It was 60 years ago that New York City passed the Landmarks Law to protect buildings and sites of historical, architectural, and cultural significance. To commemorate the anniversary, one of Landmarks’ leading proponents assembled and edited a collection of essays surveying “the future of the past” in the 21st century.
Invited by distinguished urban authority Barbaralee Diamonstein Spielvogel, a dozen leading architectural historians, critics, engineers, scholars, journalists reviewed the context, cultural significance, and promise of the buildings—and landscapes—which touch on everyone’s lives.
In the essays of “Beyond Architecture: The NEW New York” writers detail the challenges of retaining architectural treasures preserved to enhance our heritage, Queens’ oldest residence the Browne House, the Pyne-Davison row of Neo-Georgian townhouses stretching along Park Avenue from 68-69th Streets, Philip Johnson’s postmodern “Chippendale” skyscraper, Far Rockaway beach bungalows, the South Bronx’s prize-winning Via Verde sustainable urban housing are among significant sites described.
Saluting outdated buildings which are salvaged to be transformed into new uses, authors cite the tobacco warehouse that has been recreated as St. Ann’s Warehouse theater center, St. John’s Terminal railway depot now transformed into Google headquarters, the Domino sugar refinery’s reborn as offices, a triple height lobby, and waterfront access.
With nostalgia, critic and professor A.O. Scott recalls ghost signs, the historic advertising murals fading from the facades of buildings.
Writers describe significant engineering feats which have been kept, the bronze frame and glass curtain wall of the Seagram Building , the curved marble staircase of City Hall. The complicated assembly of the Statue of Liberty was itself a feat.
Nature and landscape aren’t overlooked with calls for greater recognition of essential outdoor cites and public spaces in addition to already protected Freshkills Park, Riverside Drive, Ocean Parkway, the Coney Island Boardwalk.
For the future, city planner Vishaan Chakrabarti prescribes ”As our cities grow and grow to house our Kaleidoscopic multitudes, we must build an architecture of urbanity that celebrates nature, culture, and joy, that connects all of us across the spectrum of time—emergent from the past, grounded in the present, and optimistic about a visceral, imaginable amd aspirational future.”
Other contributors include a critics Justin Davidson, Paul Goldberger, Adam Gopnik, Michael Kimmelman, architect Nat Oppenheimer, preservationist Andrew Dolkart, structural engineer Guy Nordenson, and urban planner Lisa Switkin, historian Rosemary Vietor, mapmaker Larry Buchanan, Photo Editor Sara Barrett, writer Thomas Dyja.
Editor Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, longest-serving commissioner of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (1972-1987) created the Street Name signs and Markers/Maps programs which identify all of New York City’s historic districts. Chair of the Historic Landmarks Preservation Center since 1995, she created the cultural Medallions program, plaques commemorating notable New Yorkers which are placed at locations in all five boroughs.
