A Walk in Turtle Bay: Beekman Place, the U.N., Tudor City, and E. 42nd St.

I recommend that visitors to New York, if they have time, should escape the more manic tourist attractions to discover quieter parts of the city. It's not only nice to get away from the crowds, for a change, but also to see how New Yorkers live and work. The far east side of midtown, from Beekman Place at E. 51st St. south to E. 42nd Street, is a diverse and intriguing oasis of quiet streets, spectacular housing complexes, and the international community around the U.N.


View Larger Map Distance: approx. 2 miles.
Note: This walk can function as a connector walk between two previous walks created for Walking Off the Big Apple - the Greta Garbo walk (that begins on E. 52nd St.) and the Raymond Hood architecture walk (picking up at the Daily News Building on E. 42nd St.)

Begin at 6 train subway stop at 51st St.
Walk north to 52rd St. and then east for lunch at ZipBurger (at 2nd Ave.), one of the best hamburger joints in the neighborhood (vegetarian friends like the salmon burger), and then continue walking east. Turn south on 1st Ave., walk east on E. 51st. to Beekman Place. (Or, head all the way east on E. 52nd to The Campanile, once home to Greta Garbo, and come back.)

In Auntie Mame, the 10-year-old orphan Patrick Dennis is taken to live with his peculiar aunt at her apartment at 3 Beekman Place. The quiet street of only two blocks and surrounding area is home to old New York families and several diplomatic consulates.

At the south end of Beekman Place, walk west back to 1st Avenue and proceed south on 1st Avenue next to the United Nations complex.

The United Nations complex, built in 1949 and 1950 on seventeen acres, symbolizes international utopianism. Like Rockefeller Center, completed a decade before, the buildings were designed by an international committee of architects. The main building housing the Secretariat is based on a design by Le Corbusier. In lieu of a physical tour, while preferable, I recommend seeing Sydney Pollack's 2005 movie The Interpreter for a look inside the complex.

Directly across from the United Nations, Ralph Bunche Park is a small oasis of greenery. Walk up the granite staircase next to the Isaiah Wall (with its "beat their swords into plowshares" quotation) to the Tudor City Apartments.

Tudor City
These 12 buildings in the Tudor revival style were built in years 1925-28 as rental units to keep middle class residents from fleeing to the suburbs. Designed by architects Fred French and H. Douglas Ives, the city within a city served to clean up the area's worst slums as an early example of urban renewal. In 1988 the Landmarks Preservation Committee designated Tudor City as an historic district.

Bounded by 43th Street. to the north and 40th St. to the south, between 1st and 2nd Avenues, the Tudor City complexes, unified in their dark brown bricks and variations on English Tudor ornamentation, share small peaceful parks. Charleston Heston, by the way, once lived in Tudor City. (Tudor City sites here and here for more info.)

Walk down the staircase on either side of 42nd Street to the sidewalk below and proceed west along 42nd St. The Ford Foundation at 321 East 42nd Street, designed by Roche Dinkeloo in 1967, is considered one of the best buildings of the late International Style, famous for its early use of the spacious interior glass atrium.

At the end of the walk, 42nd Street awaits. Continue west toward Grand Central Terminal where, presumably, you'll once again join the crowds.

See related posts:
Classic New York: A Walk, and a Map
The Classic New York of Mame Dennis: A Coda, on Bank Street
Classic New York: 59th and Fifth: A Slideshow
Classic New York: The Algonquin
Classic New York: Times Square
Classic New York: A Visit to Macy's, in April
Classic New York: Henri Bendel
Classic New York: The King Cole Bar at the St. Regis
The Classic New York of Mame Dennis
The Liberation Theology of Mame Dennis
Grand Central Theatre, and A New Walk Begins

Grand Central Theatre, and A New Walk Begins

After scouting new walks around Midtown East today, I made my way back to Grand Central Terminal to catch a downtown train home. When I entered the terminal I noticed that the light looked particularly theatrical. While I did see a cameraman setting up a tracking shot (that's his foot on the dolly to the right), a telltale sign that the terminal would make it into yet another motion picture, the light beaming down on the floor came not from artificial spots but from the spring sun beaming through the massive windows. Whoever stepped into that bright spot today, like the people above, cast themselves in their own drama.

In designing the next themed walk for this website, I wanted to focus on a literary character important to New York mythology. I couldn't decide whether to follow Lily Bart, the central character of Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, or Mame Dennis, the fabulous eccentric of Patrick Dennis' Auntie Mame. Both books open their New York stories at Grand Central Terminal. The House of Mirth begins with Lawrence Selden catching a glimpse of Lily Bart. After their joyful exchange of flirtatious witticisms, the couple walk up Madison Avenue. In Auntie Mame, the orphan, Patrick, and his nanny, Norah, travel by train to New York and arrive at Grand Central. From there they catch a taxi to 3 Beekman Place to meet his new legal guardian. Patrick doesn't know much about his late father's sister, only that she is "a very peculiar woman."

