Eulogy for the East River Waterfront

A few days ago I posted on the forthcoming exhibition, Preservation on the Edge, at the Urban Center in New York. As an accompaniment to that exhibition, this Tuesday, June 27, the Municipal Art Society is presenting A Eulogy to the East River's Industrial Waterfront. Various excellent speakers, including the Municipal Art Society's Frank Sanchis and historian Jeffrey Kroessler, will "eulogize" six buildings that have either recently disappeared or are in imminent danger of disappearing. Yours truly will present historical background on the six buildings. The event lasts from 6:30 to 8:30 and there will be wine. (That's what usually tips me toward attending an event.)

The buildings are: the Sohmer Piano factory in Astoria, Queens (endangered); the Long Island City Power Plant in Long Island City (altered); the Greenpoint Terminal Market ("mysteriously" immolated) in Greenpoint, Brooklyn; Cass Gilbert's Austin, Nichols warehouse (not gone but a goner) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg; and the Waterside power plant in Manhattan (gone).

Cass Gilbert's "Egyptian"-style Austin, Nichols warehouse from 1913, the same year as his Woolworth Building. Its well-deserved designation as a New York City landmark was overturned by the city council. Its stretch of Williamsburg waterfront has been rezoned for high-rise residential construction.

Brooklyn's Domino Sugar Refinery, a vast complex including several 1880s Romanesque revival buildings reminding us that sugar refining was one of the principal industries that made New York great. With the plant's closing in 2004, the following year was the first year in 275 years that there was not a working sugar refinery within the present boundaries of the five boroughs.

The Waterside generating plant in Manhattan, the one that made it into Henry Hope Reed's Beaux-Arts Architecture in New York, as it looked then...

...and as it looks now.

A lot of our industrial architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, even some of what has been considered proto-"modern," was in fact designed in traditional, including classical, styles that had, dating back to Roman times, been considered apposite for utilitarian buildings. Each of these buildings was or is beautiful, and an object lesson for today's and tomorrow's architects in how to design utilitarian buildings that embody such time-honored precepts as that the eye should be allowed to come to rest naturally upon some well-proportioned formal feature, or that, indeed, proportion, overall, as defined by the ancient tenets of the Greeks and Romans, matters, no matter the purpose of the building. Each of these buildings, whatever its rugged simplicity, ennobled the heavy labor of the legions who toiled in the often noisome industries that once defined--more than did finance, or the law, or media, or advertising--New York as a great city. We eulogize these buildings for two reasons. First, each might admirably have been adaptively reused, indeed perhaps spectacularly so, yet has fallen prey to a real-estate megalomania of historic dimensions. Second, some of these buildings remind us that though contemporary classicism has succeeded in the realm of residential design, it truly will have vanquished its doubters when once again it becomes the lingua franca of the most utilitarian of urban buildings. And unless we keep the best examples--and each of these buildings is a best example--around, we won't have the study cases we may one day need if we are to succeed in the long-term mission of restoring an elemental humanity to our urban environments.

So please join us in this eulogy.

Comments

[MCG]

Bravo, Francis. The greatness of New York City came from its harbor and harbor industries. Thank you for your tribute to our great industrial buildings. Today the city's powerful real estate interests want to build only suburbanizing structures, housing and office buildings. They play on our guilt by saying that we are "taking the waterfront back." We are taking the waterfront back, true, the way strip-mining takes back the land.

Without Wall Street, New York would look like all the other post-industrial northern cities, like Buffalo or Syracuse. Wall Street's salaries produce 20 per cent of personal income here. That cannot go on indefinitely. Wall Street also supports the housing industry. Both are cyclical. Already, securities jobs are migrating to other parts of the country. Even the New York Stock Exchange is struggling to survive.

The Municipal Art Society's "eulogy" performs a service. I hope to attend the event on Tuesday evening. Hand-wringing, however, only feels like action. When the MAS could be fighting, it has chosen to mourn.

Mary Campbell Gallagher

[MCG]

Francis,

I am writing now to commend last night's program at the Municipal Art Society on the great buildings of the East River industrial waterfront and to ask what we can do to save those that remain. If I was unjust to the MAS in my previous post, I am very sorry. Now is a time for positive action.

How many New Yorkers know that--as you have told us--with the closing of Brooklyn's Domino Sugar Refinery in 2004, the year 2005 was "the first year in 275 years that there was not a working sugar refinery within the present boundaries of the five boroughs"? How many New Yorkers even know that New York's mid-century industrial workers were well-paid? The elderly retired longshoreman who spoke last night, who had worked at the Greenpoint Terminal Market, kept saying, "everyone earned a good living." New York City's blue collar jobs really were good jobs. The loss of industry really is a loss.

Real estate developers and Mayor Bloomberg want to forget the past and tear down the buildings that remain, regardless of architectural merit or historic significance. They do not want to reuse the buildings, they want to bulldoze them for new condos and office buildings, the "highest and best use."

At the end of the evening Frank Sanchis of the MAS acknowledged that the indifference of the general public is an obstacle to saving these buildings and asked the audience what we can do. If the Highline was saved, he said, then no cause is hopeless. One audience member noted that the public will not fight to re-use these buildings as million-dollar condo lofts.

My own view is that land use in New York City is political, but dressed up with legal and aesthetic trappings. Lacking a powerful elected official on our side, we need an industrial Jackie Kennedy or an industrial Isaac Stern, or an industrial Advisory Committee of boldface names.

More immediately, Francis, can the MAS give us a list with a description of each remaining building, its legal status, the time frame for decisions or hearings or demolitions, and the names and addresses of the persons or organizations to whom we should address our postcards and letters? I am sending this request to Frank Sanchis of the MAS, as well.

[Dr. Paul Vincent Zecchino]

Thank you for preserving these architectural treasures on the web for the enjoyment of all citizens. Haven't these mammoth elegant works of industrial art fascinated us since our early years? I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island in the long shadow of the South Street Generating Station. During the wee hours on Providence's tony East Side, one could hear the Middle-C whine from the massive induced draft intake fans at South Street and sister plant, Manchester Street Generating Station.

During the early 90s, Manchester Street was rebuilt with new technology yet fortunately the original building was preserved.

South Street was closed in 1991. Fortunately, as distinct from Manhattan's mighty Waterside complex, a Baltimore developer plans to restore the sprawling brick and copper palace that is South Street into a luxury hotel and technology museum.

Better yet, the developer will restore the original six smokestacks and the iron filligree which binds them, and will as well light them at night.

These Basilicae of Power are beloved amongst urban archaelogists, as are abandoned radar stations, vintage Cold War sites, harborside Coal Gantries, and other early 20th century marvels.

Is on surprised that Wall Street swells are in a frenzy to demolish these irreplaceable cultural jewels? Nope. Don't they know all too well the cost of everything -
and the value of nothing?

Dr. Paul Vincent Zecchino
Manasota Key, Florida
19 June, 2008

[Dr. Paul Vincent Zecchino]

PS -

One can find a treasure trove of photos and articles about New England industrial utilitarian architecture at www.artinruins.com, including information on South Street's restoration.

The South Street restoration URL is www.thedynamohouse.com. Be sure to check out the photos.

Dr. Paul Vincent Zecchino
Manasota Key, Florida
19 June, 2008