Sixties Demolitions

[ablarc]

SIXTIES DEMOLITIONS

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/002a.jpg
Pennsylvania Station (1910-64).

In the early and mid-Sixties, prolonged insanity unleashed onto New York’s great Beaux-Arts monuments an orgy of architectural vandalism. Poster boys for this exhibition of looniness have come to be Penn Station and the Singer Building, both barely over fifty when they bit the dust.

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/9800.jpg
Singer Building (1906-68).

Times Square’s Hotel Astor and the New York Times Building’s fanciful skin had also passed the fifty-year mark:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/9900.JPG
Times Square: The New York Times Tower (1903-65) and the Hotel Astor beyond (with flag).

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/9950.jpg
The Hotel Astor (1904-67)

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/9951.jpg
The Astor was impossibly vast and French: three stories of space in its mansard alone.

A building’s golden anniversary generally finds owners and public alike with thoughts of demolition; starting really at about age forty, when its style has gone out of vogue, a building’s most in danger of being murdered (or as in the case of the New York Times Building, merely flayed). At that age, a building’s generally dirty, old-fashioned, boring and obsolete (like 2 Columbus Center, also about to be flayed). If it can survive to seventy it becomes “historic,” we scrub it squeaky clean and save it for posterity.

Because the Sixties’ callous demolitions now so appall us, we assume they occurred amidst vigorous protests such as you’d see today, now that we’ve re-learned to value Beaux-Arts buildings. But truth is, there was only a smattering of complaint over Penn Station, and almost none of it came from architects (in spite of what their revisionist apologists now claim).

At the time, everybody could see these buildings were obsolete, worn out and ugly; they weren’t shiny, new, functional, clean or modern. They were everything a modern architect hated. The clean, new Seagram Building (1958) and Chase-Manhattan (1960) had just sprung up to point the way; and the public had finally cottoned to the message of International Style Modernism. Progressive and forward-looking, they couldn’t wait to get more.

There were, however, these grimy, old-fashioned, obsolete buildings in the way, reminders of the benighted past, full of stuffy Victorians and Colonel Blowhards; each one was replaced with something sparkling, simple and modern.

Penn Station was replaced by a sparkling new Madison Square Garden and an office slab, which together formed a corpulent, squared-up paraphrase of trylon and perisphere:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/9952.jpg
Forty years old, they no longer sparkle. Obsolete, worn out and ugly, they’re no longer shiny, new, functional, clean or modern. The owners contemplate their replacement, and the public hopes for it. Will we miss them after they’re gone?

The Singer Building was replaced by the bronzetone banality of U.S. Steel’s tower, product of the International Style’s premier practitioners, SOM:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/9953b.jpg

As the Allied Chemical Building, the Times’ tired old tower was reskinned in glitzy marble and billboards:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/9954.jpg

And the dowdy old Astor was supplanted by the latest thing: you could tell, because it actually had fins! Like a DeSoto:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/9955.jpg
Astor Plaza.

Right now, we’re hard at work trashing monuments of Modernism, Brutalism and Post-Modernism; 2 Columbus Circle’s an example, and the U.N. Building had better watch out if it wants to keep its Modernist character; Sert’s Roosevelt Island ziggurats have already had their cheerful little bursts of color stripped. In Boston, you can hear daily calls to bulldoze that city’s iconic City Hall, high temple of Brutalism; and suggestions are made here regularly to flatten Madison Square Garden, now just as old, dirty and obsolete as the building it replaced.

We’re still moaning over the loss of the last two Gardens; if we replace this one with a replica of Old Penn Station, I’m sure we’ll be consoled; but if not, will this make three lost Gardens to bewail?

[ablarc]

The Savoy-Plaza (1927-64, McKim, Meade and White) bit the dust along with its Beaux-Arts brethren, and it was in many ways their peer. It spoke with an ever-so-faint Deco accent, but because it was at the tail end of a style that had fallen out of fashion it never quite made it to forty.

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/037 savoy plaza 2.JPG
The Savoy-Plaza.

In one respect Savoy-Plaza actually bested its peers, for it made sweet music with its neighbors, Sherry Netherland and the venerable Plaza. As the “Grand” in Grand Army Plaza, cello-like Savoy emitted staunchly rotund tones, while slender Sherry played an agile fiddle, and the Plaza mediated, viola-like. They were all French, this trio, in their jaunty green hats, and they were all hotels. Together in this most European corner of the park, they oozed plutocratic elegance:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/036 savoy plaza.JPG
Savoy was the same age as Sherry; they were both born in 1927, but while Savoy died an early death Sherry survived to become historic, and Plaza (born 1909) is not just historic but, at nearly a hundred, well on the way to a comfortable immortality.


They provided New York with perhaps its finest urban composition not actually conceived entire—as Rockefeller Center was—but piecemeal like the Piazza San Marco. A collaboration by architects over time.

Here in this stretch of Fifth Avenue, even the supporting cast was French; hovering at the trio’s outskirts in some views, Pierre, also a hotel in a green hat, sometimes joined in to make a quartet:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/038.jpg
Pierre’s the tower at left.

A 1927 aerial shows roof work on the Plaza, and Savoy and Sherry Netherland unstarted. It also shows the still residential expanse of the Forties and Fifties between Fifth and Sixth, soon to be swept aside for Rockefeller Center. This was the start of the mother of all building booms; it was after all the Roaring Twenties:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/040.JPG
Spot the Sixth Avenue El as it plunges under ground. Mansions lined Fifth Avenue immediately above the Plaza.

By the early Sixties, the Savoy Plaza had grown long in the tooth. It was replaced by the banal bulk of General Motors, Edward Durrell Stone’s white marble paraphrase of Hood’s Daily News grafted to a tepid rendition of Seagram’s massing. The music stopped. No one could harmonize with the new big guy; he was playing the kazoo.

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/042 grand army plaza 1987.JPG
1987 photo. GM presently belongs to Donald Trump, and is about to get an Apple store.

Some members of that old French gang still loiter around la Grande Armee’s Place, but they’re completely cowed by GM; Sherry hovers wraith-like in the shadow, barely visible:

http://66.230.220.70/images/post/savoy/043.jpg

There’s another, roughly contemporary but much smaller white marble building by Stone at the Park’s opposite, Southern corner; that’s the one to keep and this is the one to lose.

.

[lofter1]

Those old photos showing NYC as she was (before so many mediocre boxes replaced some incredible gems) really make me want to cry.

[Fabrizio]

"In the early and mid-Sixties, prolonged insanity unleashed onto New York’s great Beaux-Arts monuments an orgy of architectural vandalism. Poster boys for this exhibition of looniness...."

"Because the Sixties’ callous demolitions now so appall us, we assume they occurred amidst vigorous protests such as you’d see today, now that we’ve re-learned to value Beaux-Arts buildings. But truth is, there was only a smattering of complaint over Penn Station, and almost none of it came from architects (in spite of what their revisionist apologists now claim)."

The trashing is still going on.

It might not be happening with big showy "important" buildings like Penn Station, the Singer, the Astor, or the Savoy Plaza, but developers are still indeed chipping away at beautiful old New York. It might be a brownstone in Chelsea, it might be the ambience that a row of old tennement buildings provide, or maybe just a non descript brick office building in mid-town.... they´re being town down, reclad, or "renovated" with innapropriate, ugly additions. Just as people in the 60´s were unable to see the worth of certain buildings... it is the same today.

"Right now, we’re hard at work trashing monuments of Modernism, Brutalism and Post-Modernism..."

I doubt that people will ever be crying over the loss of the NYColiseum at Columbus Circle, or the loss of a Madison Square Garden. These buildings were built with one thing in mind: efficiency and cost ...and that can always be duplicated. There is no art there. The Seagrams, the CBS building, Lever House, The Ford Foundation building, 510 5th, the UN building, even the (former) Pan Am etc. are a different story.... if any of those should be threatened, there will most certainly be a debate.... as is happening with 2 Columbus Circle.

[Fabrizio]

Oh, and if you really want to weep, you should see the row of buildings that made up West 45th Street: the Helen-Hayes, the Morrosco, and the Bijou theatres (along with a small, beautiful, art-deco hotel whose name I can´t remember) all torn down and basically replaced with blank concrete walls for the hideously ugly Marriot Hotel.... and this was the 1980´s folks...

I was one of the crazies out there in the snow protesting BTW.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Cool pictures ablarc, I could stare at those old ones for hours.

[TomAuch]

This gallery makes me realize how much we've lost over the last four decades. Penn Station and the Singer Building especially.

[expose05]

Thank God there is a landmarks commission

[BrooklynRider]

One Liberty Plaza.

[expose05]

Some people say things happen for a reason. When people saw penn station get destroyed people were appauled and angry. Sadly somethings that were so historic and beautiful got destroyed and that's when the landmarks commission was created. So some good came out of it in ( Im not saying it was good to destroy those buildings) which these buildings got destroyed but so many buildings now are being saved and preserved. They are an example which mistakes were made and how we must never make those mistakes again in the future. Like Grand Central for example. It was saved :)

[Fabrizio]

We could make a nice list of treasures that were lost long after the Landmarks Commission was formed. The Landmarks Commission is great but no guarantee...

For the younger members of the forum who might not have known these beautiful buildings:

http://www.ibdb.com/VenueImages.asp?Id=1154

http://www.ibdb.com/VenueImages.asp?Id=1278

http://www.ibdb.com/VenueImages.asp?Id=1065

http://www.ibdb.com/VenueImages.asp?Id=1164

Be sure to click on the thumbnails.

These were all demolished en masse in 1982. Unbelievable but true.

Also during the 80´s: the awful recladding of the Broadway and the Palace theatres. The tearing down of the Rivoli. And even this year: the tearing down of the Studebaker building.

And this is just the theatre district.

[Comelade]

There is a super Internet site, specifically on "A PHOTOGRAPHIC ESSAY OF 19th CENTURY BUILDINGS DESTROYED IN THE 1970' S"

http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/

[krulltime]

Wow... so many nice old buildings destroy by those big boxes... I mean maybe todays newer buildings have a better character than the sixtees big boxes.

But I guess some unwanted sacrifices have to be made... to make our wonderful skyline.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I wish I had paid more attention.

I have a vague memory of the last time I was in Penn Station, a trip with the family to vist relatives in Pittsburgh.

It was during the demolition, and what I remember most was canvas tarps draped all over the interior and pigeons.

[thomasjfletcher]

Superb thread.
"an orgy of architectural vandalism"; you said it! People really went crazy for a while. (there are still some crazies left out there!)

[lofter1]

There is a super Internet site, http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/

Thanks for that link...

But I'm confused as to why The Cable Building (still standing at Broadway & Houston) is included.

[BrooklynRider]

Anyone know what kind of lease Penn Plaza and MSG have over Penn Station? That is one combo of buildings that is a serious blight on the cityscape.

