Woolworth Building New York

New York's skyscraper renaissance

The Woolworth Building was the first to emerge in Downtown in 1913.Then the action moved to Midtown with radiators brilliant art deco Chrysler Building (1930), these steps reduced the Aztec Empire State Building (1931) and, finally, the elegant, slender towers of Rockefeller Center (1933, although Some construction continued after that). After the Second World War, modernism and kicked in from there everything was extruded - turns became a bit more rectangular plans drawn up and clad in glass.

This moment of American exuberance has been replaced by cold, rational influence of European avant-garde.The Twin Towers, now in mourning, were the heyday of the time - pure dumb boxes with a little leaven pseudo-Islamic trend in the base. Why extrude a square where you could extrude two, get this discount on bulk materials? The architect, Minoru Yamasaki only need a plan - savings all around.

But now, standing in SoHo, Tribeca and Chinatown and to look back to where it all began, the cluster of towers around the city Woolworth Building and you can not help but notice a tower that shines as brightly and mesmerically that Chrysler should have when its flagship stainless steel, hyper-polished car parts have crossed his arrow.

Recent scrapes the city is shamelessly being called "New York by Frank Gehry," as if it were a celebrity fragrance.But despite the marketing spiel, this is an extraordinary structure, the first skyscraper by architect of the Guggenheim Bilbao and the first in New York in a generation to cause a stir.

It is a shimmering tower of steel, its surface gently undulating, like curtains fluttering in the wind. It glints of sunlight from almost anywhere in Manhattan - and looks even better across the water in Brooklyn. Yet at street level, you never know he was there.It sits on a solid and sober brick on Spruce Street, a block containing a public school and facilities for the nearby hospital, part of a plan of compromise that allowed the developer to build the tower 76 floors - now billed as the largest residential building in the Western Hemisphere.

New York Visions « Hudson Owen's Blog

When I arrived in New York in the late 1970s, the Twin Towers were in place, part of the year. I had a temporary job working in a bank or financial company, on the 95th floor of the North Tower. Some employees from the old location refused to make the trip because of the height. After the attack, I thought of these people. I do not remember their names and faces only vaguely. None would have survived the air strike and fire. They were trapped and died in the flames, or jumping.

I did not like the towers. They were too impetuous and brand new.The five other buildings on the site of the WTC were more across the city center. And there was the square with the ball sculpture and water fountain. During the emergency water, the fountain was dry.

The historic core of the city was low-rise: Dutch buildings on side streets, Fraunces Tavern, Delmonico, the circular fort in Battery Park, along the low building Battery Park and the Coast Guard Station, the quaint shops and restaurants in the seaport of Southport.Downtown was there, the city began (the water once came to the Water Street) Our first president delivered his inaugural address at Federal Hall, one of the most photographed sites in New York.

Downtown is the story does not progress. Any upstart could build the tallest building in the world. New York had the neo-Gothic Woolworth Building, the Empire State Building and the twin towers.

Basically what the twin towers lacked class and charm. The lobby of the WTC had a cathedral proportions.As an observer of the interiors of New York, I would give him second in the Winter Garden at World Financial Center, definitely worth a look in his day.

When the towers came down, the open horizon. For the first time in decades, New Yorkers have had the opportunity to rethink their horizon. There were two main lines of thought at the time. Mayor Rudy Giuliani wanted the entire site on a monument, a view I share. The most popular point of view was to rebuild the twin towers, to repair the hole in the sky and deny terrorists a victory they thought they could have reached.Developer Donald Trump would have become the champion of this concept and publicly submitted a design scale model of his own. The big problem with this idea was suggested that it would have, visually, that the attack never took place and therefore the people who died in 2793 he was brought back to life.

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