Ten Minutes of Protest
I went to LaGuardia Place today to support Landmark West's call for the Landmarks Preservation Commission to hold a public hearing regarding the fate of 2 Columbus Circle. The building sits on the south side of Columbus Circle, which, if you haven't noticed, is not the same kind of circle it was for Judy Holliday in It Should Happen to You.
What it is is a makeover dreamed up by some of the best suburbanish minds around, I have no doubt. That Time Warner Center, with four star restaurants upstairs from . . . clothing stores. The new Center of the Circle hangout mall, thoroughly bland and hackneyed. And now comes the mayor's plan for Edward Durrell Stone's quirky Modernist building with the striking facade.
You know the facade and the building. . . . Very white marble with porthole windows. Venetian palazzo detail, like. Originally it was Huntington Hartford's art museum.
Landmark West circulated an email letter to supporters; the letter was signed by many, many architects and architecturally minded people. Nobody at City Hall seems to be listening.
The Mayor says, Why should I give the public a chance to comment? It will only slow the timely development of this almost-cursed property. A brownfield gets more attention these days than does Columbus Circle--and Judy Holliday is no longer with us, so the billboard gimmick is out. A market town is a market town, and this is a real estate issue, and I couldn't give a fried chicken leg if the Museum of Arts and Design wants to slice up 2 Columbus Circle like a toast caddy. It's an ugly building, all the architects say so. (Okay, only the architects I want to listen to but still.) (And why should I notice that 30 years after Ada Louise Huxtable denounced it as a "die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops" she began to actually like it?) The Museum is a fine new tenant. Tourism! Culture! Shopping! Enough is enough.
Mr. Mayor, I, for one, haven't had a enough (granted, I put all those words into your mouth). The sign I carried today read, "AIA, You Don't Speak for Me." You don't have to be an expert or an architect to know what works in the city and what doesn't. I've been in the Stone building dozens of times, and know that I like it inside and out. I miss too many destroyed buildings to let this feature of the cityscape go without a peep. So I peeped.
Actually, the main peeper on the march was a portly man with the kind of voice that belongs in the middle of a Franco Zeffirelli set. Unfortunately, he was booming, "Down with Bloomberg!" I could barely speak to the general contractor who stopped by on his bike to see what was what. We were all having a little bit of a hearing problem.
From across the street, a man shouted, "Peace and quiet!" The portly booming man yelled back something about this being America. Then a man came down the block and started asking him to be quiet. Now came a retort about the Constitution. The word asshole was somewhere in there (from the complainer), and then the complainer said, "There's somebody on a deathbed four stories above here."
The booming man did not care. I considered the man's deathbed friend. Dying to baritone strains of "Down with Bloomberg," well, it seemed very New York somehow.
The complainer marched away almost beside himself. The good news is that the portly boomer did not yell after him, "Edward Durrell Stone's iconic 1964 building is on its deathbed!"
Even though: it is.
What it is is a makeover dreamed up by some of the best suburbanish minds around, I have no doubt. That Time Warner Center, with four star restaurants upstairs from . . . clothing stores. The new Center of the Circle hangout mall, thoroughly bland and hackneyed. And now comes the mayor's plan for Edward Durrell Stone's quirky Modernist building with the striking facade.
You know the facade and the building. . . . Very white marble with porthole windows. Venetian palazzo detail, like. Originally it was Huntington Hartford's art museum.
Landmark West circulated an email letter to supporters; the letter was signed by many, many architects and architecturally minded people. Nobody at City Hall seems to be listening.
The Mayor says, Why should I give the public a chance to comment? It will only slow the timely development of this almost-cursed property. A brownfield gets more attention these days than does Columbus Circle--and Judy Holliday is no longer with us, so the billboard gimmick is out. A market town is a market town, and this is a real estate issue, and I couldn't give a fried chicken leg if the Museum of Arts and Design wants to slice up 2 Columbus Circle like a toast caddy. It's an ugly building, all the architects say so. (Okay, only the architects I want to listen to but still.) (And why should I notice that 30 years after Ada Louise Huxtable denounced it as a "die-cut Venetian palazzo on lollipops" she began to actually like it?) The Museum is a fine new tenant. Tourism! Culture! Shopping! Enough is enough.
Mr. Mayor, I, for one, haven't had a enough (granted, I put all those words into your mouth). The sign I carried today read, "AIA, You Don't Speak for Me." You don't have to be an expert or an architect to know what works in the city and what doesn't. I've been in the Stone building dozens of times, and know that I like it inside and out. I miss too many destroyed buildings to let this feature of the cityscape go without a peep. So I peeped.
Actually, the main peeper on the march was a portly man with the kind of voice that belongs in the middle of a Franco Zeffirelli set. Unfortunately, he was booming, "Down with Bloomberg!" I could barely speak to the general contractor who stopped by on his bike to see what was what. We were all having a little bit of a hearing problem.
From across the street, a man shouted, "Peace and quiet!" The portly booming man yelled back something about this being America. Then a man came down the block and started asking him to be quiet. Now came a retort about the Constitution. The word asshole was somewhere in there (from the complainer), and then the complainer said, "There's somebody on a deathbed four stories above here."
The booming man did not care. I considered the man's deathbed friend. Dying to baritone strains of "Down with Bloomberg," well, it seemed very New York somehow.
The complainer marched away almost beside himself. The good news is that the portly boomer did not yell after him, "Edward Durrell Stone's iconic 1964 building is on its deathbed!"
Even though: it is.
posted by Elizabeth Manus at 4:55 PM
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