[TLOZ Link5]

As always, ablarc provides an inimitable wealth of information with one of his excellent threads.

Speaking of Lost NYC, the webmaster of that site was a semi-regular poster here, and he always was very informative and eager to share information. He hasn't been around for a while, though; anyone know what happened to him?

[BrooklynRider]

Who was he (username)?

[TLOZ Link5]

lostnyc :P

[thomasjfletcher]

I'm still in touch with hime (Randall). He's busy selling casts he makes from rubber moulds he surreptitiously makes from carvings on old buildings. Very cool idea- I wish i could incorporate them into a design!

http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/forums/uploads/post-8-1116716856.jpg

http://www.lostnewyorkcity.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=136

[ablarc]

I doubt that people will ever be crying over the loss of the NYColiseum at Columbus Circle, or the loss of a Madison Square Garden. These buildings were built with one thing in mind: efficiency and cost ...and that can always be duplicated. There is no art there. The Seagrams, the CBS building, Lever House, The Ford Foundation building, 510 5th, the UN building, even the (former) Pan Am etc. are a different story.... if any of those should be threatened, there will most certainly be a debate.... as is happening with 2 Columbus Circle.
That's right, it's the presence of art that makes a building worth preserving. The sad thing is that we travel through history with a blind spot for the art of
forty to seventy years back in time. For this period, the mere existence of a preservation movement not based on NIMBY considerations should be enough reason to shelve thoughts of demolition.

[lofter1]

Regarding similarities between the Baths of Caracalla and the Old Penn Station ...

While Caracalla certainly served as the inspiration for the main room of the Old Penn, there are many distinctions.

The size of the two buildings is quite distinct, with the main room (tepidarium) at Caracalla smaller (82' x 170'; 125' high) than the main waitng room it inspired at Penn (277' long; 150' high).

The lay-out of the two buildings is also quite different as can be seen in the images below.

Caracalla

http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Thermae_of_Caracalla.html (http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Thermae_of_Caracalla.html)

The central mass of the building measured 390 feet wide by 740 feet long.

The largest room, the vaulted tepidarium, measured 82 by 170 feet. The inside height of the tepidarium has been estimated at 125 feet

http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/rome/baths_caracalla/ac880320.html (http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/rome/baths_caracalla/ac880320.html)


http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/rome/baths_caracalla/ac880320.jpg




Old Penn Station

http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/Penn%20Station/penn.html (http://www.forgotten-ny.com/STREET%20SCENES/Penn%20Station/penn.html)


Waiting Room: 277-foot long, 150-foot ceiling

http://www.greatbuildings.com/models/Pennsylvania_Station_mod.html#mod (http://www.greatbuildings.com/models/Pennsylvania_Station_mod.html#mod)


http://www.greatbuildings.com/models/Pennsylvania_Station.150.jpg (http://www.greatbuildings.com/models/Pennsylvania_Station_mod.html#mod)


http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?method=4&dsname=Wikipedia&dekey=Pennsylvania+Station&gwp=8&linktext=Penn%20Station


http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/b/ba/Penn_Station3.jpg

[londonlawyer]

It's horrible to see all of the magnificent old buildings that we lost, but we are lucky to have kept so many as well. Areas like the UWS, parts of the UES (west of 3rd), the Village, the Flatiron Dist., etc. have mostly pre-war buildings. Moreover, I was looking at books recently of yesterday and today photos of Denver and Chicago, cities that have far, far, far fewer old structures per capita than NY. Sadly for them, they had many magnificent buildings from the late 1800's and early 1900's that were razed and replaced with crap.

[Jim Koeleman]

Why they de-construct the 'Deutsche Bank Tower'?
Has it to much damage of the 9/11 attacks?

[ZippyTheChimp]

http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=3577&page=12

Use the Search function.

[ablarc]

Some people say things happen for a reason. When people saw penn station get destroyed people were appauled and angry. Sadly somethings that were so historic and beautiful got destroyed and that's when the landmarks commission was created. So some good came out of it in ( Im not saying it was good to destroy those buildings) which these buildings got destroyed but so many buildings now are being saved and preserved. They are an example which mistakes were made and how we must never make those mistakes again in the future.
Yeah, but have you been following the Landmarks Commission's recent performance? It's the little gems we're losing these days --the ones that give fine-grained character to a place.

.

[Peakrate212]

Yeah, but have you been following the Landmarks Commission's recent performance? It's the little gems we're losing these days --the ones that give fine-grained character to a place.

.

I like Bloomberg. But, he needs to rethink his appointment of Robert Tierney at Landmarks.

Unlike recent administrations including the Guliani era, Mr. Tierney's job is extremely important, as development pressures are pushing every site in NYC to re-evaluated for expansion, demolition, etc to maximize the FAR.

Look what has recently fallen: Horn and Hardart 57th street, Warhol Factory 33rd st, The Sutton Theatre, Le Madri building 18th st, the Beekman Theatre.

Look what is going: The Drake hotel, West 55th and west 54th street townhouses, west 13th street carriage house.

I think the time has come to evaluate EVERY BUILDING IN THIS CITY - start with Manhattan, as the pressure is greatest there.

We cannot afford to look back as we do to the 1960s and ask, "Why didnt anyone do anything?"

[lofter1]

What makes you think that Tierney isn't doing exactly what he's been appointed to do?

[TREPYE]

http://www.techno-science.net/illustration/Architecture/Gratte-ciel/Img/Singer_Building_1.jpg
Does anybody know why the knaves that decided to demolish the Singer Building chose its particular site. I mean they could have built Liberty Plaza a block away or something. Couldn't they? Why, why, why did they have to go out of their way to demolish that beauty when there might have been other sites available???

[Fabrizio]

Treype: Have you ever seen the movie Sunset Boulevard? See the scene where Norma Desmond pulls up at the studio in her 1920´s limousine ...in her hat and stole. She´s laughed at by everyone.

It´s the 1950´s... there was no nostalgia for the past.

The people that did protest the distruction of these buildings were oddballs. There were the gays...there were the busybody, "little old ladies in tennis shoes" as they were called back then. Oddballs interested in art and culture. These odballs were against "progress" ....against "all the construction jobs that will be created"....against "all of the office space that Manhattan needs".

Today you might call them "preservationists"...but back then, if term NIMBY had been yet coined that´s probably what most would´ve called them.

[ablarc]

It´s the 1950´s... there was no nostalgia for the past.
And you couldn't look to architects...their Orwellian education told them these weren't even architecture.

You looked in vain for Singer, Penn Station or even Chrysler in an architectural history textbook; they had all been edited out, like Trotsky.

[Ed007Toronto]

Does anybody know why the knaves that decided to demolish the Singer Building chose its particular site. I mean they could have built Liberty Plaza a block away or something. Couldn't they? Why, why, why did they have to go out of their way to demolish that beauty when there might have been other sites available???

Probably because the developer owned this building and not one a block away.

And just because these buildings are architectural marvels doesn't mean they make great office space. The developers were no doubt looking to make more money by offering modern office space. Most of these older buildings can't offer that no matter how much money you invest in bringing them up to date. Part of the reason many are now becoming condos.

[ablarc]

No doubt most folks on this board can’t fathom how Penn Station was torn down without much protest.

But there’s a great opportunity to observe first hand a similar dynamic forming right this minute in Boston over that city’s iconic and world-famous City Hall, which the mayor just proposed to sell.

You can observe first-hand and in real time the architectural “cognoscenti” of Boston’s forum howl for this now-much-hated building’s destruction. Like Penn Station in the early Sixties, Boston City Hall is the victim of deferred maintenance and changing fashions. Like Penn Station, it’s dirty, dysfunctional and in an outmoded style not yet rehabilitated. It’s hard to believe that architects and the public alike mostly hated Penn Station and called for its replacement by something up-to-date and profitable on its valuable and underutilized site. You can find those very self-same sentiments expressed about Boston City Hall here and now: http://www.archboston.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=524

A unique opportunity to glimpse history in the making by the likes of us.

You might even be tempted to join in.

After all, what's being proposed for destruction is a Sixties building !

Here's a chance to vent.





P.S. Be sure to scroll through all pages of that Boston thread. A fascinating read: everything you need to know about how we lost Penn Station.

.

[kz1000ps]

Lol, Ablarc. I just posted my first post in that thread. But I must say -- the original Penn Station is considered by nearly everyone to be aesthetically far superior to its replacement, regardless of architectural ideals behind it, while with Boston's City Hall, there's no comparison made to the old "old" city hall, regardless of invisible theories -- it's so ugly to so many people that it doesn't even bring up comparison to any other buildings. It's just plain ol' unenjoyable.

I ventured into the place for the first time a couple weeks ago (when I got the unofficial shots of the new tower), and I found it to be what others have said -- cold and hard to navigate. And entry to the building beneath the hulking mass does NOT inspire feelings of transparency and access, let alone compassion.

[TREPYE]

No doubt most folks on this board can’t fathom how Penn Station was torn down without much protest.

But there’s a great opportunity to observe first hand a similar dynamic forming right this minute in Boston over that city’s iconic and world-famous City Hall, which the mayor just proposed to sell.

You can observe first-hand and in real time the architectural “cognoscenti” of Boston’s forum howl for this now-much-hated building’s destruction. Like Penn Station in the early Sixties, Boston City Hall is the victim of deferred maintenance and changing fashions. Like Penn Station, it’s dirty, dysfunctional and in an outmoded style not yet rehabilitated. It’s hard to believe that architects and the public alike mostly hated Penn Station and called for its replacement by something up-to-date and profitable on its valuable and underutilized site. You can find those very self-same sentiments expressed about Boston City Hall here and now: http://www.archboston.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=524

A unique opportunity to glimpse history in the making by the likes of us.

You might even be tempted to join in.

After all, what's being proposed for destruction is a Sixties building !


I don't know about that Ablarc. I don't think it is a good comparison. Penn Station, as run down as it was at the time, was something New Yorkers were proud of and for good reason as it was a beautiful structure. I don't know if there was much ambivalence among New Yorkers. As far as Bostons City Hall; yeah, some people like and some hate it but I never recall hearing "oh, you gotta go check out Bostons City Hall". I Never went out of my way to see it and now that I see what it looks like it I don't feel like I missed much.

It think that this quote by the Boston forumer Ron Neuman says it all:

http://www.archboston.com/forum/templates/subSilver/images/icon_minipost.gif (http://www.archboston.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7471#7471)Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 6:03 pm Post subject: Call me a philistine if you must, but if a prominent new public building continues to be soundly rejected by the public after 38 years, it's a failure.

What 'new' structures do you see on tourist postcards representing the city? The Hancock Tower, the Zakim Bridge, probably even the long view from the harbor incorporating Rowes Wharf and International Place. But not City Hall.