Walking helps the decision-making process. In the end, I decided to leave Lawrence Selden and Lily Bart in the terminal spotlight and pick up their story another day. The story and walk I'm about the pursue, I also thought, promises to bring some subtle complexity, with its tension between autobiography and fiction. So, soon I will take Patrick Dennis to Beekman Place, and a new walk begins.

Photo by Walking Off the Big Apple. April 3, 2008.

See related posts:
Classic New York: A Walk, and a Map
The Classic New York of Mame Dennis: A Coda, on Bank Street
Classic New York: 59th and Fifth: A Slideshow
Classic New York: The Algonquin
Classic New York: Times Square
Classic New York: A Visit to Macy's, in April
Classic New York: Henri Bendel
Classic New York: The King Cole Bar at the St. Regis
The Classic New York of Mame Dennis
A Walk in Turtle Bay: Beekman Place, the U.N., Tudor City, and E. 42nd St.
The Liberation Theology of Mame Dennis

Waxing Poetic About the McDonald's at Broadway and Thomas

I was walking south on Broadway the other day to look at the Woolworth Building when I was struck by the spectacle of this vernacular burger franchise. I've written about more elegant buildings, including art deco masterpieces, contemporary condo developments, and modern office buildings, so this commentary represents a departure from my regular excellent taste.

Many die-hard preservationists would find this building and what it represents as a violation of the architectural integrity of lower Manhattan. After all, the gray cinder block construction is mundane and the advertising signage excessive. It's way tacky.

I have to say I like it. I enjoy the repetition of the golden arches, the purple neon window outlines on the second floor, the abundance of red, and the display of food products featured on the side billboard that seemingly dance in the blue sky. I love the red doors, and the whole thing exudes an aesthetic connection to some stores in Chinatown. I'm impressed that they've made a banner for the dollar menu. Looking at the photo as an art object, I'm glad a woman in a red coat walked into the frame at just the right time.

I wouldn't want to live in an entire city that looked like this, but I don't advocate freezing Manhattan in a time capsule either. I support most of the efforts of the preservation societies and landmark commission, because losing the architectural heritage of New York would be a travesty on many levels. On the other hand, some preservationists seem to me too dogmatic and overly married to the status quo. There's nothing wrong with a pink building here and there, for example. And I'm not scared of just a little red.

Jean Nouvel, Cass Gilbert, and the Hugh Ferriss Degree of Separation

In the image here, a streetscape along Mercer Street in Soho, the dark glassy building on the left is 40 Mercer, a luxury condo development by architect Jean Nouvel completed a few months ago. Yesterday, the prestigious Pritzker Prize (site) announced that Nouvel was the 2008 recipient. Looking south, Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building, which I wrote about in the previous post, stands off in the distance.

Nouvel, a 62-year-old innovative designer, has several opportunities to add his touches to the physical landscape of New York. The condo above is a modest, though elegant, contribution. What he's planned for midtown is of a different order.

Nicolai Ouroussoff, architecture critic of the NYT, writes that Nouvel's planned 75-story tower next to the Museum of Modern Art "promises to be the most exhilarating addition to the skyline in a generation." (NYT article) The sketch of the proposed tower, Ourousoff notes, takes off from the imaginative 1920s sketches of architect Hugh Ferriss. Early in his career, Ferriss decided to focus on a career rendering the works of others, and after moving to New York in 1912 he went to work for Cass Gilbert. His rendering of the Woolworth Building for Gilbert is considerably lighter in mood than his later signature expressionist and theatrical sketches of the 1920s.

Nouvel, we're all coy to point out, resembles a handsomer though unmistakable Dr. Evil. Fashioning this new tower out of the mythical renderings of the New York skyline of mid-century - from Fritz Lang's Metropolis to DC Comic's Gotham (also Ferriss-influenced), Nouvel presents to New Yorkers a building that looks like its sketches, revealing the criss-cross lines of its construction. We'll be able to see straight through it in places. I'm now fantasizing an image of Nouvel, standing at a window on the 75th floor and looking out at the new Gotham, softly stroking a tiny hairless kitty.

See also Walking Off the Big Apple's 40 Bond to 40 Mercer walk. Image above by WOTBA.

UPDATE April 9, 2008. The proposed MoMA tower, designed by Nouvel, faces considerable opposition. Read about the Landmarks Preservation Committee public hearing in this NYT report.

The Woolworth Building

Minnesota architect Cass Gilbert (1859-1934) designed several important buildings for 20th century New York. The Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House (1902-1907) at 1 Bowling Green, his first big commission, is a lavish Beaux Arts- style masterpiece. The New York Life Building (1926-28) is a massive building that blends neo-Gothic with the geometries of more modern 1920s structures.

