2005
Open House New York Weekend
But I still sing glory from a highrise and I will say thanks if you're pouring my drinks
Two quick interior pictures to start from Raimund Abraham's wonderful Austrian Cultural Institute, a landmark twenty five foot wide tower on East 52nd Street. Friendly Austrians took small groups on continuous tours up to a conference room and library on the upper floors and then down into the theatre and public galleries on the lower floors. The second picture shows the second (or third) floor overlook down to the lobby that was clearly visible from both sides of the railing.
On a higher floor (the fourteenth if I remember right) was a small conference room that is typical of the tower, rooms get increasingly smaller as the facade starts to lean back.
Meanwhile across the street from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Renzo Piano's brand new NY Times Building is under construction. Forest City Ratner's preview center was open as part of Open House New York, and by preview center I mean conference room filled with models, renderings and a bird's eye view of the adjacent construction site. The NY Times building will have a few unique design features, the most visible one being a screen of horizontal ceramic rods (like the one on the wall) that are to be suspended from each of the facades and develop this cool disappearing effect as they rise, if all of those models and renderings are to be believed.
The actual building under construction, looking west towards Eighth Avenue, with W 41st Street (and my still abandoned graduate school masters thesis site) on the immediate right.
The big new attraction this year was the Chrysler Building lobby, one of those places where security guards would otherwise chase you away. The certainly popular space accompanied by a short talk about the interesting history of the certainly popular building designed by fellow Pratt alumni William van Alen, although the harsh acoustics of that certainly popular space did not make listening to such an interesting talk all that easy.
We’re now at the Waldorf Astoria (or Waldorf=Astoria as the grammar police like to say), the legendary hotel on Park Avenue. Small reserved tours allowed me and my fellow plebes into spaces I would normally avoid at all costs, although I will admit that the hour long tours were fairly interesting. After a brief history of the hotel, our vaguely international name dropping tour guide (and hotel PR rep) took us through the lobby, into a few ballrooms, past afternoon tea, into a few suites and finally into the monstrous kitchen, where the sous chef gave us a choice of some tasty American pastries that I guess they would have otherwise probably thrown out. This first picture is of the understated clock (ok, maybe understated isn't the right word) in the lobby, a saved non white relic from the legendary white city of the 1893 Chicago's World Fair.
We toured two suites in the Waldorf Towers, the first one rented out at an obscene $3500 a night while the second one rented out at an unbelievably obscene rate of $10,000 a night. Pictured below is not the Presidential Suite (damn security concerns) but rather their Royal Suite (one of those obscenely expensive ones) and one time home to Duke and Duchess of Windsor. The suite was huge, including a dining room that looked to seat around 40 people though it seemed to me to bear a creepy resemblance to that room near the end of Stanley Kubrick's classic "2001." Oddly enough while 10K may buy you a huge room it does not buy you everything- rooms featured what could best be described as a cheap looking Panasonic alarm clock radio, one that looks worse than one I would expect to see in a room a hundred times (or so) cheaper.
The pictures continue at PS 260, a film (ok, tv commercial) editing studio located in a penthouse space on Fifth Avenue near 28th Street. The space has a tremendous advantage in its location- even in a heavy rain it was hard to miss all of those iconic buildings lurking in every direction. Upon exiting the elevator you are face to face with a large window and skylight framing a clear view of the Empire State Building. As nice as that may have been, things get even better upstairs where a rooftop deck opens up to a view that is good enough to make you linger in what could best be described as an otherwise miserably heavy rain. Off to the right (and not in this picture) the New York Life building looks close enough to touch, the Flatiron Building looks a perfect as always and the otherwise expansive view through that window downstairs starts to feel just a bit closed in.
These next few pictures feature the Ellis Island south side tour, certainly a highlight of that (or any) weekend. The tours were small, reserved, sold out and an absolute pain in the ass to get to. I booked a 9:30 am Sunday tour, meaning I had to be on the heavily secured 8:30 am miserable Circle Line boat, meaning I had to be at Castle Clinton in Battery Park by 8am meaning I had to get up painfully early to get there from my serviceable (although certainly not spectacular) 20th choice midtown hotel.
I was one of the first non NPS people to tour the south side, reserved tours were available for Open House New York Weekend only. The south side is the unrestored one, areas consisting primarily of abandoned hospital buildings- one state of the art hospital complex designed for immigrants who were only a little sick and another where the really sick immigrants could be held until they were shipped back home, if they lasted that long.
Inside (and outside) the bad building. Imagine that it's 1910, you just arrived from Europe after surviving a painfully long journey in steerage class. You arrive on West Street in Lower Manhattan and are put on another smaller boat to Ellis Island where you have to deal with levels and levels of bureaucracy in a language you don't understand. You are forced to see a doctor- probably the first one you have ever seen- except that you can't communicate with him and he's dressed in an especially harsh military outfit. The next thing you know you're in this building, trapped in whatever ward has people suspected of having the same disease as you, being made to wait to be sent back via steerage class or to just die waiting. If you're reading this and thinking of Godfather Part 2 and young Vito, then you're thinking of the other, good building- there sick immigrants who were believed not to be a burden to society were held just until they were ready to be exploited in New York or wherever their final destination may have been. Here in the bad building, patients' future were decidedly more... bleak.
Next up is the High Bridge Water Tower, way, way uptown in Washington Heights, a familiar site for anyone who has ever been on the Harlem River Drive- it's that tower that doesn't look too much like a water tower near the north end of the drive. While getting there really was half the fun (the 168th Street Station deep under Washington Heights is one of the most fun in the whole subway system, one where you have to board a monster elevator just to escape such great depths), getting up the tower was definitely the other half of the fun. A perforated iron stair climbs and climbs (and climbs) to a view that is certainly interesting but nowhere near as much fun as the journey there.
While getting there really was half the fun (the 168th Street Station deep under Washington Heights is one of the most fun in the whole subway system, one where you have to board a monster elevator just to escape such great depths), getting up the tower was definitely the other half of the fun. A perforated iron stair climbs and climbs (and climbs) to a view that is certainly interesting but nowhere near as much fun as the journey there, while inside you can enjoy a moodier image of what life was like going up the stairs, where not that much has changed since 1872.
Since I was uptown anyway, I decided to stop the Cathedral of St John the Divine, a place I had not returned to since that infamous and well celebrated "We, Like Sheep" incident years ago (if you have ever seen Handel’s Messiah with some friends in the back row of a cathedral, then you may have some idea what I mean by that). The cathedral was part of Open House New York, meaning that the tours were free (despite that guilt inducing $5 suggested donation sign guarding the entrance), besides that not much has really changed, it's the same as it ever was.
On the way there at 112th and Broadway was the infamous Tom's Restaurant (for anyone who cares), the site of Suzanne Vega's Tom's Diner song ("Oh this rain it will continue through the morning as I'm listening to the bells of the cathedral, I am thinking of your voice") as well as a fictional site used for many exterior shots of that often rerun 1990s popular situation comedy.
Keep going back in time. Open House New York 2004 is next.
