New York, April 1998.
Arriving back into the World Trade Plaza at eighty-nine degrees (Fahrenheit, not tilt) and heading south to walking between the wedding cakes of Wall Street, the spaces narrow and dark, is this really the financial centre of the world? A brief look in the lobby of the Woolworth building, the Cathedral of Commerce (or is it Monty Python’s “Crimson Life Assurance”?), with stone vaulted ceilings in the lobby, resembles the nave of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Battery Park, large lawns, dense tree planting make a welcome contrast from the landscape of extruded blocks, Victorian streetlights, promenade and seafront pavilions evoke memories of the English seaside. Looking above the trees, the decorated crowns of the towers borrowed from medieval Europe give a clear sense of the inspiration for Gotham City as created by Bob Kane for in the Batman Comics.
A rather rapid walk back uptown and joining the constant flow of migrating locals heading along the non-diagonal part of Broadway in what amounts to a daily stampede. Opposite, City Hall Park, one of those not square squares, a great place for demonstrations in front of the city hall, immigrant workers at this time and not a “Ghostbuster” in sight. Dragged northwards by the rush moving along to the Soho Guggenheim Museum, not to be confused with Frank Lloyd Wright’s version, the Soho Guggenheim Museum is hosting an exhibition of Chinese art. The compactness of Soho spreads out to give way to parking lots; adverts are painted directly onto the walls of buildings to cover the entire wall. Such streetscape! Broadway starts on the diagonal and crosses a green park at Union Square and emerges unexpectedly alongside the Flatiron building, that when approached from the South is unrecognisable.
Crossing the corner of Madison Square Park and onto Fifth Avenue, the names Gap, DKNY, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Levis, Banana Republic, seen as concessions in Rackham’s, Birmingham’s department store, are proudly displayed here each with their own large store. Yes, and there is Tiffany’s, seems to be a jewellery store, and I cannot see anywhere to go for breakfast though. Looking up Fifth, above the sea of heads, there are blocks as far as at the eye can see, the zone above the storefronts dominated by US flags that seem to hang from an inclined flagpole on every building.
A fire truck with sirens whooping and zapping, along with the low rumble of air horns, tries to push through the traffic where car drivers seem to have ignored the fact that they are in the fire lane (zap! zap!), keeping to the left side of Fifth, where the shadows cast by the blocks offer some relief from the heat. Up ahead, the Empire State Building emerges above the blocks and the traffic light that is holding everybody up and the perpetual surge of traffic crossing in what seems to be a yellow stream of the ubiquitous taxis.
There is a clearing in the tall blocks, the entrance plaza to the New York Public Library, steps leading up to a white stone plane of arches, columns, pediments, guarded by two lions set against the backdrop of the skyscrapers. Limousines pull up onto the driveway to the Plaza Hotel amongst crowds of onlookers hoping to catch a glimpse of somebody important. The hotel façade, representative of a kind of oversized European classical fairytale castle, looks out over the trees and lake and paths and railings of the natural splendour of Central Park.
Continuing the walk up Fifth Avenue, with the park to the left, passing the stone arches, columns, and pediments of the Metropolitan Museum of Art or more simply known as the Met as it emerges out of a clearing in the trees. The “real” Guggenheim museum, the one designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that appears in the architecture books, reveals itself, the white concrete sculpture, dramatic from a distance, remarkably reminiscent of Lubetkin’s animal enclosures at Dudley Zoo, and on the surface not in much better condition. The concrete has fared better internally and the spiral ramp is impressive, more Chinese art, but the building itself just maybe not living up to its legend. A group of break-dancers arrive and start their routine on the sidewalk, ghetto-blaster, spinning on heads, that kind of thing, to be moved on by the police after a few minutes.
The full story is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble published by Xlibris — Do We Need ARCHITECTS? A Journey Beneath the Surface of Architecture
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