He designed the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, where I spent my undergraduate years, and also buildings for the campus of The University of Texas in Austin, including Battle Hall (1911), a Spanish-Mediterranean Revival building that houses the architecture library and is considered one of the best structures in Texas. I only bring this up because I spent many pleasurable hours inside Battle Hall researching my master's thesis on the American skyscraper. I remember how I would sometimes look up from my books and gaze at the windows and ceiling and thinking about wanting to live in such a place.

The Woolworth Building at 233 Broadway, the tallest building in the world when it was built in 1913, annoyed some modernist architects for its neo-Gothic ornamentation and bothered others for just being so tall. It was impressive for its design and engineering, with the steel frame skeleton supported by enormous caissons driven deep into the earth. The elevators were faster and more plentiful than in other buildings at the time, a profitable factor that Frank Woolworth appreciated for his "cathedral of commerce."

This morning I walked south through Soho on Mercer Street until Canal, walked a block east and then continued south on Broadway until I reached the Woolworth Building. I sat in City Hall Park across the way and looked at the building for some time. The neo-Gothicism lends the building the ecclesiastical aura, but there's little doubt of its secular intent as permanent outdoor advertising. What it doesn't look like at all, interestingly, is a Woolworth store.

The Woolworth Building hovers in my field of vision whenever I walk through downtown, and I've started to invest in it spiritual meaning and power. Maybe angels hang out up there, like the ones dressed in trench coats in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire.

Image: The Woolworth Building, 233 Broadway.

See nearby places in Tribeca:
Establishing Shots: The Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca of Duane: Duane Street and Duane Park
Tribeca Living: A Building for Chocolate, and One for the Wool Trade
In Search of the Lower West Side: Before Tribeca
Walking Off Tribeca and Remembering Mostly Lunch
Walking Off Tribeca: The Lay of the Land
Walking Off Tribeca: Starting at Square One

The Tribeca of Duane: Duane Street and Duane Park

On my walks through Tribeca last week, I found that my head and feet propelled me toward Duane Park, whether I liked it or not. This particular triangular streetscape, with its little well-groomed island of a park in the center of the confluence of two streets, seems so pretty that there must be something amiss.

This section of Duane Street between Hudson and Greenwich is so sweet that when the weather warms up I want to bring back my set of portable watercolors to paint the scene. It's a quiet movie set of a place with a museum-like quality, reminding me that Tribeca recovered from its shell-shocked days after September 11 by becoming the home for the Tribeca Film Festival.

Not many people roam the streets. While visiting during the day, I've shared the street and park with a handful of people. A few fathers with children, nannies with babies in strollers, and a couple of twenty-somethings by themselves wandered about, most stepping into the welcoming Duane Street Patisserie for coffee and a treat.

The buildings that line the north and south sides of Duane Park represent various styles of architecture popular in the 19th century - neo-Renaissance, Romanesque Revival, Queen Anne, Federal, neo-grec, etc. Importantly, for the overall pleasant effect, these five or six-storied buildings conform to human scale. The exception of scale belongs to the former Western Union building at 60 Hudson St, a massive Art Deco monument that looms over the park like a mean nanny. It's a clean street and a neo-urbanist dream of mixed-use development, except for a mixture of social class.

Given Tribeca's status as one of the city's wealthiest zip codes and Duane Park well-kept by the lucky neighbors, I feel I've intruded just a bit by being here, cautiously stepping into someone else's yard. I'm paranoid. Nevertheless, I've come across so many references in the contemporary literature of New York about the city's decaying sense of place* that this idea of New York-as-Museum-of-Its-Former-Self has started to color my vision, too. Maybe that's why I want to go back to Duane Park with a set of watercolors.

*For more on this emerging theme, read Walter Kirn's excellent review of Richard Price's novel, Lush Life, in the New York Times Book section from Sunday, March 16. Price's novel evokes the changes on the Lower East Side.

Image: The Tribeca of Duane by Walking Off the Big Apple.

See related posts:
The Woolworth Building
Establishing Shots: The Tribeca Film Festival
Tribeca's Most Tripped-Out Vista
Tribeca Living: A Building for Chocolate, and One for the Wool Trade
In Search of the Lower West Side: Before Tribeca
Walking Off Tribeca and Remembering Mostly Lunch
Walking Off Tribeca: The Lay of the Land
Walking Off Tribeca: Starting at Square One

Tribeca's Most Tripped-Out Vista

Whoa...

This afternoon, after spending most of my time wandering Tribeca's pretty cobbled streets and looking at nineteenth century manufacturing buildings, I walked west on Duane Street, through Washington Market Park and then up the steps of the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

When I turned around to walk down the steps this vista stopped me in my tracks. The patterned squares of the college's plaza below and the differing rectangular-patterned windows of the tall office buildings in the distance almost made me lose my balance. The sculpture in the middle is perfectly sited and humanizes what could be a frightening glimpse of modernity gone wrong. Instead, modernism looks exciting from these steps.

