRUS has a set loca­tion, tour guides, and a very active Tum­blr – recently named one of the Ten Best Urban­ism Blogs on Tum­blr by This Big City – the museum is still look­ing for dona­tions and sup­port to be able to launch the project com­pletely. Check out their Crow­drise page here to watch the video and to donate to the cause!

And, check out recent cov­er­age in the NYTimes and The Real Deal!

 

Adaptive Reuse in Split

Charles R. Wolfe, an envi­ron­men­tal lawyer based in Seat­tle has writ­ten an arti­cle on the ben­e­fits of adap­tive reuse of land­marks in urban rede­vel­op­ment. Accord­ing to him, “to rein­vent cities, we need to know where we have been and where we are going.” Focus­ing on the town of Split, Croa­tia, Wolfe exam­ines the ques­tions “How did our pre­de­ces­sors han­dle these issues in sim­pler times, when reuse was a prac­ti­cal neces­sity? What can we learn form those stories?”

He uses Split as an exam­ple due to its strong record of con­vert­ing and reusing impor­tant his­tor­i­cal land­marks. A for­mer mau­soleum is now used as a cathe­dral, and the Emperor’s apart­ments are now the “struc­tural frame­work of a res­i­den­tial area.” As a result, there is a clear inter­sec­tion of past and present in the city.

The argu­ment behind this fas­ci­nat­ing story is to encour­age the prac­tice of sus­tain­able reuse in our own cities today – to empha­size the idea that both pub­lic and pri­vate spaces can hold many pur­poses over time. There are many pos­i­tive aspects of the prac­tice of sus­tain­able reuse, and we should be aware of them.

Read more on The Atlantic Cities

 

Pro­fes­sor M.R. Wolfe sketch cour­tesy of Charles R. Wolfe.

Buildings = Energy Exhibit at the AIA — Oct 1, 2011 to Jan 12, 2012

AIA New York Chap­ter : Calendar

When: 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1 Join us for the open­ing of Buildings=Energy, the Cen­ter for Architecture’s fall exhi­bi­tion, on view Octo­ber 1, 2011 to Jan­u­ary 21, 2012. The Buildings=Energy open­ing is pre­sented in con­junc­tion the open­ing of Smarter Liv­ing – The 2000-Watt Society.

via Aiany

Have Your (Batter) Cake & Eat It, Too: A 19th-Century Food Tasting : October 14th, 2011

Have Your (Bat­ter) Cake & Eat It, Too: a 19th-Century Food Tasting…

 

Add this to your calendar:

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