Reply With QuoteI´d like to see the circle without trees. I think it would look more sophisticated.
An instant hangout spot, comparable to the Pulitzer Fountain at Grand Army Plaza. I just wish that the trees were more mature, and when I was there for the first time there was a lot of water on the ground. Anyone think that the fountains leak?
I´d like to see the circle without trees. I think it would look more sophisticated.
It seems like too much of an effort to cross the circle deliberately just to hang out, especially as the southwestern gate of Central Park and the entrance to the TWC just adjacent are both more accessible and already extremely popular in that regard. Maybe putting a subway entrance in the circle would have enlivened it, and create enough pedestrian flow across the circle to entice those otherwise too perturbed by the obstacle of the traffic.An instant hangout spot
When the traffic is stopped by the red lights it takes all of 15-30 seconds to cross into the circle. That's less time than crossing from TWC across B'way + CPW to Central Park.Originally Posted by czsz
Grand Army Plaza faces the same dubious traffic and contextual obstacles that Columbus Circle does, by your logic; yet it is a successful public space and an integral part of the city's fabric. It directly abuts, yet is not part of, Central Park: providing a respite from the city without creating the illusion of having actually left it. The first time I went to the newly completed Columbus Circle, there were dozens of people hanging around — and this was around 11pm on a weeknight.
More pictures, please.
Judging by the clear sky and the relatively low number of people, I'd say you were there around...10 am?
It's not bad. Certainly an improvement.
Thanks for the photos of the new Circle treatment, Zippy.
That’s about it; faint praise.
We waited for years for this?
It’s better now than ever before, but Columbus Circle has had a rocky road to its present incarnation.
In 1920, streetcars paraded through on their way to Times Square. The high-rise must have made a nice visual terminus for Central Park South, as the gap in TWC does now. There seemed a lot of pavement to cross. Lonely on its tiny block, stood a mansarded precursor of Stone’s presently threatened 2 Columbus Circle; for decades until the TWC came along, that little gem alone proclaimed the circularity of this intersection grown amorphous.
In the more enlightened twenties, however, the Circle’s buildings more or less agreed on its roundness, even the two-story pipsqueaks. Of these, the almost-triangular structure at Broadway and Central Park West was another one of those low-rise skyscraper bases that Hearst was in the habit of abandoning about the city; when this Tudor terra-cotta building came down for the Gulf and Western (now Trump) Building, it was found to have sufficient steel structure to support a tower. This one bit the dust, while Foster is augmenting the other (though without retaining its anticipatory structure). Are there more of these secreted somewhere about town?
At street level, the Circle seemed respectable enough in the early Twenties, and perhaps surprisingly placid; streetcars don’t intimidate quite like a yellow wall of cabs, and even the innermost circle enjoyed the company of pedestrians, though not yet a fountain:
Sporty car, nifty subway kiosks in traffic island, good price on cigarettes.
At night, the high-rise seemed strangely post-Modern; the south-facing façade vaguely Dutch:
Unsurprisingly, it was called the Circle Building:
By 1933, some modest skyscrapers had lounged onto the scene. The billboards almost rivaled Times Square, there were still plenty of row houses, and Irwin Chanin’s glitzy Century Apartments were brand new:
In 1938, the Hearst building sported a Coca Cola sign to rival Times Square’s, and the Mayflower Hotel still had its ornament:
By 1946, 240 Central Park South had arrived on the scene, and row houses were growing scarcer:
With his usual zeal for the banal and his wooden eye, Robert Moses replaced the vaguely-Dutch high-rise with the Coliseum, a lump that trashed its surroundings for decades. It denied the Circle and it denied the axis of Central Park South. Denied it? More like: stopped it dead in its tracks with a big blank wall. For a Modernist, it was an article of faith that if something was liked by the Beaux-Arts it just had to be bad. Apply that thinking and you can see why most architects didn’t lift a finger to prevent Penn Station’s demise.
The organically distorted Circle now featured roadways cleaving meaningless interstitial spaces, parked cars, and even little suburban patches of grass. Perhaps out of guilt, the new Gulf and Western Building provided a circle of its own, a new subway entrance. G+W replaced the lowly Hearst skyscraper base, and assisted in the Circle’s dissolution with a narrow face to the circle –-so narrow, in fact, that it exceeded a prudent slenderness ratio and swayed in the wind until new owner Donald Trump engaged Philip Johnson to imagineer it as a hotel. This now came complete with a 3-D circle in the form of a globe:
1980’s
Until quite recently, only Stone’s little folly believed in the Circle. That’s one of the traits that makes it a pioneer of post-Modernism.
.
Last edited by ablarc; August 1st, 2005 at 09:31 PM.
Wow. Great images.
the statue at columbus circle had a lot of soot in the 20's
ablarc: you're a terrific resource for those of us who love nyc...thanks for all the great info you provide.
Fantastic post ablarc.
While it's nothing extraordinary it definitely looks great. I love the old pics! The site of the TWC sure has changed a lot, but now it's perfect.
Wow! those are great photos... things I´ve never seen before. I love the circle in the early shots. I like the statue plunked down there in the middle of a flat circle with no trees and stuff.... add cobble stones and it could be a circle in Milan. I think the problem today is that urban designers go way overboard with all the friendly accoutrements, so afraid of austerety... they´ve got to squeeze in lawns and bushes, flowers, fountains, trees, steps, seating...it can all get very dumbed down looking.
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