Title: 100 Years of 100 Things: The NYC Skyline

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue our centennial series, 100 Years of 100 Things. We're up to number 94, 100 years of the New York City skyline. To talk about how our skyline became so iconic and how it's evolved over the decades, I'm joined by Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times and author of The Intimate City: Walking New York. Michael, always great to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Michael: Thank you, Brian. It's great to be here.

Brian: Listeners, we don't have as much time for this as we usually do in a non-membership drive segment, but we want to invite a few of you in here with your favorite or least favorite part of the New York City skyline. Your favorite or least favorite part of the New York City skyline, or any questions about its evolution. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Michael, I guess we need to go back before the 1920s, more than 100 years, to talk about the start of building skyward. Where would you start the timeline?

Michael: It's a really great question, Brian. In a way, you almost have to go back into the 19th century to the Brooklyn Bridge. It's hard, probably for anybody, to really conjure now how shocking that must have been, this incredible giant structure, the size of a mountain, really, imposed on what was still a city of really mostly two and three-story buildings and church steeples that were really a couple of stories maybe higher. People started to walk essentially over a bridge over where birds were flying.

I think that association of awe and height, ambition, architectural glory, brilliance was established, if not before then, certainly at that point. By the turn of the century, when you start getting skyscrapers, I think New York was already establishing itself globally as a new model of a city, a vertical city.

Brian: I guess technology that allowed the Brooklyn Bridge to be built, as it has done throughout the history of the skyline, throughout the history of so many things that we talk about in this 100-year timeline series, technology drives change.

Michael: Absolutely. It was the invention essentially of steel frame buildings and the elevator that allowed a vertical city. In New York's case, that coincided with the fact that the city was the financial capital. It was concentrated mostly on the lower end of an island. The idea of building tall buildings in which you could get a larger number of people, they were mostly commercial buildings, of course, almost all in the beginning, was this perfect combination that inspired the idea of the skyscraper in New York.

It wasn't necessarily invented here, but it was certainly developed here and went hand in hand, as you say, with technology and these other factors, like the economy, like the subway, speaking of technology, which could bring people from all sorts of places to the skyscrapers.

Brian: Our listeners know we talk so much about debates over zoning these days. Before 1916, if I've got my timeline right, there were no legal limits on how big buildings could be. You got the Wall Street Canyon effect. How did lack of regulation contribute to what we sometimes now call the Canyon of Heroes down there? I call it that when there are parades.

Michael: That was where New York City started, and these were narrow streets from pre-colonial days, even. That's right. These big buildings start to be built, and before 1916, you have some of the greatest skyscrapers, the MetLife Building, the Woolworth Building, the Singer Building, really amazing things that were being built. There weren't regulations about their shape, and so there were buildings that were being built in lower Manhattan on these tight streets, which were just these towering walls, and there was fear. You also have to remember, this was a time when you still had a lot of outbreaks of disease and epidemics.

There was a fear that the lack of light and air was going to be harmful to people and was, in general, not good for the city, shadows and so forth. In 1916, you had this massive zoning effort by the city, out of which emerged essentially rules about setbacks. When you think about all the classic skyscrapers that followed, whether it's the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building and others, they define that classic image of the skyscrapers based on the setback, which was an outgrowth of this regulation. If we're going to go taller, we have to provide more space and light and air. The way to do that is to make them not straight up, as you say, these cliffs, but sort of setback.

Brian: Interestingly, what's coming in so far in our texts and on the phones is people calling with their least favorite thing about the New York skyline. What you were just talking about is the biggest theme I see so far. One of the texts says, "Least favorite in Manhattan is the tower that obscures the view of the Manhattan Bridge." Just taking that as an example. The zoning first happened, and you see buildings in the 1920s and '30s, like the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, they were responding to zoning codes.

As you were just describing, some of the buildings at that time started wide at the bottom, but narrow as they went up to let in more light and air as they get taller. I just want to linger on the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building for a sec, because they are two of the most famous buildings in the city, if not the world, and probably two of the most beloved. How were they conceived or received at the time?

Michael: It's an interesting question because we now look at a lot of these buildings as beloved parts of the city. The Chrysler Building, when it opened, received a lot of criticism. It was considered an abomination architecturally. It was an Art Deco building, and a lot of people didn't find that tasteful. It opened right before the Empire State Building. The Empire State Building had a better reception in the beginning. They both did, but especially the Empire State Building, opened right into the teeth of the Depression.

It was a little different because not only was it a little taller, so it now set the record, which was a nice thing. It was a sign of hope in the Depression. It was also open to the public. It had space for more kinds of small businesses. It felt more like a populist building. People would go to the top and look out over the city from there. What's interesting about this to me is this evolution of these buildings in our imagination, the way they become something else over time.

Now I think the Chrysler Building may be the most beloved of all. It's certainly an iconic one for the city. I can't disagree with the person who wrote in about that building in what's called Two Bridges, the area near the Manhattan Bridge between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. That's pretty much an abomination. There are a lot of buildings which go up and they come to be seen differently. I bet you're going to get some people writing in about a lot of the supertalls as well.

Brian: One text on that, just to put it in a listener's words, "Those stupid skeleton high-rises."

Michael: [laughs] Personally, Brian, I'm a little more tolerant of them. They vary in their quality. There's, I think, some nice ones. The Steinway, one by an architecture firm called SHoP, is better than some of the others. The Viñoly one, which looks to me interesting. Some people find it just a raised finger at the city. I think one of the most interesting things about the evolution of the skyline, it's like the EKG of New York City. It changes all the time as the city goes on, and its dynamic changes. In effect, the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers created a view of the city, almost a suspended bridge view of the city. You had these two towering poles, and then you had a lower area in between.