Even the ambivalent Bostonian says:

http://www.archboston.com/forum/templates/subSilver/images/icon_minipost.gif (http://www.archboston.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=7496#7496)Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2006 11:14 pm Post subject: I'm so forever torn with this building. One side of me appreciates the architectural style, but the other side thinks it is absolutely atrocious. I definitely like to see the city hall plaza developed before razing city hall, but if after the plaza is redeveloped and it still looks like ass, then tear that shit down.

Why hasn't The Boston City Hall been designated as a landmark??
Key to this comparison is to postulate wether or not Penn station would have been designated as a Landmark had this protection been available at the time. I think it is safe to say that it would have with flying colors. Ultimately, the biggest reason that Penn was demolished is because it fell into the wrong hands at the wong time. The a-holes who brough it didn't give a flying f---about how the citizens of NYC felt about it.

If there is one good thing about these 60's projects it is that "emotionally" they are very easily replaceable. Think about how readily people would accept the demolition of Mr and Mrs Skylinekillers themselves: One Chase Plaza and One Liberty Plaza for the possibility of getting much better architecture. I think that the same thing is going on in Boston

[GVNY]

Ablarc, I am very confused regarding your comments. You believe that correcting one of the most horrific errors in city planning, which involved the complete destruction of a thriving neighborhood and intersecting streets for a useless plaza and eyesore brutalist architecture, is equal to that of the deconstruction of the beautiful, landmark Pennsylvania Station?

If so, I question your judgement.

Edit:

I recant my comments, Ablarc. Although I do believe this specific Boston urban renewal project to be one of the most horrific errors in city planning in history--which it is--the fact is is that City Hall was indeed constructed and that it was and is an important piece of architecture, and thus should be saved and appreciated. You have helped me understand why my first calls for the entire site's destruction were unwarranted.

I view Boston City Hall as a monstrosity, but its importance and influence on architecture cannot be understated, and thus it must be saved! And if you are one of those people, similar to me, who dislike this building with a passion, save the structure to appreciate it and to present it as an example to future generations of how not to build.

The plaza on the other hand...inexcusable. Raze it and return the narrow street grid and dense, urban fabric. Alas, if the entire block was demolished for a superior replacement, I would not be upset.

Ablarc, if there was one person I have learned from in regards to city planning, it is you! I have read many of your accomplished, intelligently thought out threads and posts, all of which have influenced my thoughts on city planning significantly. I jumped the gun regarding your opinions on Boston City Hall, truly believing your reasoning was flawed. But I was wrong, and through the mastery of your reasoning, have reinstated my trust in you. You're a brilliant city planner, even if you may not be one professionally.

[ablarc]

...the original Penn Station is considered by nearly everyone to be aesthetically far superior to its replacement...
Only today ... not then. That's entirely my point.

You have to believe me about that and resist the temptation to rewrite history to what you think it must have been to make sense to you in hindsight. The "hindsight" of folks who weren't there is at direct variance with public opinion at the time of demolition. Hard to believe, but true.

Though I was young, I was aghast at what was happening; it gave me a permanent distrust of conventional wisdom applied to aesthetic judgment, and that has carried over into my professional life. In fact, it directly influenced me to become an architect.

"How could people have been so blind?" Well, they had a slick, shiny and state-of-the-art new Madison Square Garden (took years for it to get dirty and "ugly" in peoples' eyes) and progressive high-rise offices to replace a lumbering, uneconomical, space-consuming and "ugly" embarrassment --and, why, even the station was made functional and economical below ground for its dwindling users...

so ugly to so many people that it doesn't even bring up comparison to any other buildings. It's just plain ol' unenjoyable.
EXACTLY what travelers and most members of the public said about Penn Station ...and virtually all architects!

Hard to believe? Certainly, to anyone from today who didn't actually witness it.

I found it to be what others have said -- cold and hard to navigate. And entry to the building beneath the hulking mass does NOT inspire feelings of transparency and access...
This could be --verbatim-- a quotation from a member of the Sixties public. They saw an inhuman and relentless fascist colonnade; if you take off your rosy glasses and approach it with a different mindset, you can train yourself to see another like it at Farley.

The love-fest that now swirls about Penn Station commenced some years after its disappearance; no premonition of it at all if you didn't encounter one of Penn Station's rare crackpot defenders of the time (youthful though I was, I was one of these. I couldn't believe what people were saying and doing as I watched Penn Station come down).

After a few years, the rosy glasses of nostalgia made folks forget how dirty and --yes!-- difficult to navigate and hence UGLY the building was perceived as being. But if you were a time-traveler to 1964, you wouldn't believe what people thought. It's not what you think today.

Not even Vincent Scully --who cemented a career with his later "scuttle in like a rat" comment-- had much to say at the time; he --along with his architect buddies-- was enthralled with Modernist ideology, which saw Penn Station as the derivative, structurally dishonest sham pastiche that Howard Roark certainly would have seen it as. What do you think Frank Lloyd Wright thought? And Le Corbusier? Hint: Boston City Hall was being conceived at the time --and again contrary to today's revisionist beliefs, the public embraced it when it opened. The revulsion came much later, just as with Penn Station.

I'm just a reporter from a past that most forumers can't have actually seen (a kind of Martian witness).




The first glimmers of regret are starting to dawn, I notice, in folks' perception of the 2 Columbus Circle affair.






It's good to beware of public opinion. I bet you can find some confirmation of that in the world of politics.

[MidtownGuy]

right on, ablarc

[ablarc]

Key to this comparison is to postulate wether or not Penn station would have been designated as a Landmark had this protection been available at the time. I think it is safe to say that it would have with flying colors.
Not safe to say at all. Having been there I can personally vouch for that.

We always like to find evidence in the present of our superiority to the benighted recent past.

That's what we're busy doing with Boston City Hall.

[MidtownGuy]

I saw just now, for the first time, some pictures of Boston City Hall. I like it! Sure, it's looking a bit shabby but this building must be saved. What presence. It's a great example of it's time and I personally think it's beautiful, though I know many here will think I'm nuts. One thing though, I never liked vast barren plazas. What's up wit that?!

[ZippyTheChimp]

Key to this comparison is to postulate wether or not Penn station would have been designated as a Landmark had this protection been available at the time. I think it is safe to say that it would have with flying colors.Cart before the horse.

Public impetus to establish landmark laws would have been preceded by an appreciation of the building as worthy of preservation.

[Fahzee]

I saw just now, for the first time, some pictures of Boston City Hall. I like it! Sure, it's looking a bit shabby but this building must be saved. What presence. It's a great example of it's time and I personally think it's beautiful, though I know many here will think I'm nuts. One thing though, I never liked vast barren plazas. What's up wit that?!

Exactly. the plaza surrounding city hall is the aesthetic equivelant of a vacant lot. From just about any angle, it looks unfinished, and forbodding. (and ridiculously windy in the winter)

And yet, that might be the point
- with all of the barren, open space, the actual city hall becomes otherworldly.
Everytime I visit boston I've felt that the City Hall complex is a bit of an architectural Catch-22. The plaza helps enforce the presence of city hall but at the same time, the plaza increases the impersonal feel of the building.

[TREPYE]

Not safe to say at all. Having been there I can personally vouch for that.

We always like to find evidence in the present of our superiority to the benighted recent past.

That's what we're busy doing with Boston City Hall.

Cart before the horse.

Public impetus to establish landmark laws would have been preceded by an appreciation of the building as worthy of preservation.

Im confused. I'm not going to pretend that I was there cuz I wasn't so my conclusions about the public appreciation of Penn Station are based on the articles speaking against its demise and the formation of the Landmark Preservation being directly related. If people didnt appreciate it enough how is it that they were gavanized to create an agency to protect future prospective landmarks? Or was Grand Central station more beloved and thus its impending demolition motivated people more than the actual demolition of Penn Station?

[MidtownGuy]

with all of the barren, open space, the actual city hall becomes otherworldly

Your right. Otherworldly is a really good word to describe it. I always thought that aesthetic was beautiful, just hostile. Like something from an old sci fi movie. I'm thinking one of the Planet of the Apes episodes.

[ablarc]

I personally think it's beautiful, though I know many here will think I'm nuts. One thing though, I never liked vast barren plazas. What's up wit that?!
What's up is Modernist concepts of space and civic virtue. The Modernists in question were: Planning Czar and Moses Clone Ed Logue, Master Planner I.M. Pei and Prizewinning Architectural Geniuses Kallmann and McKinnell (the latter only 25 years old at the time).

Modernist space was traditional urban space turned inside out: instead of Piazza San Marco as outdoor room surrounded by building walls it was City Hall Plaza surrounding a sculptural lump in the infinitude of unbounded space. The plaza’s space stretched shapelessly from here to Timbuktu --a concept familiar from every suburb and from Sixth Avenue.

In Boston, the problem was exacerbated by preservationists’ insistence on a visual corridor to North Church, which made the plaza especially leaky where there should have been an inside corner.

The supposedly civic and democratic space was so vast that when tens of thousands gathered there to protest Vietnam, the crowd seemed paltry. Not even the Red Sox were able to fill it.

[ablarc]

If people didnt appreciate it enough how is it that they were gavanized to create an agency to protect future prospective landmarks?
They weren't galvanized immediately; look at the time line.

Or was Grand Central station more beloved and thus its impending demolition motivated people more than the actual demolition of Penn Station?
Yes.

Beaux-Arts architecture had become popular again. By that time, Singer, Savoy-Plaza, Astor and New York Times were all gone. Without murmur.

[kz1000ps]

Only today ... not then. That's entirely my point...

EXACTLY what travelers and most members of the public said about Penn Station ...and virtually all architects!

Hard to believe? Certainly, to anyone from today who didn't actually witness it.

I understand the whole "don't rewrite history under today's terms" mantra. I've read Walter Whitehill's "Topographical History", among others, and considering that (arguably) Boston's preeminent architectural historian was for the new building before and after it was built speaks volumes to myself -- In other words, I feel I have a decent grasp on what people were thinking then, and see parallels to our attitudes today.

What I don't see, by attempting to put myself in future people's shoes (a sketchy proposition I know), is anyone getting all warm and fuzzy over a picture of the by-then-demolished City Hall by Kallman + McKinnell. While I don't care either way if it stays or not (economics behind keeping it is a whole 'nother story), I highly doubt that aonther 40 years from now anyone besides architects and art historians would lose a wink of sleep over its disappearance. Unless of course the new city hall turns out to be even worse than the current one, which is entirely possible.

Of course this argument brings up the whole issue of the common man versus the cultured art critic, and while you say "beware of public opinion," I say to that "just as much beware those who can seemingly talk forever and in effect say nothing." I don't prefer either side, but in the case of City Hall, I side with Joe-sixpack.

[ablarc]

Your right. Otherworldly is a really good word to describe it. I always thought that aesthetic was beautiful, just hostile. Like something from an old sci fi movie. I'm thinking one of the Planet of the Apes episodes.
Albany is even more so. And how about Brasilia? Or Chandigarh?

