On my first trip to Italy, I learned two very important words as a visitor: chiuso and costruzione (closed and construction). In fact, it started to become a private joke – everywhere we went, we encountered some variation on the theme of closed and/or under construction. Admittedly, with such a density of ancient architecture and sculpture, the repair and maintenance of places such as Florence, Venice, Rome, etc. will, of necessity, be a perpetual enterprise.

In America, as a much newer country, this is a novel concept, and repairs taking place repeatedly or over long periods of time are usually viewed as tragic or a sign of incompetence.
With the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, we have our own shrine to chiuso and costruzione. A tour around the 11.5-acre property reveals metal sheds, barbed wire fences, and until 2007, scaffolding. See more photos of the interior and exterior here.

In some rather unfortuitous twists and turns, the construction of this cathedral has been proceeding in fits and starts since its inception in 1892 and, in fact, is still not completed. Bad luck, World War, running out of endowment money, long periods of stagnation. And, to add insult to injury, a fire in 2001. An early change in architects resulted in the mixture of architectural styles we see today – Romanesque and Gothic. This is a long and complex tale (read about it here).

But there are other things of a more positive nature. This cathedral is enormous – 601 feet long with an interior height of 124 feet. It is one of the largest cathedrals in the world. The Statue of Liberty could fit inside. There is a magnificent pipe organ. The place inspires awe.
Although most churches are involved in community and charitable work, St John has gone much further than most, with a wide range of performing and visual arts programs, concerts, workshops, educational work, and a plethora of outreach programs.

Memorial services, celebrations, and speakers by and for people of all walks and faiths have been seen here – St. John’s really stands out in this eclectic, nondenominational way. Philippe Petit has performed there and was an artist in residence. Many notables, such as the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu, have spoken at Saint John. There is even a triptych by Keith Haring (The Life of Christ).

A fervent mission is now at hand to finally complete the work – the Eastern portion, where these photos were taken, has been finished. I was told that full completion of the interior will be done by November 2008 (with celebration and fanfare I am sure), so I would pencil this in on my calendar…

Everything Donald Trump does has to be bigger in some way. And, of course, being a real estate developer, this means bigger buildings, and in NYC, that means zoning, neighborhoods, and controversy.
When I heard that a 42-story condominium hotel was being built in SoHo, I was surprised to hear that such a project passed all the hurdles and community opposition. So, armed with a camera, I decided to see the project and setting for myself – always a good idea, since many stories are spun and important details left out.

The first thing I discovered was that this building was not located in central SOHO near the historic district with its lowrise cast iron buildings. It was on the corner of Spring and Varick Streets, where we have a strip of rather ungainly, hulking behemoth buildings in the printing district on a transit road to the Holland Tunnel. There are, however, shorter buildings and a school nearby on Spring, and the building does tower above anything in lower Manhattan, apart from the financial district. Many community members consider it an absolutely egregious sin, another one of Donald’s cheap and shiny buildings, foisted on the neighborhood by the devil himself. Personally, I would have preferred it at least somewhat shorter. But if it wasn’t too tall, too shiny, inappropriate, or irritating in some way, we wouldn’t know it was a Trump property, would we?

Afterthought: I sometimes wonder whether we really dislike Donald; he provides an endless source of entertainment. The King of Glitz is, in some ways, much like some aspects of NYC – shouting its prominence for all to be heard…

On a more somber note, a building worker was killed in an accident on January 14, 2008. You can read the story in the New York Times here.

When I first moved to NYC and was absolutely busting with enthusiasm for the city, this strip along 6th Avenue was a must-stop on my whirlwind auto tour for visitors. I was a one man marketing campaign (at a time where New York was not seen very favorably), and showing off this strip of skyscrapers extending as far as the eye could see really did inspire. For me, it just screamed big, best, and all the other superlatives I associated with the city. I would park somewhere along 6th Avenue in the 40s on the EAST side of the avenue and command my passengers to get out and witness the evidence first hand that NYC was the best.