What's happened in recent years with all these buildings, including these super talls, is they've not only obscured the Empire State and the Chrysler Building, they've complicated the skyline in really interesting ways. It's harder to orient yourself, if you're a New Yorker, around the skyline. First of all, there are many areas. Brooklyn now has some remarkable skyscrapers. Parts of Manhattan that really didn't have as many tall buildings do, too. I find that dynamic and interesting. A lot of people are just appalled, of course.

Brian: Now, the listener writes, I can't resist reading this one, "Least favorite Verizon reminds me of my monthly bill."

[laughter]

Brian: Back to the timeline, the skyline timeline, the next big change after the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building era, it was probably the mid-century glass box era, the international style skyscrapers, those on Park Avenue above Grand Central, things like that. Was that an aesthetic change or a technological development in structural engineering in its own right?

Michael: Yes, it was both yet again. You had the curtain wall, and that created the ability to create these now sheer faces, glass boxes. They went hand in hand with the different idea of how these buildings would relate to the street. You often have these setbacks, these plazas in front. Two very great examples are the Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe, and Lever House by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, across the street from that, which has a plaza on the ground floor. Those are kind of really beautiful buildings.

I don't think they've ever caught on in the popular imagination in the way the Empire State or Chrysler did or Woolworth and so forth. I think that's a really crucial thing, too, Brian, because New York has always changed. It's always gotten rid of buildings, sometimes pretty great ones, and replaced them. For much of history, New York's history, that was okay. The Empire State Building itself replaced a really good building, I think was the early version of the Waldorf Astoria.

It was when modernism came in, and a lot of people really couldn't embrace the aesthetic of the glass box, didn't really see what was beautiful or special, even about Lever or Seagram, that people began to become skeptical of change in general. A lot of that change was vertical. It was about the creation of these new tall buildings, Park Avenue, Sixth Avenue, and in other parts of the city. That dynamic, I think, has lived on. It was epitomized, of course, in the demolition of Penn Station, which produced, to Penn Plaza, a really hideous skyscraper there. It's still what I think many people feel when they think about big buildings going up now.

Brian: You're really saying you know when NIMBYism started, and it was the 1940s.

Michael: [laughs] That's possibly true.

Brian: Some of the comments that we're getting are about skylines, not just in Manhattan, but in our area. On Brooklyn, listener writes, "There was a time you couldn't build anything in Brooklyn taller than the Dime Savings Building*." Another one writes, "The Eye of Sauron," I'm not sure if I'm getting that right, but it's at 9 DeKalb, "is such an eyesore in the downtown Brooklyn skyline." This listener adds, "At the same time, it's so tall and unusual that it does serve as a useful orientation tool." Then on New Jersey, caller is saying they hate the two "modern buildings." I think one of them is called the Modern, if I'm not mistaken, in Fort Lee, right across the George Washington Bridge.

Michael: The Brooklyn skyline has changed, in a way, the most dramatically. That's absolutely true about the Dime Savings Building. Now, the Brooklyn Tower, as it's called at 9 DeKalb, which is also by SHoP, I've heard it described as the Eye of Sauron, is huge. I think it's over 1,000 feet tall. I don't mind it myself, again, but I think, and yes, it certainly is a marker. I think that's part of the economic shift that's taken place in Brooklyn. Brooklyn itself, which had been, of course, an incredibly vibrant and major city, but was more around industry and working New Yorkers, has become much more of an economic, financial, wealthy part of the city.

With that have been these towers, which mostly are now not commercial, but residential, luxury towers. I think the point about that that's really crucial is we could see the Woolworths Building as a sign of American prosperity. A lot of these towers, which are so incredibly expensive to live in, are visible daily reminders of the financial inequities of the city. Who can afford to live in those places? They even carry a different connotation, I think.

Brian: We're almost out of time, coming up to the present, at the end of the 100-year timeline. Listener writes, and a few listeners are chiming in on this. I'll read one text that says, "Least favorite, abominable, ham-fisted collection at Hudson Yards, including The Shawarma." I think you have something to say about this.

Michael: Yes. I'm with all the callers you've mentioned, the people writing in on those buildings, including Verizon. Hudson Yards is the epitome of the problem. You can't just put up tall buildings. It's like an architectural petting zoo. Some good architects creating a place that has nothing really to do with New York and the way New York works. It feels soulless.

There's a big issue about what's going to happen with the rest of Hudson Yards, which is a conversation we'll maybe have another time. I think the one sign of hope there is that New York is an incredibly resilient and resourceful place. Even neighborhoods like Hudson Yards may morph over time into something that we recognize as something part of the city, but at the moment, I'm with your caller. It's a pretty depressing sign.

Brian: Michael, 15 seconds. Do you have a favorite view of the skyline, the Manhattan skyline, a vantage point?

Michael: Oh, that's a really interesting question. Let me say this. I think going up to the top of tall buildings has never been the place from which I'd like to see the city. It's usually some middle ground, pretty high, 20, 30, 40 stories high, but there's something about the city when you go too high that you miss the life on the streets. I think the thing that excites us about New York is not just the height, but that energy that you really feel when you can see what's going on on the ground.

Brian: That, folks, is 100 Years of 100 Things number 94, 100 years of the New York City skyline. Thank you so much, Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times and author of The Intimate City: Walking New York. Thanks, Michael. It was great.

Michael: Always a pleasure.

Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More to come.

*correction: the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower at 1 Hanson Place

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