Modernist space. Grows out of Corbu. He liked things big.

When he came to New York, he said: "The buildings are too small and too close together."

If you put lots of space around something you can step back and appreciate how BIG it really is.

[ablarc]

What I don't see, by attempting to put myself in future people's shoes (a sketchy proposition I know), is anyone getting all warm and fuzzy over a picture of the by-then-demolished City Hall by Kallman + McKinnell.
You won't have to wait too long. Chances are you can expect Bob Campbell to weigh in any moment. Though he'll appear to equivocate in his usual even-handed tones (brief genuflection to Joe Sixpack's view) you'll be able to read his position accurately enough.

.

[Jasonik]

40 years from now the public will want to demolish Frank Gehry's buildings because they are violent, out of context and impractical to maintain. Only "architects and art historians" will "lose a wink of sleep" over it.

The only reason there are anything other than generic banal shopping mall civic buildings and cookie-cutter tract development is because of "architects and art historians".

Architecture and Architectural appreciation are only elitist rarefied concepts to our vastly underappreciating public because of the paucity of education regarding the continium of Western Architectural History given to "Joe Sixpack" (of juiceboxes) when a child. We can have all the preservation societies and committees but they will be for nought if gradeschool developers and real estate speculators are not educated about arguably the most important aspect of their future vocations.

If people are kept naive then politicians will continue to be tempted to stage grand gestures and appeal to (uninformed) public opinion and play political three card monte with public land, private developers, and eminent domain.

[ablarc]

^ Largely true, alas. Populist impulses won't do the trick, 'coz popular taste is fickle.

Preservationism has been with us since way before Penn Station's demise. In the Depression, the WPA produced a definitive register of American Colonial architecture, Williamsburg was "restored", and in the Eighteenth Century, Nicholas Hawksmoor slapped a contextual Gothick front on Westminster Abbey.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Im confused. I'm not going to pretend that I was there cuz I wasn't so my conclusions about the public appreciation of Penn Station are based on the articles speaking against its demise and the formation of the Landmark Preservation being directly related. If people didnt appreciate it enough how is it that they were gavanized to create an agency to protect future prospective landmarks? Or was Grand Central station more beloved and thus its impending demolition motivated people more than the actual demolition of Penn Station?My recollection of the time is that there never was any general public outcry for preserving Penn Station, or support for the Landmarks Preservation Law enacted in 1965. I believe that the vocal opposition to the destruction by an influential minority made city government realize that it had a public relations embarressment on its hands.

The public involvement of note at the time was the designation of Brooklyn Heights as a historic district, and even there it was an affluent neighborhood that had recently been faced with destruction by the BQE construction. The rest of the city hardly noticed.

Grand Central Terminal was designated a landmark in 1967, but I don't think was any more beloved than Penn Station. Pennsy had merged with NY Central to form Penn Central RR, but it continued a downward spiral that was reflected in the deteriorating condition of the terminal throughout the 70s.

Landmarks got its teeth when the city sued the railroad in 1968 to stop construction plans which challenged the legality of historic preservation.

The case was heard by the US Supreme Court in 1978, the first time the court ruled on the matter of landmark designation.

Exerpt from Court ruling (http://Exerpt from Court ruling)

As Jasonik noted, the public attitude has not changed. Historic preservation is supported by a vocal minority.

[ManhattanKnight]

Exerpt from Court ruling (http://Exerpt from Court ruling)



Broken link? Here's the full decision for anyone who's interested:

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?navby=CASE&court=US&vol=438&page=104

[Fabrizio]

I think its very hard for young people to understand the 1950s and 1960s mindset.

They first started to talk about tearing down Penn Station in 1962.... put that in context. That was the year of the Seattle Worlds fair.... the monorail. I was a little boy, but can still remember the photos of that thing in the magazines we would get delivered, Life and Look.

Astronauts were national heros. John Glenn was like a major rock star.

Jet travel was still new and the big deal. Being a stewardesses was like THE sexiest job on earth. The new TWA terminal was what modern travel was all about.

In !964 you had the NY Worlds fair with super futuristic architecture. You had the Beatles, the Mustang, the GTO, the mini-skirt. These were all national phenomena, that friggin took the country by storm. The message was about being modern and young.

So where does an old drafty TRAIN STATION for gosh sakes, fit into all of this?

Good riddance!

[ablarc]

The message was about being modern and young.

So where does an old drafty TRAIN STATION for gosh sakes, fit into all of this?

Good riddance!
And now it's happening all over again ...except now the train station's a drafty old City Hall.

[Bob]

I suspect a major reason many of these old buildings were lost is lack of proper maintenance. Many were filthy, out of repair, ugly, etc. A building starts to die the moment it is built! Proper upkeep is therefore essential.

[kz1000ps]

Standing tough under stars and stripes
we can tell
This dream's in sight
You've got to admit it
At this point in time that it's clear - the future looks bright!

On that train all graphite and glitter
undersea by rail
Ninety minutes from New York to Paris
well by '76 we'll be A.O.K

"International Geophysical Year"
Donald Fagen, "The Nightfly", 1982

[ablarc]

I suspect a major reason many of these old buildings were lost is lack of proper maintenance. Many were filthy, out of repair, ugly, etc. A building starts to die the moment it is built! Proper upkeep is therefore essential.
Exactly.

Some folks can't see past the dirt.

[ZippyTheChimp]

I think that was a major factor in the lack of support for 2CC - broken sidewalk, barricaded entry, debris, in the lobby half dead trees poking out from the perennial sidewalk shed.

I think its very hard for young people to understand the 1950s and 1960s mindset.

They first started to talk about tearing down Penn Station in 1962.... put that in context. That was the year of the Seattle Worlds fair.... the monorail. I was a little boy, but can still remember the photos of that thing in the magazines we would get delivered, Life and Look.

Astronauts were national heros. John Glenn was like a major rock star.

Jet travel was still new and the big deal. Being a stewardesses was like THE sexiest job on earth. The new TWA terminal was what modern travel was all about.

In !964 you had the NY Worlds fair with super futuristic architecture. You had the Beatles, the Mustang, the GTO, the mini-skirt. These were all national phenomena, that friggin took the country by storm. The message was about being modern and young.

So where does an old drafty TRAIN STATION for gosh sakes, fit into all of this?

Good riddance!

It wasn't just young people.

Teenagers today probably see the preceding decades in a more linear way than in the 60s. There was a distinct chasm that separated the worlds before and after WWII. We still use the terms today: pre-war, post-war.

The image of Europe's old architecture that American 20-something GIs brought back home was something like this:

http://www.anicursor.com/3ad/trotman2.jpg http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/trs/images/hamburg-bombing3b33646r.jpg

[TREPYE]

So what you folks are trying to tell us "younglings" is that the acceptance of the demolition of Penn, Singer, Savvory etc. was just a fad. Modernism presented a new and "space age way" of doing things thus it became more acceptable in the name of progress.

So how do you explain our mindset today? Some (if not most) would beg to have the likes of architectural masterpieces in the quality and scale of these Beaux Arts structures. Glass is the wave of the future in scrapers and at points I can't stand its repetitive unimaginative mundane impact.

Perhaps our level of progress has "plateaued" out to the point that since it can't get any better the repetitive notion of our contemporary architecture makes us wish for the structures of the past. Has architecture progressed to a level of practicality that does not allow us to economically facilitate the next wave of natural progress such as building "structural expressionism" style scrapers such as 80 South street, or building much taller towers (without the finagle of masts ala NYTimes Tower, BoA)? This natural progress may entice us a little more and make us not envy the structures of the past so much.

[Luca]

Ablarc convincingly argues against the mind-trap of ahistorical thinking in relation to preservationism and deftly deflates the purely populist "what people like/dislike" measure of conservation worthiness as being too predictably time-dependent ('everyone' hates the 30-50 year old buildings).

I also thought Fabrizio evoked the futurist/progressivist slant of the 60s well.

Nonetheless, I think you can push the relativism too far. There are objective standards in building and urban patterns. There are also considerable ideological constructs in architecture, especially where major public buildings are concerned. I would argue that hyper-minimalist/brutalist buildings and Corbusian/Bauhaus urban form represent a nadir in the content and expression of those objective qualities so that, historical/cultural parallels notwithstanding, the demolition of the signer building and the demolition of, say, most of Albany are not of comparable artistic (de)merit.

That said, I think the most infamous/iconic examples of 50s-70s architecture should be preserved:
1. as mementi insania per admonitio moliori
2. because, dislike them as we may, posterity may judge them differently and great buildings do not belong just to those alive today, not unlike nature, say.

[ablarc]

...dislike them as we may, posterity may judge them differently and great buildings do not belong just to those alive today, not unlike nature, say.
Tolerating ... even re-introducing ... wolves in the wilds.

For future generations.

.

[ablarc]

...you can expect Bob Campbell to weigh in any moment. Though he'll appear to equivocate in his usual even-handed tones (brief genuflection to Joe Sixpack's view) you'll be able to read his position accurately enough.
As predicted:

THE ARCHITECTURE
Brutal, powerful structure of 1969 is now out of style

By Robert Campbell, Globe Correspondent | December 13, 2006

As much as any building in the world, Boston City Hall is a measure of changing fashions in architecture.

It's hard to believe now, but in a poll of architects and historians in the bicentennial year of 1976, the building was voted one of the 10 greatest works of architecture in American history.

No way would that happen today. And even back then, the building was a lot more popular with architects than it was with the public.

The design for the building was chosen by a panel of expert jurors in an open design competition. Any architect in the United States could enter. The winners were two Columbia University architecture professors, Gerhard Kallmann and Noel Michael McKinnell. Both were inexperienced -- McKinnell was still in his 20s -- and neither had actually built a building before.

City Hall opened in 1969. And 1969 was the era of what is called Brutalism.

Brutalism was an architectural style of massive, powerful, raw concrete buildings. The term comes not from the English word "brutal" but from the French "beton brut," which means raw or unfinished concrete.

The style was derived from the late work of the most famous architect of that era, Le Corbusier. Boston City Hall, in fact, is pretty closely modeled on what is perhaps the French architect's greatest building, the monastery of La Tourette in southern France.

Corbusier's love of raw concrete was inspired by his discovery of World War II pillboxes on the coast of France, concrete buildings thrown up quickly for defense. They seemed very real, very honest, not like something a sophisticated architect had fussed over.

But La Tourette is modest in scale. Blown up to the proportions of City Hall, Brutalism does become brutal. From the beginning, most people found it intimidating.

The powerful outward thrust of the middle floors, as seen from outside, is the architects' way of letting you know that these floors are occupied by the important people, namely the mayor and the city council. But they look not so much important as aggressive, even threatening.