Here, we have a long, unified grouping of 40-50 story skyscrapers – some of the tallest in the city, many with eponymous names like McGraw Hill, Exxon, Celanese, Time-Life, the Stevens Tower, Americas Tower, 1155 Avenue of the Americas (the black granite building in the foreground designed by Emery Roth), et. al. Many of these were built in the 1960s and 70s, and the names no longer apply – the original tenants have relocated. Some were annexes to Rockefeller Center, leveraging the cache of that complex. McGraw Hill, Exxon, and Celanese (not clearly visible in this photo which starts at 43rd Street) were known as the XYZ buildings. In 1981, Paul Goldberger wrote: “For a long time, I thought that nothing could be worse than the “XYZ” buildings on the Avenue of the Americas, the massive Exxon, McGraw-Hill and Celanese skyscrapers that comprise the western expansion of Rockefeller Center, so named by their planners because of their nearly identical design. The three boxy towers are banal in the extreme, with huge and generally useless plazas dulling the street life in front and straight tops flattening out the skyline up above.”

Nostalgia aside, I must agree with most architecture critics that these buildings and their plazas are rather cold, lifeless, and joyless. The AIA Guide to NYC says,  “They are sorry neighbors to their parent buildings.” They perhaps best serve as a lesson illustrating how serious a responsibility architecture really is. Buildings become a semi-permanent legacy – designs should not be based on whim or the fashion trend of the moment…

No Fall from Grace, Thickens and Sickens, and Travesty in Travertine were all competing titles for this story. The W.R. Grace Building at West 42nd Street was commissioned by the W.R. Grace Corporation, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and completed in 1971 (the resemblance to the Solow Building at 9 West 57th St. is no coincidence – the initial, rejected design for the facade of that building was used by Bunshaft for the Grace Building). A casual perusal of Internet sources will give relatively neutral to positive reviews of this building. Wikipedia’s entry is perfunctory. 50 stories with signature curved sloping bases (the same on 43rd Street) (click here for photo). Exterior in white travertine.

But if you dig further, you will find that many architects HATE this building. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger said, “The Grace Building’s front – I call it swooping, others call it a ski-jump – is an arrogant, exhibitionistic form that breaks the line of building-fronts that is important to any New York City Street … Mr. Bunshaft, it would seem, cares nothing about Bryant Park or about anything except the shape of his own building, which from the northwest, at the corner of 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue, looks like nothing so much as an immense piece of furniture squeezed awkwardly into the wrong place. At that corner, as a zoning bonus permitting extra height, is one of the coldest and most unwelcoming plazas any architect has created anywhere.” The AIA Guide to NYC calls it “a disgrace to the street.”

But the plot thickens and sickens. W.R. Grace and Company was founded by William Russell Grace (1832-1904) in 1854 in Peru – he had left Ireland due to the potato famine. He moved to NYC in 1865. He was also the city’s first Roman Catholic Mayor, serving two terms from 1880-1888. Initially, the company was in fertilizer and machinery. Later, there were acquisitions of chemical companies, and here the problems started.

It was found that in the 1970s, the W. R. Grace Company had improperly disposed of trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent, which entered the groundwater of Woburn, Mass, causing six deaths from leukemia and numerous illnesses in the town’s families. They were indicted in 1987. However, this is only the start. Grace was also plagued with asbestos injury claims and lawsuits as a result of vermiculite mining in Libby, Montana (the vermiculite was found to contain asbestos). In 2001, they filed for bankruptcy protection. The U.S. Department of Justice determined that Grace had transferred 4-5 billion dollars to spin-off companies it had purchased just before declaring bankruptcy (the bankruptcy court ordered the various companies to return nearly $1 billion to Grace). This story has been the subject of TV, PBS, and NPR specials, and even a film (A Civil Action, starring John Travolta).

The company, now located in Maryland, no longer has offices in the Grace Building. W.R. Grace is still in business, is traded on the NY Stock Exchange, and has a valuation of $1.5 billion. So far, there’s been grace for Grace…