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IN its not-so-brief and thoroughly unhappy life, ground zero has been a site for many things: tragedy and grief, political campaigns and protests, battling architects and warring cultural institutions, TV commercials and souvenir hustlers. Perhaps it was inevitable we'd end up at pure unadulterated farce.
That's where we are as of this Memorial Day weekend. A 1,776-foot Freedom Tower with no tenants - and no prospect of tenants - has been abruptly sent back to the drawing board after the Marx Brothers-like officials presiding over the chaos acknowledged troubling security concerns about truck bombs. But truck bombs may be the least of the demons scaring away prospective occupants. The simple question that no one could answer the day after 9/11 remains unanswered today: What sane person would want to work in a skyscraper destined to be the most tempting target for aerial assault in the Western world? As if to accentuate this obvious, if frequently suppressed, psychological bottom line, news of the Freedom Tower's latest delay was followed like clockwork by a Cessna's easy penetration of supposedly secure air space near the White House, prompting panicky evacuation scenes out of the 50's horror classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still."
why we should build apartments at ground zero
The FreedomTower, with or without its fancy spire, is an unnecessary building. The planned skyscraper, which will contain 2.6 million square feet of commercial office space, doesn’t have a single tenant – an unsurprising fact, since the demand for commercial office space in lower Manhattan is so small that it can barely be said to exist. The tower, it seems, is being built not to ennoble, enliven, or enrich the city but to satisfy the narrow, self-interested agendas of Silverstein, who leased the TwinTowers in 2001, and the Port Authority, which build the WorldTradeCenter and still controls the land. Silverstein, for his part, is largely building with insurance money instead of borrowing, as developers usually do, and he figures that he will be well positioned in the unlikely event that the lower Manhattan office market rebounds. Meanwhile, the Port Authority receives ten million dollars a month in rent that Silverstein still pays, under the terms of his lease.
The glamorous era of New York preservation - the outcry over the demolition of the old Pennsylvania Station, Jackie Onassis picketing to save Grand Central Terminal - is long over.
But judging from Tuesday's weak-kneed decision by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission to approve a scaled-back expansion of the Whitney Museum of American Art, certain New Yorkers have failed to catch on. To them, apparently, the overreaching goal is saving what's old - as if the loss of an undistinguished brownstone parallels the razing of a beloved landmark.
Essentially, for the sake of preserving a humdrum brownstone facade on Madison Avenue, the commission embraced a substitute design for the museum that transforms a generously proportioned public entrance into a more confining experience. The architect, Renzo Piano, drafted the alternative - which would save that brownstone, while demolishing another - when the museum realized that the addition was in danger of being voted down by the commission.
Aside from weakening a promising design, the commission's stubbornness proves that it is unable to distinguish between preserving the city's architectural legacy and embalming it. This is particularly galling given that the commission steadfastly refuses to meet on Edward Durell Stone's endangered 60's "lollipop" building at 2 Columbus Circle - a building that is far more essential to the city's historical fabric.
im in total agreement with ouroussoff on the whitney expansion and stones 2 columbus circle
Taken together, the two cases imply a complete disconnect with the changing realities of preservation in New York City. It is as if the commission believes that New York is still living under the threat of tabula rasa Modernism.
We no longer live in the 1960's. There is no Robert Moses, with the power to bulldoze entire neighborhoods in the name of urban progress. Jane Jacobs, the activist who took him on, now lives in Toronto. The old tradition-vs.-Modernism battles are irrelevant. On the contrary, many Modernist buildings are now landmarks worthy of preservation.