The biggest problem with City Hall, though, is the interiors. Indoor walls made of gray concrete, often without much natural daylight, are depressing. And there are a lot of them.

Those who admire the building sometimes argue that architecture doesn't have to be beautiful to be great. For them, City Hall is an ugly, wonderful, powerful, unforgettable building.

But fashions come and go in architecture, as in any field. City Hall today is definitely out.

One thing everyone agrees on is that the building could easily be improved. Even the original architects, who now run a very successful national practice out of Boston, say they would welcome some changes.

The multistory atrium, which is now open at the top to the sky, and therefore the rain, could be glassed in to become a delightful winter garden. A restaurant at the top of the great entry staircase could be a place for staff and public to meet and schmooze.

Even a bit of ivy on the exterior wouldn't hurt. The architects' original idea of a beer hall in the basement, like those in many German city halls, could be revived.

Mayor Menino would like the site and the plaza sold for redevelopment. The city could make a profit that way. But City Hall, whatever you think of it, is in an ideal location, easy to reach by subway. They mayor's been talking about tearing it down for years. He should be thinking instead of making it the best that it can be.

[Fabrizio]

Luca writes:

"I would argue that hyper-minimalist/brutalist buildings and Corbusian/Bauhaus urban form represent a nadir in the content and expression of those objective qualities so that, historical/cultural parallels notwithstanding, the demolition of the signer building and the demolition of, say, most of Albany are not of comparable artistic (de)merit."

I dont know this city hall except from photos.... but I do love the brutalist style. Howerever, I will agree that historic buildings like Penn Station and the Singer building, as well as so many of the small historic buildings we are seeing torn down today, have one element that make them even more important than the landmarks built after WWII: the hand of the artisan.

Rough, poured concrete can look chic, as far as my taste goes, but the sculptures, reliefs, mosiacs, murals, wood work.... and other building techniques that pre-WWII buildings have, are out of use today and nearly impossible to duplicate. Often for that alone, they should be considered for saving.

---

[MidtownGuy]

Keep, the building, make the improvements. Surely the described grey interior walls can somehow be warmed. Perhaps keep some raw areas, color-washed by LED light installations, and adding modern finishes in other areas.
The proposed wintergarden sounds promising. Certainly improvements can be made to the plaza to make it more inviting. Some kind of minimalist water feature, some concrete benches at the very least
http://static.flickr.com/132/322208807_6e4dba09e4.jpg
and you know,some kind of greenery in the front yard wouldn't hurt. There are ways to do it harmoniously with the architecture, not interfering with the monumentality of the building's presence. I would not add trees, best to keep the immediate approach clear, but some lowslung plantings to break up the monotony of all those bricks would go a long way.
http://static.flickr.com/142/322213405_d8f465f63b.jpg
Can beton brut be power-cleaned somehow? i know beton brut wasn't supposed to be pristine by original intent, but a little bit of freneshening up
is in order.

The more I look at this building the more I absolutely love it.
http://static.flickr.com/144/322218262_b39e4aaea8.jpg

[Fabrizio]

Midtown: as Im sure youve seen in your travels, big empty piazzas can work beautifully. Isnt it interesting that this one does not.

A great, big, red brick piazza.... no trees.... no furniture...not even steps:

[MidtownGuy]

Absolutely. ^^It's like night and day.
The above scene is urban theater. A place to linger.

[ryan]

I love this building, but I hate everything built in the 80's - especially anything by Michael Graves. I don't think you can overstate the subjective nature of fashion. Every generation changes things - just for the sake of change (encouraged, no doubt by planned obsolescence).

That said, the baby boomers have a specific hate of old things. My mother told me she thought Penn Station was "creepy" and "scary - like a horror movie" so she was really happy when it was replaced. She also hates Victorian anything, and loves anything newly built.

Think about "haunted" or "witch's" houses - always ornate pre-war buildings. It's a part of our cultural subconscious.

[lofter1]

I've never been inside the Boston City Hall, but have had the dis-pleasure of navigating the interior of one of NYC's Brutalist public buildings: the Manhattan Family Courthouse (http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/resources/man_familycourt.shtml) at 60 Lafayette Street (1975; Architect: Haines Lundberg Waehler).

This is how it originally appeared from the outside, clad all in shiny black stone, as cold as midnight ice:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/images/buildings/man_newfc.jpg

The original design was also seemingly ill-conceived -- and notoriously hard to maintain with spalling everywhere. Hence the exterior recently has been re-clad, now in a lighter granite -- more windows have been cut into the facade to allow better light into the building and the public lobby area has been re-formed.

However, the interior on the upper floors where one finds the courtrooms and other public areas remains in its original Brutal state: all exposed concrete and odd angles -- with every hallway running at diagonals so that upon entering one is immediately confused and feels lost and overwhelmed by the building itself. This is hardly what a citizen should be meant to experience in a place that is supposed to serve the people of the City. Rather, in this building at least, one feels that the Machine of Justice has taken control and will do with you willy-nilly as it pleases.

A comment by the architect? Perhaps ...

But the result of this particular building is that it dis-empowers and reduces the individual.

To me that shows a total failure of public architecture.

[kz1000ps]

From nearly two years ago:

http://img157.imageshack.us/img157/2145/dscf0060uy0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

[ablarc]

Midtown: as Im sure youve seen in your travels, big empty piazzas can work beautifully. Isnt it interesting that this one does not.

A great, big, red brick piazza.... no trees.... no furniture...not even steps:
Siena is fully enclosed by buildings, so it feels like a room.

No leaking space, no roaring traffic.

[pianoman11686]

So what you folks are trying to tell us "younglings" is that the acceptance of the demolition of Penn, Singer, Savvory etc. was just a fad. Modernism presented a new and "space age way" of doing things thus it became more acceptable in the name of progress.

So how do you explain our mindset today? Some (if not most) would beg to have the likes of architectural masterpieces in the quality and scale of these Beaux Arts structures. Glass is the wave of the future in scrapers and at points I can't stand its repetitive unimaginative mundane impact.

Perhaps our level of progress has "plateaued" out to the point that since it can't get any better the repetitive notion of our contemporary architecture makes us wish for the structures of the past. Has architecture progressed to a level of practicality that does not allow us to economically facilitate the next wave of natural progress such as building "structural expressionism" style scrapers such as 80 South street, or building much taller towers (without the finagle of masts ala NYTimes Tower, BoA)? This natural progress may entice us a little more and make us not envy the structures of the past so much.

These are some good questions, and they might even explain why there's a greater level of (perceived) apathy among the public about architecture, as some people have noted. Can we even say there's a definitive architectural style in vogue today? I've heard it called "post-Post Modernism," but I'm finding it difficult to define what that means. I guess you could say the current trend is a less strict interpretation of Modernism, but there's so much else out there: deconstructionism (Gehry, Libeskind, Herzon/DeMeuron), structural expression, as you mentioned, the occasional PoMo, and some more classical revivalism.

It's a strange question, but: is architecture finished going through a stylistic evolution? Is it just going to be a mix of styles from now on, instead of a new dominant one like Brutalism coming along? And does this, in any way, make structures like Boston's City Hall all the more significant?

[ablarc]

I would argue that hyper-minimalist/brutalist buildings and Corbusian/Bauhaus urban form represent a nadir in the content and expression of those objective qualities so that, historical/cultural parallels notwithstanding, the demolition of the signer building and the demolition of, say, most of Albany are not of comparable artistic (de)merit.
That may be, but even this will vary with time.

That said, I think the most infamous/iconic examples of 50s-70s architecture should be preserved:
1. as mementi insania per admonitio moliori
2. because, dislike them as we may, posterity may judge them differently and great buildings do not belong just to those alive today, not unlike nature, say.
The only solution, imo, is to landmark anything and everything that a decent number of art historians ever declared in print to be significant architecture. That would have saved Penn Station and 2 Columbus Circle alike, and it would save Boston City Hall, even with all these buildings at their nadir of popularity.

That's the only time a building is endangered anyway. If it can survive the trough it's home free.

If such a mechanism existed, it would stir activists to lobby art historians to take a greater interest in buildings like Shelly's Automat (and ...lawdy... those Midtown townhouses (Lehman, et al.).

[TREPYE]

It's a strange question, but: is architecture finished going through a stylistic evolution? Is it just going to be a mix of styles from now on, instead of a new dominant one like Brutalism coming along? And does this, in any way, make structures like Boston's City Hall all the more significant?

An adequate point indeed. The current style a somewhat diverse. But this diversity does not make us disregard the quality of previous architectural styles the way they were disregarded in the sixties. Perhaps the relics of prewar were just simpy better thats why the likes of Boston's City Hall are a lot more easily expendable than say if the same thing was happening to the Municipal Building in NYC.

I was kinda hoping that some of the [percieved] elders statesmen involved in this discussion -namely: Ablarc, Zippy, or Fabrizio- would answer the relation of todays mindset (as I described it in my previous post (http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showpost.php?p=135823&postcount=64)) to the mindset in the 60's.

[ablarc]

But this diversity does not make us disregard the quality of previous architectural styles the way they were disregarded in the sixties. Perhaps the relics of prewar were just simpy better thats why the likes of Boston's City Hall are a lot more easily expendable than say if the same thing was happening to the Municipal Building in NYC.
Not so; in fact you're demonstrating the very same blind spot for Boston City Hall as folks showed towards Penn Station when it was City Hall's age. Think of yourself as driving a car with a broad c-pillar. It produces a blind spot, and you carry it around with you. It's always there, the same distance back at all times as you travel through time. The blind spot is ALWAYS there toward the architecture of 35-60 years back.

If Boston City Hall survives to the year 2025, I dare say it will be regarded as a higher architectural achievement than the Municipal Building. That's because by the eternal principles of architectural tectonics, it actually IS.

You can catch a discussion of this as well as a graphic presentation of the blind spot here: http://architecturalboston.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=501&start=30

[TREPYE]

Not so; in fact you're demonstrating the very same blind spot for Boston City Hall as folks showed towards Penn Station when it was City Hall's age. Think of yourself as driving a car with a broad c-pillar. It produces a blind spot, and you carry it around with you. It's always there, the same distance back at all times as you travel through time. The blind spot is ALWAYS there toward the architecture of 35-60 years back.

If Boston City Hall survives to the year 2025, I dare say it will be regarded as a higher architectural achievement than the Municipal Building. That's because by the eternal principles of architectural tectonics, it actually IS.

You can catch a discussion of this as well as a graphic presentation of the blind spot here: http://architecturalboston.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=501&start=30

I think you are talking in terms of nostalgia for a defunct architectural style. Forget about age and time, lets take the 4th dimension out of this. Suppose they were the same age (Municipal and Bostons City Hall). In those terms I'm speaking about sheer quality and "what would you rather have in your city" type of preference. And does this have a bigger impact on the ambivalence among the public of whether to keep it or not?

