Bill Moyers said it best, standing at a microphone: "This is akin to being told by the Texas sharp, 'Play the cards fair, I know what I've dealt you.' " He was addressing N-YHS trustee Barbara Knowles Debs before more than a couple of hundred people (about two hundred had left by 9 p.m.) beneath the majestic ceiling of the Fourth Universalist Society on Central Park West.
Ms. Debs was the last N-YHS speaker to speak eloquently about its mission and its importance to the city, the nation, and the world. Her words were to be the last of a presentation whose slides covered included only renovations regarding the Society's landmarked façade. It left unaddressed the matter of a 75,000-square-foot envelope with a giant invisible "For Sale!" sign overhead.
Why was the most important part of the presentation missing?
As the Society's head would like us to believe, the projected partnership with a yet-to-be-revealed developer is not ready to be presented and discussed. Everybody, including Mr. Moyers, knew better.
You could have heard an errant snowflake landing against one of the Clayton & Bell stained glass windows, it was that quiet.
"This is like putting a building in the center of Paris," Mr. Moyers added. He himself is an avowed admirer of the Society and beneficiary of its manifold treasures. He is also neighbor of its esteemed establishment.
The audience, which overfilled orchestra seating at the Fourth Universalist society, had come to hear just what N-YHS president and C.E.O. Louise Mirrer had to say. She didn't have much except by way of practiced public relations gobbedly gook.
Her position teetered on the threshold of sheer tackiness--Ms. Mirrer used to be a Medieval scholar, before she was an administrator at C.U.N.Y--when the question period turned out to be studded with appearances by . . . employees of the New York Historical Society! The majority of them had been hired on about a year ago.
As angry people shouted and groaned (quite a heckling crowd) Ms. Mirrer stood her ground, along with her architect Mr. Byard, and the Revered Rosemary McNatt. (Reverend McNatt, who was moderating, was the only person radiating unscripted human-beingness.)
After two hours, the audience, which had taken in a presentation about Phase One--it covered the benefits of a new café with Keith Haring's Pop Shop ceiling, the expected ease of flow in the new exhibition spaces, the extremely pressing matter of library storage and access--the audience was finally getting a little bit of satisfaction.
Mr. Moyers wanted assurance from Ms. Debs: If he and the public fully support Phase One, a $15 million up-do already in process, will the Society ditch it's air rights sale? Ms. Debs faced him fully. She looked, from where I sat, just the tiniest bit heartbroken as she told him, simply: No.
(The look made me wonder: Must the Society sell its air rights? If it doesn't, will the bank come and take away all the documents and toss them on the garbage heap?)
What the audience came for, and what Mr. Moyers so thrillingly gave them, was voice of protest that could penetrate the walls of Ms. Mirrer's fortress. For a few minutes, people actually held onto hope that Central Park West and this triple-landmarked building would not be marred by steel stems assembling a new toy above a city institution whose leaders should be repelled by such an idea.
PHASE TWO, the air rights sale, is out there, pacing the horizon, as it were. (Four commas!)
Landmark West!, an Upper West Side preservation group (for which I have stuffed envelopes) has marked out this territory as part of its Save Our Skyline campaign, the estimable Kate Wood presiding.
Ms. Wood amassed for the evening a flyer's worth of text, including quotations from everybody from Philip Johnson to James Stuart Polshek to Paul Goldberger (and, all right, Bill and Judith Davidson Moyers) regarding the last time the Society tried to dishonor city history and give way to a tower overhead.
That was thirteen years ago.
There are no good arguments, really, for the city's historical society to show its hometown the back of its hand this way. It's bad architecture, it mocks its own existence, it's cynical.
TO SOME, a tower on Central Park West is just another neato tall building. A developer sees a tower, I see a giant middle finger, extended.
I am glad to be standing inside the cathedral with Mr. Moyers at the microphone.
He is saying: "Once you take that space away, you will never get it back."
