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part four
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previous page.
One wonders how AIA-NYC would have read had it been written anew rather
than merely revised and updated. As it stands, it happily avoids the
cranky pedantry of White's decade-old Paris guide; but in its place is a
kind of Connecticut retiree's disengaged weariness. It isn't that he's
paleo-reactionary--if anything, Norval White remains a principled urban
progressive at heart who'll take Tschumi over Trump anyday (in fact, he'll
pay you to take Trump--please). But too many new entries this time
around--some of them relatively prominent buildings in prominent
locations--are given the generic "1990s" (or sometimes, vestigially,
"1980s") architectural date and no architectural credit. One looks in vain
for certain architectural icons of the 90s, such as the much-publicized
"green" rehabilitation of the National Audubon Society HQ (the "green"
stuff's not all that discernable with the passerby's naked eye, but so
what). Of course, there are eleventy jillion other omissions that we'd
hoped might be remedied this time around but weren't; you can't have
everything. (They include a pair of my fave 60s pop-music icons within a
spit of each other on Broadway: the still-with-us Brill Building, and that
beaconed Tommy James inspiration, the MONY Building--both mentioned in
Access, by the way.) But given how as a quasi-self-generating series of
urban facilities, Chelsea Piers became a true Noo Yawk 90s urban phenomenon
and experience, one expects more than a non-indicative mention in the p238
ex-Westyard Distribution Center entry--and one also wishes for a clearer
indication that for all the love and care that went into it, the Fulton
Market spent much of the 90s not "filled with activity day and night",
but rather as an increasingly forlorn symbol of the festival marketplace
novelty having run its course, as nearly all the shopping and eating that
counted decamped for the more Gapcult-friendly Pier 17. (Perhaps the truth
is tread upon lightly because Fulton Market and the South Street Seaport in
general is much more the baby of Willenskyan "heritage culture" than
Chelsea Piers. It proves that yes, even in this realm of
heritage-conscious felicitous urbanity, all the careful, well-studied
planning in the world cannot hold a candle to Jane Jacobs-style vulgar,
messy, styleless urban spontenaiety.)
In fact, if one looks carefully throughout the chapters, very little of
the introductory text has been updated since 1988--which, considering that
the intervening years have seen not only important volumes on the city such
as the formidable New York Encyclopedia, and lots of new directions in
archi-urban research, but the Giulianian apotheosis of New York as
spiffed-up commodity, is a bit puzzling and dismaying. (Though, one might
argue, the commodification process and its urban patterns were already
adumbrated in the later Koch years.) On a more vulgar level, considering
that AIA-NYC has traditionally been among the earthiest and most
real-world-and-popular-mythology-grounded of the architectural guides (hey,
anything to "provide context"), some might call the absence of 90s popcult
ref points disconcerting--thankfully or not, the banally requisite
"Friends" or "Seinfeld" references are nowhere to be seen, and even the
Fort Greene/Clinton Hill areas breeze by with nary a mention of Spike Lee.
(On the other hand, a front-to-back peruser'll spot the movie "Men In
Black" referenced a few pages into the first tour; sorry about having
promises raised so early.) Maybe again, it's a sobering-up in the
aftermath of 80s excess, or another acknowledgment that other guides do the
pop-cult thing better, or a reflection of Norval White being more the
ahts-elitist type than Eliot Willensky (though as with the "Men In Black"
ref, White does good deadpan). But there's still a vague aspect of vacuum
overcoming the enterprise; maybe a jaded disillusionment...
...with one exception that may or may not prove the rule, and where it
counts, yet: Times Square. Over the editions, coverage of the Times
Square vicinity has been beefed up considerably and nicely, thanks in no
undue part to the blanket landmarking of its early theatres in the 80s.
Even in 1988 W&W stopped short of providing full entries on that theatrical
plethora (providing instead a 2-page reference list sans comments); but now
there are the full entries, replete with references to shows that played
there ("Friends" & "Seinfeld" may be transitory things, but Broadway is
eternal), and even the recent massive redevelopments around Times, 42nd, et
al have been treated (all things considered) charitably and without undue
cynicism. (Yet still, no Brill, no MONY, not even the Times Square Howard
Johnson's, and there's at least a couple of unattributed "1990s"
thereabouts...)