Another interesting aspect (bigger than the nostalgic component) to this is what is it being replaced with. If it is another SOM type glass box then people would definitely rather have the brutalist City Hall. If its something like Calatrava's Path train station does it take the sting out of loosing it?

[pianoman11686]

I think you are talking in terms of nostalgia for a defunct architectural style. Forget about age and time, lets take the 4th dimension out of this. Suppose they were the same age (Municipal and Bostons City Hall). In those terms I'm speaking about sheer quality and "what would you rather have in your city" type of preference. And does this have a bigger impact on the ambivalence among the public of whether to keep it or not?

I think what he's saying is that you just can't "forget about age and time," that the passage of time itself influences how people perceive "quality." And that perhaps only the most qualified individuals (art historians and such) can make an unbiased, objective assessment of a building's value, and whether it is worth preserving.

My only question is: how do you select this "panel of experts," and exactly how influential will their opinion be on public policy?

[TREPYE]

Yes I know that, but its how scholars and buffs look at it. These Bostonians are not looking at it like this otherwise perhaps the major would not want to sell it and there wouldn't be such ambivalence in the Boston thread.

[pianoman11686]

I think ablarc has once again deftly proven the difference between good architecture as something to be appreciated, and something to be worshipped. For anyone who hasn't read through the Boston forum, ablarc's post there makes it worth doing so. You'll find an analysis that can't possibly be realized, or even fully understood, by the public at large (that includes their representatives in power). The disconnect is as real and significant as that exists between reason and emotion: you either view something and "feel," or you view something and "think." Ablarc thinks, and makes an effort at doing so; the rest of us, for the most part, only feel, and refuse to think out of laziness, fear, or sheer lack of competence.

Ablarc: you briefly mention, in that post, Venturi and the "duck." I'm only slightly familiar with his theory, but in any case: you would not approve of that kind of approach in evaluating real architecture, correct?

[TREPYE]

you either view something and "feel," or you view something and "think." Ablarc thinks, and makes an effort at doing so; the rest of us, for the most part, only feel, and refuse to think out of laziness, fear, or sheer lack of competence.


Yes, good point. But with anything in terms of impact; a nice scraper, a painting, a hot broad you dont have to think about em, just being able to look at em and admire them, as shallow as its sounds, is what most people base their opinions on. This is how a relic like the Municipal Building may have more impact than the BCH. I agree it is much more fufilling and even beautiful to add depth to things in terms of knowledge, history and significance. And it could add a lot of charisma to something as superficially mundane as BCH. In BCH's case is there enough to make people want to glorify the structure.

[ablarc]

Opposition Growing to City Hall Sale


BOSTON - Preservationists and architects are scrambling to save City Hall from the wrecking ball, citing the brick and concrete building’s significance as an example of classic modernism. Earlier in the week during an annual address, Mayor Thomas Menino revealed plans to sell the current City Hall property and construct a new facility in the South part of Boston.

Susan Park, head of the Boston Preservation Alliance, tells GlobeSt.com that members of the non-profit organization will meet next Wednesday to discuss the Mayor’s plans.

“In today’s world, is City Hall the most efficient building going? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have architectural significance,” says Park, adding that she expects the alliance to issue a statement on its position following next week’s meeting.

Architect David Fixler, a principal with Einhorn Yaffe Prescott and president of the New England Chapter of Docomomo, an organization that promotes the documentation and conservation of buildings considered to be part of the modern movement, tells GlobeSt.com that members are concerned the structure, once hailed as one of the most significant buildings in the country, will be destroyed.

“This is a building that has always had its troubles but it has a place in history,” says Fixler, noting that the building and the surrounding plaza has hosted everything from anti-war and desegregation demonstrations to summertime concerts during its 40-year history.

Fixler, who has worked on the building, says the structure has always been treated as a historic building by preservation groups, the Boston Landmarks Commission and the National Trust.

“It has become Boston’s great public gathering space. In that sense, it has become the locus of civic life,” Fixler says.

But the building also has architectural significance, he notes. An award-winning building that has long been considered an architectural marvel by architects, City Hall was named one of the 10 most significant buildings in the United States in the mid-1970s by members of the American Institute of Architects, Fixler says. Today, it remains an example of classic modernist style.

Fixler says he expects Docomomo will take a position on the building’s sale in hopes of preserving the structure that he says remains symbolic of Boston’s rebirth as a world class city.



Link (http://www.globest.com/news/803_803/boston/151434-1.html)

[Jasonik]

I'm glad Docomomo got involved, I was wondering when we'd hear from them. I've had the opportunity to meet Mr. Fixler and he is a passionate scholar and advocate for important modern buildings. I know he did some excellent consulting for Radcliffe on their library not long ago.

[Citytect]

I think Boston City Hall is one of the most intriguing structures I've ever experienced. There's so much to think about in those walls of raw concrete. It's simultaneously unsophisticated and monumental. I think it represents the function of City Hall well. It's a public building but, on the whole, it remains behind-closed-doors. It's a place for the powerful publicly-appointed city leaders, not so much for the general public. It's a maze designed for those in-the-know. Just try to walk into the place and blindly navigate the passageways and stairs; you'll be lost. The building's way of mockingly saying, "You don't belong here." I love that. It's honest.

The plaza is problematic though, especially during Boston's harsh winters. It's definitely one of Mr. Pei's duds. It should be a public space the general public will use - the truly "public" part of the complex. It's current state is simply not functional. It's particularly unfortunate because the location could support a lively public plaza (busy T station, nearby attractions, etc.). The big hurdle is auto traffic around the plaza.

[ablarc]

40 years from now the public will want to demolish Frank Gehry's buildings because they are violent, out of context and impractical to maintain. Only "architects and art historians" will "lose a wink of sleep" over it.
You can trust art historians more than architects in this regard.

Anecdote to illustrate why:

Student in art history class refers to a work’s “beauty.” Eminent professor (Skull and Bones) corrects student: “We don’t use that term. We’re professionals.”

Architecture and Architectural appreciation are … elitist rarefied concepts to our … public because of … paucity of education …

If people are kept naive then politicians will continue … to stage grand gestures and appeal to (uninformed) public opinion ...


So what you folks are trying to tell us "younglings" is that the acceptance of the demolition of Penn, Singer, Savoy etc. was just a fad.
Hating 35-60 year-old architecture is a permanent fad that follows us around through time. Little wonder: architecture of that age is what we just got through supplanting with something “better.” We want it gone. It’s unprogressive.

Modernism presented a new and "space age way" of doing things … So how do you explain our mindset today? Some (if not most) would beg to have the likes of architectural masterpieces in the quality and scale of these Beaux Arts structures.
Beaux-Arts buildings are now older than 60, so we like them again. They’re antiques, and everyone likes antiques.

They’re back in fashion. What’s out of fashion now, and endangered by our inevitable aesthetic blindness, is Modernism.

Ironically this thread’s title, “Sixties Demolitions,” referred initially to demolitions of earlier buildings perpetrated in the Sixties by proponents of the modern. Forty years later, we’re seeing buildings of the Sixties threatened on all sides by the same blindness. The thread’s title serves equally for both phenomena because it’s really one phenomenon.

Glass is the wave of the future in scrapers and at points I can't stand its repetitive unimaginative mundane impact.
See, you’re already starting to have your doubts. Wait thirty-five years, and they’ll be full-blown. You’ll be satiated with the architecture of today and longing to replace it with whatever is fresh and new at that time.

Perhaps our level of progress has "plateaued" out to the point that since it can't get any better the repetitive notion of our contemporary architecture makes us wish for the structures of the past.
It hasn’t plateaued. You’re just looking at the inevitable effects of time on our attitudes toward artifacts. That’s what art historians study (scientifically, I might add), and that’s why you can trust them –and only them—to be objective. They’re trained to be. They don’t use words like “beautiful.”

I think you are talking in terms of nostalgia for a defunct architectural style. Forget about age and time … Suppose they were the same age ([New York’s] Municipal [Building] and Boston’s City Hall). In those terms I'm speaking about sheer quality and "what would you rather have in your city" type of preference.
Sheer quality: Boston City Hall is better, hands down. It’s a much greater intellectual synthesis, a hugely more significant creation of the human mind.

By contrast, the Municipal Building is mere picturesque pastiche, a pretty re-arrangement of pre-existent themes. Easy to like, like a Viennese torte.

(An art historian will tell you that because he understands art.)

And does this have a bigger impact on the ambivalence among the public of whether to keep it or not?

As Jasonik has already pointed out, public opinion is ignorant and fickle and the victim of zeitgeist. When the time comes, the public will likely change its tune (especially if City Hall is cleaned and "restored," meaning improved to present-day expectations) --though there are certain works of art that are always difficult for the public, such as those by James Joyce or Schoenberg.

… the Boston forum, ablarc's post there … You'll find an analysis that can't possibly be realized, or even fully understood, by the public at large (that includes their representatives in power). The disconnect is … real and significant …

Here’s some of the Boston post. Sorry about its length:

Some things are hard to like unless you make an effort (and maybe always will be). Examples are opera, caviar, Gertrude Stein, Zen Buddhism, James Joyce, cilantro, Garcia Lorca, twelve-tone music, Immanuel Kant, Jorge Luis Borges, twelve-tone music for the umpteenth time, Jackson Pollock, foie gras, frog’s legs, tripe, brains, oysters, Steve Reich, Kasimir Malevich, Michelangelo Antonioni, Leonard Cohen and Brutalist architecture. All acquired tastes.

Explaining why you could like these things is hard for the same reason most folks don’t bother with understanding: you have to rack your brains, and that’s work. It’s easier to just dismiss it. The list above contains difficult food ingredients and difficult human achievements. By definition, the difficult human achievements took intellectual rigor to create and they take the same faculty to grasp.

Most folks who throw in the towel a few pages into Finnegan’s Wake don’t really dare dismiss Joyce, coz they’ve heard he’s deep. They read on the Net that literary critics think Ulysses the greatest novel of the English language, and they’re not about to put in the effort to see if that’s true. So they leave it at that.

More folks feel free to diss, say, Wagner without making any real effort to see where he’s coming from; the fat sopranos provide them with a cheap shot --even as doubts may linger about whether they got it right.

But most of us have heard we’re all experts in architecture; after all, we spend most of our time in it.

Don’t you believe it !

Few of us go anywhere near any real architecture most days, just as most of what we read isn’t literature. Architecture is not synonymous with buildings, and most buildings aren’t architecture.

Architecture is rarefied artistic rigor applied to making a building. This means dreaming up a unified and meaningful whole. All works of art are that; they hang together.

I design forty or fifty buildings per annum, and most years not one of them qualifies as architecture. Most clients not only don’t want architecture, but if they catch an inkling of what it is they actively loathe it. And well they should, because it can’t possibly serve their purposes unless they’re already looking for it, for architecture is never just utilitarian; even the Bauhaus is anything but that.

Confronted with the prospect of architecture, most clients wisely recoil in horror, knowing it will alter their habits, demand maintenance and understanding, may expose them to their peers’ ridicule or censure, will leak and make them hot or cold, and likely lighten their wallets. Architecture is much too risky; anyone who really wants it already has a somewhat masochistic devotion to art. These folks are rare and easily identified.

City Hall is a collection of fat sopranos.

Once you get into its conceptual reality, you won’t just like it; you’ll love it. Did you ever meet a lukewarm opera buff?

Empty platitudes about how powerful and bold the building is: I’ll spare you that because you can see it for yourself,

But since I have to design buildings myself I can reveal a little about how hard it must have been to juggle all the components of City Hall so they hang together as an artistic whole.

The fancy term for this is tectonics, which the dictionary says is the science or art of assembling, shaping, or ornamenting materials in construction.

In keeping with their Modernist predilections and their minimalist leanings, Kallmann and McKinnell made their art out of the science. The question was: how much compositional interest would emerge from the rigorous and correct application of a very small number of rules and their intersection with the nature of the narrow spectrum of building materials chosen. Like Mies: they believed that less is more, but not so little it’s a bore.

Their building’s tectonic components are the structural and mechanical systems, and there’s precious little else to this building (except glass infill where the structure isn’t). The structural materials are brick and two kinds of concrete: poured-in-place and precast, which has a different nature.

And here’s a surprise: in their reductionist zeal, they made the upper levels’ structure double as the mechanical system. Concrete ducts !! You can see them clamber up the building’s outside; that’s what those massive cement fins are that function “decoratively” at the upper levels, like colossal dentil molding. Simultaneously they serve as the building’s structure and enclosure. To synthesize, to hang together, to do more with less.

“I like an arch,” replied the brick, when Louis Kahn famously inquired what it wanted. That wasn’t the answer Kallmann and McKinnell wanted to hear; as card carrying Modernists, they knew arches were verboten. So they relegated brick to their building’s lower realms, where it wasn’t required to make openings (something it does pure and correct without steel only as an arch). Earthbound, it became a metaphor for terra firma, a role confirmed by organic fusion with the vast brick plaza, and by the literal fact that brick is clay.

From mother earth spring foursquare geysers of once-fluid concrete: congealed, they’re cement sequoias, at once lofty, sturdy and as differentiated as individual trees in a forest. These are the mainframes both literally and figuratively of the entire civic structure. They hold up the building, they link earth to sky, at the entrance they greet you with soaring sylvan monumentality onto which you can project your civic pride in Boston’s virtuous government or feel oppressed by its corruption and bureaucracy: the same forms will serve for either, the choice is yours.

From here, space corkscrews heavenward past cantilevered council chambers, elevator shafts, monumental stairs and a now bunkerish mayor’s office that you could freely visit in happier days. Like the brick below, all this poured beton brut reminds of Rome’s identical brick and concrete building technology: solid, compressive, imperial, built for the ages, and susceptible to barbarians.

Here also may lie the building’s symbolic weakness, for on top of all this poured monumentality and upbeat symbolism lie draped like wet blankets: three layers of precast bureaucracy! O, parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.

Oh, it gives those folks a view who are confined there all day. But mostly it gives you the completed composition that was this entire building’s formal impetus from the get-go: an inverted-pyramid composition motivated by a desire to depict. In Venturi’s terms it’s a duck, for this building is actually a thinly disguised sculpture, a statue of … another building! And that building is the Monastery of LaTourette.

So there you have it, another layer of symbolism: City Hall as monastery ;). Or perhaps you’d prefer: City Government as inverted pyramid :). Or would you care for Topheavy Government :D?

The fact that the top is precast is brilliant, because precast is the next logical progression in the structural evolution of masonry as you go up light to the sky and forward in history. Industrialized factory construction allows a uniform and standardized module, and steel reinforcement permits an almost gossamer lightness in the context of this building’s otherwise pachydermal ambiance. Mechanical systems are threaded through the gaps, and lighting courses through the lower chords in a marvel of integrated design.

What to a layman seem clunky beams with rectangular gaps register as elegant Vierendel trusses to an engineer, supported correctly at their fifth points, ends cantilevered. The panel points of these supports are conveyed downward as columns or transfer beams to the lower floors, which therefore acquire the exact and regular modular order of their upper brethren, like a drumbeat but with contrapuntal improvisations. A tour-de-force of spatial ordering that fully integrates the building, like writing a business letter in iambic pentameter.

Did someone say “cantilever”? Why that’s a thematic subtext throughout this building, where all outside corners are cantilevered and all three upper floors are corbelled (cantilevered) outward from the floor below. Structure in the service of massing. Like writing an iambic-pentameter business letter in which now all the sentences rhyme.

It turns out City Hall’s proportioning and dimensioning is done according to the Modulor (Golden Section) as in Corbu’s original of which this is a formally structured set of improvised variations. That’s like adding yet another layer of integrating formal order, infinitely subtle, like making each sentence in the business letter start with a letter in an acronym.

Does all this matter? What is it really but a shameless display of virtuoso skill and intellectual rigor? Even fuller of artifice than Vermeer’s little optical highlights -- to those who can see them-- or Mozart’s abrupt forays into minor keys. Does it matter that Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is all organized –macro and micro-- out of a pattern of four notes? Does that make it better than if it were pleasant melodic noodling? Does it matter that the iconography of a Gothic portal may reveal prophetic secrets of the Book of Daniel? Does it matter that the juggler finally figured out how to add a seventh twirling plate? Would it matter if the complete discography of Max Roach vanished tomorrow? Does it matter? Of course not.

What use, after all, is art when we can replace it with profit –especially if we can simultaneously declare it ugly and have most folks murmur agreement. And what, oh what can be done with a building with dirty concrete, bad heat and a bad rap?

I can’t tell you if Boston City Hall is ugly, because to me the question is meaningless. Maybe beauty is in the eye of the beholder. All I know is I don’t have the brainpower or the creative inventiveness to pull off something simultaneously so tightly organized and formally varied in a million years of trying. So difficult…

Maybe we could respect that. Others have in the past.

* * *

One way to measure the importance of something is by how much else it has affected, and you can gauge something’s effects by the number of its imitators. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Boston City Hall has been much admired.

City Hall’s imitators are everywhere. Charlotte has two. One is a college classroom building, another is the Charlotte Observer.

Dallas has at least one. …And it’s the City Hall !!

Boston doesn’t have an imitation of Dallas’ City Hall. Dallas has an imitation of Boston’s City Hall.

An exterior whose expression is composed entirely of its structure and its mechanical system: do you recognize the schema of the Pompidou Center?

An architect who tells you he’s not influenced by other architects is a liar. For about fifteen years, Boston’s City Hall influenced more building designs than any new building on the planet. And Boston has the original !!

Boston can be proud.

Ablarc: you briefly mention, in that post, Venturi and the "duck." I'm only slightly familiar with his theory, but in any case: you would not approve of that kind of approach in evaluating real architecture, correct?
A duck is a building in the Modernist style that therefore is required to renounce ornament. Deeply desiring to be beautiful and loved, it hits upon this strategy: if I can’t use ornament to decorate myself, I’ll make my whole shape an ornament (sculpture). That ornamental form can be abstract (anything by Thom Mayne or Zaha Hadid; perhaps Boston City Hall) or representational (the famous Long Island building in the shape of a duck; most works of Frank Gehry; perhaps Boston City Hall).

But with anything in terms of impact; a nice scraper, a painting, a hot broad you dont have to think about em, just being able to look at em and admire them, as shallow as its sounds, is what most people base their opinions on. This is how a relic like the Municipal Building may have more impact than the BCH. I agree it is much more fufilling and even beautiful to add depth to things in terms of knowledge, history and significance. And it could add a lot of charisma to something as superficially mundane as BCH. In BCH's case is there enough to make people want to glorify the structure.
Give it time.

Or maybe it’ll be like Finnegan’s Wake or Crime and Punishment: eternally difficult.

Should we perhaps burn Finnegan’s Wake?

[ablarc]

Debating the over-Hall: Boston architects, planners all have ideas on whether and how to do it

By Paul Restuccia
Sunday, December 17, 2006


Does Boston really need a new city hall and what should we do with the one we have now?

Those are questions some of the Hub’s leading architects and planners are debating in the wake of Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s call last week to sell the 9-acre City Hall site and construct a new building on a 14-acre site along the South Boston waterfront.

The 1969-built City Hall, an international award-winning building, is generally liked by architects but has long been despised by the much of the public and the mayor, who wants a new icon to reflect 21st century Boston.

“I think building a new City Hall is a good idea as long as a new building is better than the current one,” says Tim Love, principal of Utile Inc., a firm that’s done master planning work on Southie’s Fort Point District, the edges along the new Greenway and Summer Street from downtown to the new convention center.

“But whether we do build it should also depend on what is done with the City Hall site which would have to be brilliantly redesigned to make the move worthwhile,” adds Love, who has also designed several high-style condo complexes in Southie. “I like the current building but there are better uses for its nine acres.”

Love suggests a public-private partnership that would ensure that what goes on the current site will be a mix of uses as well as open space of the highest quality rather than a development solely determined by the bottom line. And if what would replace City Hall was better, he says he would support demolishing it.

Frano Violich, who is head of the Boston Society of Architects’ design committee, supports building a new city hall, but not destroying the old one.

“We have to use our imagination on how to reuse the current City Hall,” says Violich, of influential cutting-edge firm Kennedy & Violich. He suggests turning the building into a performance center or even housing and adding higher-density development around it. “I like the building, but the city’s got to evolve. It’s time to move on.”

But other architects are against adaptive reuse of the current City Hall as well as the loss of its expansive brick plaza.

“Do we really need another iconic location for a city hall when we already have one?” argues Anne Beha, who has won awards for her contemporary addition to the Christian Science Monitor library and whose preservation work includes the former Charles Street Jail, which is being converted into a hotel. “We tore down Scollay Square for this location which is at the crossroads of the city and accessible to all by multiple subway lines.”

Jane Weinzapfel of Leers and Weinzapfel Architects, who successfully adapted and added to another major 1960s iconic building, the Harvard Science Center, thinks that the same thing can be done for City Hall.

“You could add a glass addition on top with more space and redesign and brighten the interior to meet the needs of city government for the future,” she says. “Why rip City Hall out of the heart of the city and move it to the extremities? The South Boston Waterfront doesn’t need a city hall to be successful.”

But economic arguments for relocating are strong - nine acres of prime development that could fetch $300 million or more and provide millions more in annual tax revenue.

“The reason why we have the present City Hall building and plaza is because in the early 1960s Boston was desperate for renewal but that is no longer the case,” says David Dixon, a principal at the Hub’s Goody Clancy & Associates whose urban planning has won numerous national awards. “We now have a chance to add more vigor to this part of downtown that needs more people and more activity.”