But, major tourist zone and place of Big Apple mythology that it is, Times
Square is easy stuff. Then, there's its opposite number as an out-there
destination and perverse fixation point, and the erstwhile most delirious
part of this real Delirious New York, the true test of the truest AIA-NYC
connoisseur--Staten Island. Of all comprehensive New York tourist guides,
few--not even Access--give visitors the kind of positive incentive to turn
the requisite Staten Island Ferry sightseeing jaunt into, well, an excuse
to visit and appreciate Staten Island--i.e. to actually get off at the St.
George end and look around, rather than doubling back to the Battery--that
AIA-NYC does. And such is the curiosity-piquing magic of architectural
perambulation; it gives a positive sense of place and destination--a little
bucolic, a little elegiac--to what might otherwise be dismissed as sleepy,
unhip, ordinary, and unworthy of your time. Thus the St. George end of the
Staten Island Ferry is revealed not as a nothingsville, but, like
Brooklyn--and in an oddly more "all-American" way--a happy antidote to
tromped-over, Trumped-over, Schragered-over Manhattan. And even St. George
is only Staten Island's gilt edge: AIA-NYC celebrated Staten Island in
toto as a daffy, unique, sometimes lovely, sometimes not-so-lovely,
sometimes just perverse slab of the city, totally different from the rest
and perhaps more for those oddball fanatics of "Long Island" or "New
Jersey" as a concept--yet with an odd sort of
reverential-yet-carefully-critical dignity tempering what could easily have
collapsed into easy, banal 80s-style irony and cynicism (or 90s-style arch
"extremity"). It was like the happily orchestrated, weirdest-of-them-all
grand finale to the guidebook (and you can go home now, richer in
spirit)--and in its turn, if there has to be a model for "Pevsnering" the
North American suburb, AIA-NYC's erstwhile treatment of Staten Island, in
turning the forgotten or even forgettable into something unforgettable, is
a fine place to start. (And I know, having perambulated Staten Island,
right down to the blitzed-out Arthur Kill Road processional drive, AIA-NYC
in hand--who needs Compostela when you have Tottenville--as a conscious
diversion on a cross-country road trip in '93. In a subsequent family
parlour game, when asked my favourite body of water, I chose Arthur Kill.
Then I was told that my choice was supposed to show the kind of lover I
was, or something like that. I guess that must mean I'm destined for
Angelina Jolie or something...)
But, after the loss of the Necrology, the saddest aspect of AIA-NYC 2000
is that relative to 1988, Staten Island's been anaesthetized. Albeit with
a mitigating factor: in keeping with the cartographic bolstering throughout
the volume, there's now capsule maps of St. George, New & West Brighton,
Stapleton, et al (though, curiously, not the most self-consciously
"walkable" part of all, the Richmondtown Restoration)--a definite benefit,
especially given the cluttered, ill-planned, upsy-downsy and dubiously
navigable and sometimes even unsafe (yes, there are zones in Staten Island
you'd think twice about treading into) nature of those communities. But
outside of that, it's a shortsighted shadow; and contrary to the pattern
elsewhere, even a discernable amount of the between-the-cracks old has
vanished in the name of editorial rationalization, together with the bulk
of 60s/70s schools, community centres, Charles Azzue wackiness, etc. As
for the extremist's Joizy-cum-Long Island "dystopian" aspect of Staten
Island (Heartland Village, Fresh Kills, et al--yeah, even any real
reference to Fresh Kills, that ur-objet in SI, is shoved away)--it's all
but gone, although continuing post-Venturian trends in suburban scholarship
(think of obvious cases like Joel Garreau on Edge Cities, etc, or even your
average copy of Metropolis) would have led one to expect otherwise.
Instead, we're left with a Staten Island that conforms too closely to a
familiar historic-communities-and-heritage-landmarks-and-token-little-else
model of architectural guiding--and illustrating Peter Eisenman's
fascinatingly, disconcertingly cosmopolitan vision for the Staten Island
Ferry Terminal cannot compensate. An overzealous post-80s "return to
sobriety"? Or running out of space at the end of the book (familiar
situation to the last-minute term-paper writer with a page/word limit)? Or
just misguidedly "concluding" that Staten Island as previously covered
isn't all it's cracked up to be?
NEXT: "NYRO was a BRONX BABE"
in PART 5.
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