If that means demolishing the current City Hall, Dixon says he would support that.

“I love the building but that doesn’t mean it has to always be there,” Dixon says. “We are a more confident city now and should build a new city hall whose image reflects us as a city of profound creativity and innovation, a building that’s exuberant and celebratory with important public meeting places that will bring people there.”

What might that new image be? Seattle has chosen to have a showpiece of green technology as its new city hall. Austin’s is a stony mass with jutting angles. San Jose’s new 18-story municipal center with its attached glass rotunda is all about transparency of a government accessible to all. And London relocated its new city hall out of its center along the Thames into a dramatic glass egg with stunning interior balconies.

Violich suggests a chameleon-like building in Southie - one where changing images can be projected on the exterior and one that uses materials that harness energy from the sun and reflect light from the water.

But cutting-edge architect Monica Ponce de Leon of Office dA doesn’t think that city hall needs a new image. She adds that it’s less environmentally friendly to demolish an existing building, one she says was “built to last.”

“We shouldn’t tear down a building important to the history of architecture just because it’s fallen out of fashion - that’s short-sighted,” says Ponce de Leon, whose award-winning work includes the soon-to-open Macallen Building in South Boston, a high-design and environment-friendly condo complex, which will have a sloping grass-covered roof. “City Hall has personal memories for me - I got married there - and has a lot of public memories as well as a place of city celebrations when the Patriots [team stats] and Red Sox [team stats] won.”

But Maryann Thompson, who designed the award-winning pavilion and vine trellises project at Arnold Arboretum, thinks the current plaza should be turned into a park with “lots of big trees” and that the current building should be refitted to be brighter and more energy-efficient.

Harvard Design School planning head Rodolfo Machado, of Boston firm Machado and Silvetti Associates, who designed a park near the proposed Southie site, feels that the current city hall is a great building that should be left as is.

“City Halls don’t move easily,” says Machado, who also designed the posh Atelier/505 condo and theater complex in the South End. “I think it’s a good idea to put a major civic building on the waterfront, perhaps a City Hall annex.”

But Menino wants a new city hall in Southie, not an outpost.

“Whether we do this or not, it should not be the decision of one man,” Beha says. “All the citizens of the city need to be involved.”

[TREPYE]

The 1969-built City Hall, an international award-winning building, is generally liked by architects but has long been despised by the much of the public and the mayor, who wants a new icon to reflect 21st cenury Boston.

“I think building a new City Hall is a good idea as long as a new building is better than the current one,” says Tim Love, principal of Utile Inc., a firm that’s done master planning work on Southie’s Fort Point District, the edges along the new Greenway and Summer Street from downtown to the new convention center.

“But whether we do build it should also depend on what is done with the City Hall site which would have to be brilliantly redesigned to make the move worthwhile,” adds Love, who has also designed several high-style condo complexes in Southie. “I like the current building but there are better uses for its nine acres.”

Love suggests a public-private partnership that would ensure that what goes on the current site will be a mix of uses as well as open space of the highest quality rather than a development solely determined by the bottom line. And if what would replace City Hall was better, he says he would support demolishing it.

“We have to use our imagination on how to reuse the current City Hall,” says Violich, of influential cutting-edge firm Kennedy & Violich. He suggests turning the building into a performance center or even housing and adding higher-density development around it. “I like the building, but the city’s got to evolve. It’s time to move on.”

“The reason why we have the present City Hall building and plaza is because in the early 1960s Boston was desperate for renewal but that is no longer the case,” says David Dixon, a principal at the Hub’s Goody Clancy & Associates whose urban planning has won numerous national awards. “We now have a chance to add more vigor to this part of downtown that needs more people and more activity.”


As unfair as it sounds it seem to be the prevailing thought among "art history non-educated" Boston public.

Another interesting aspect (bigger than the nostalgic component) to this is what is it being replaced with. If it is another SOM type glass box then people would definitely rather have the brutalist City Hall. If its something like Calatrava's Path train station does it take the sting out of loosing it?

But I think this may be the best solution....

“You could add a glass addition on top with more space and redesign and brighten the interior to meet the needs of city government for the future,” she says. “Why rip City Hall out of the heart of the city and move it to the extremities? The South Boston Waterfront doesn’t need a city hall to be successful.”

Is this a reasonable compromise ablarc?

[pianoman11686]

Here’s some of the Boston post. Sorry about its length:

Don't apologize! It's eye-opening.

A duck is a building in the Modernist style that therefore is required to renounce ornament. Deeply desiring to be beautiful and loved, it hits upon this strategy: if I can’t use ornament to decorate myself, I’ll make my whole shape an ornament (sculpture). That ornamental form can be abstract (anything by Thom Mayne or Zaha Hadid; perhaps Boston City Hall) or representational (the famous Long Island building in the shape of a duck; most works of Frank Gehry; perhaps Boston City Hall).

Gotcha. So, in a way, "ducks" differentiate themselves from structures like the highly derivative Beaux-Arts by being theoretically innovative - a sign of creative thinking. I'll buy it, but I don't think it helps Boston City Hall's cause.

Someone's just got to communicate the building's achievement as a work of mental prowess. That, more than anything, makes it worth saving. Almost anyone can look at posterity and imitate it to be "pretty"; from the sounds of it, very few can accomplish, independently, what the architects of City Hall did.


Give it time.

Or maybe it’ll be like Finnegan’s Wake or Crime and Punishment: eternally difficult.

Should we perhaps burn Finnegan’s Wake?

Still can't stand Schoenberg. Haven't attempted Finnegan's Wake (yet).

[ablarc]

Is this a reasonable compromise ablarc?
Sure, especially if the original architects get to do it. They're still around, though they've changed their style.

[ManhattanKnight]

December 17, 2006
http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/12/17/nyregion/17house.600.jpg

Plan to Raze Home Prompts Belated Outcry

By DAVID HAY

WESTPORT, Conn. — At the end of a road lined with freshly minted, oversize colonial-style homes surrounded by carefully tended lawns is a jarring sight: an unusual 1970s house with shredded strips of its tar roof and quartz-covered walls torn away and spread about the yard.

In this stylish town where residents are waging what seems to be an all-out campaign to bolster its colonial image, teardowns are hardly an unusual sight. But many people are horrified that a Modernist home designed by a renowned architect is about to be razed.

Since a local Web site began spreading that news last month, a debate has erupted about the character of Westport and the future of the house, which is on sought-after Minute Man Hill Road.

It was designed by Paul Rudolph, who was the dean of the Yale School of Architecture from 1958 to 1965 and a student of the Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius. Mr. Rudolph, who died in 1997, built homes and public and commercial buildings. Among them are his penthouse apartment on Beekman Place in Manhattan, Yale’s Art and Architecture Building and the Burroughs Wellcome headquarters in North Carolina.

In an interview on the Web site, WestportNow.com, Morley Boyd, the chairman of the Westport Historic District Commission, said: “If you’re looking for shock value, it’s hard to beat the loss of this house. There is not much to top it.”

But in a town where 92 demolition permits have been issued so far this year, a celebrated lineage alone is not enough to save the house. Because it is not at least 60 years old, the historic commission does not have jurisdiction. “The house is not historically significant, and any view of how good or bad an architect Paul Rudolph was is purely subjective,” said David Waldman, who runs a commercial real estate company and whose wife is listed in town records as the buyer of the house.

Mr. Waldman said that his family wanted the house for the lot. “We have a family of three young children, and a modern structure wasn’t appealing to us,” he said.

The 4,200-square-foot house, which is to be razed this week, was commissioned by Louis Micheels, a former president of the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society, and his wife, Ina.

It is an elongated series of interconnecting cubes, whose eastern end, the master bedroom suite, hovers above a sloping hillside. Thin panels on cantilevers hang above large windows, keeping the sun at bay. And typical of the experiments with new materials for which Mr. Rudolph was known, pieces of Arctic quartz are embedded in the exterior stucco, giving the off-white walls a rough-hewn texture.

“Its overlapping planes and spaces open up beautifully to each other,” said Robert A.M. Stern, dean of Yale’s architecture school. “As with his other work of the time, Mr. Rudolph managed to synthesize the dynamism of Mies van der Rohe with the spatial inventiveness of our most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.”

The Micheelses recently moved to Newton, Mass., after living in the house for more than 30 years. “We are getting pretty old and we wanted to be close to our children,” said Dr. Micheels, 89, a Dutch-born Auschwitz survivor who wrote “Doctor 117641: A Holocaust Memoir.”

Still, they said they left with fond memories. The openness of its interior and the terraces facing Long Island Sound were favorite aspects of the house.
“We could see out to the Norwalk Islands, and you can’t ask for more than that,” Dr. Micheels said.

In September 2005, he and his brokers began searching for a buyer who would appreciate the house’s architectural merits and be willing to pay almost $5 million for it.

But there were no offers, and the price was reduced by about $1 million. “People are not interested in houses from the 1970s,” said Marina Leo of the Higgins Group real estate agency, who was one of the brokers. Still, the recent outcry against tearing the home down reflects a feeling among many in Westport that they have lost an opportunity to preserve a significant building.

As Professor Stern put it: “All over the world people are waking up to the fact that Modernist houses are valuable works of art. The town of Westport will be diminished by this loss.”

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[ablarc]

^ More stupidity.

They have a perfect right to do this.

Everyone has the right to act stupid.

Some folks even make a living at it.

[ablarc]

An interesting comment from ArchBoston's elitist curmudgeon, justin:

Yeah, but this is a public building. It's the most public of all public buildings. You can't build that without democratic input.

You can and you should. Medical practice affects the lives of ordinary people far more directly and importantly than city government. Does that call for a system where one becomes a doctor by standing for an election? Should cancer treatments be determined by referendum? Of course not: Joe Sixpack can't make useful medical judgements. Leave it to the experts, regulated at arm's length by the government.

Should biological theories be judged by popular will? Well, it's been tried recently... In fact, the whole CIty Hall debate reminds me of the Kansas school board debacle, transposed into architcture.

Is architecture any different? Here is why it may appear so: when asked about angiogenesis inhibitors as a potential cancer treatment, the average Joe draws a blank, but he has no trouble reacting to a building. The problem is that he then proceeds to take his gut reaction as the ultimate authoritative opinion, in no need of articulation or justification. You need not go any farther than this thread to see examples of that. Read Sister's posts next to ablarc's, and then ask yourself: if you were unusure about what you thought about City Hall, whose opinion would be more likely to sway you?

So here I propose a fairly low bar for who should have a say: those who have seen a large enough sample of architecture to inform their opinions, and who can articulate those opinions beyond grunting 'cool' or 'sucks'. Notice that my criteria in no way prefer any particular taste: ablarc passes them par excellence, even though I disagree with him 40% of the time.

Ron is an interesting case: articulate all right, he s