Image: by Walking Off the Big Apple, March 14, 2008.

See related posts:
The Woolworth Building
Establishing Shots: The Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca of Duane: Duane Street and Duane Park
Tribeca Living: A Building for Chocolate, and One for the Wool Trade
In Search of the Lower West Side: Before Tribeca
Walking Off Tribeca and Remembering Mostly Lunch
Walking Off Tribeca: The Lay of the Land
Walking Off Tribeca: Starting at Square One

Tribeca Living: A Building for Chocolate and One for the Wool Trade

The Powell Building (1892) at 105 Hudson Street (at Franklin St.), shown on the left, was designed by Carrere & Hastings, the architects of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street and the Frick mansion, among other others. In 1890, Henry L. Pierce, the head of a chocolate company in Massachusetts, wanted a nice building for his company, a step up from the plain vanilla of industrial architecture. Hence, this elegant Beaux Arts-style building.

After Pierce died his estate sold the building to candy manufacturer Alexander Powell who, in turn, hired his architect to enlarge the building and add stories. In the 1970s the building's higher floors were converted into residences. The Japanese restaurant Nobu (restaurant website) is on the first floor, in the same place that Powell once displayed his chocolates.

The Renaissance revival building at 260 West Broadway (at Beach St.), its curved entrance shown on the right, was built as the New York Wool Exchange in 1894-96. The wilier wool traders of New York hoped to trump the wool traders of Boston with such an edifice, but the scheme never worked. In 1907 the American Thread Company took over the building, and since the 1920s it's been known by that name. Now, not surprisingly, the building is operated as a condominium.

Images by Walking Off the Big Apple. Part of the series, Walking Off Tribeca.

For those in search of chocolate and were disappointed reading this post, please see Wee Willy WOTBA's Downtown Chocolate Walk, for chocolate locations north of Tribeca.

See related posts:
The Woolworth Building
Establishing Shots: The Tribeca Film Festival
The Tribeca of Duane: Duane Street and Duane Park
Tribeca's Most Tripped-Out Vista
In Search of the Lower West Side: Before Tribeca
Walking Off Tribeca and Remembering Mostly Lunch
Walking Off Tribeca: The Lay of the Land
Walking Off Tribeca: Starting at Square One

Monday Roundup: Chelsea Planning Tip, Whitney Biennial, Green Peppercorn Sauce, and Other Items

Visiting Chelsea. Maybe the following quick Descent Into Art Hell in Chelsea has happened to others: I hate when I'm in Chelsea and I've just realized I wanted to visit a particular gallery but it's four streets back now and I walked right past it earlier and I don't feel like trying to find the stupid door on the self-important gallery anymore and I hate looking at art in this part of the neighborhood in the first place where there are hardly any trees and curse the person that thought warehouses and factories for baking cookies were good places to view art and where there's no place to sit down and it's kinda far from the subway and I don't feel like going back there now. I'm going home.

Golly. WOTBA needs some HELP. Look at that little girl on the horse. She looks like she's spoiled and could cry. I'm better now, thank you. I've started planning my trips to this well-known art mecca in advance through the website chelseaartgalleries.com, and I am a better person for it. The website includes a feature that allows you to plan shows you want to see by organizing them by street, and then you can print out the list. With organizing my excursions, I can enjoy myself now and even include some impromptu gallery visits.

Food. I've found good places for hamburgers. I like Rare on Bleecker, Soho Park on Prince, and now, I like Stand on E. 12th. I went to Stand last night and ordered the hamburger with green peppercorn sauce. Best thing ever. I prefer the lighting in the other places, however. Inside Stand, the spot lighting is a little too theatrical for me, and where I was sitting I thought I'd be called upon to deliver a monologue.

I met some friends for lunch the other day near MoMA. We gathered at Sushiya (Menu Pages) at 28 W. 56th Street, between 5th and 6th Ave., and I thought the sushi was some of the best I've had in New York. Very fresh, sublime texture. They kept replenishing our green tea, so we had to cover the glasses with our hands.

Lecture on Raymond Hood. For those who enjoyed reading about the architect on this website and will be in NYC this week, Carol Willis, the director of The Skyscraper Museum (39 Battery Place), will be delivering a lecture titled "Raymond Hood 'The Brilliant Bad Boy' of New York Architecture" on March 4th, 6:30-8 p.m.$10. More info here.

The Whitney Biennial 2008 opens this Thursday, March 6. The website is up and running, with bios and images of the participating artists. Ideas of fluidity, ephemera and displacement prevail among this youngish group of artists, and it looks like we'll all be invited to blog along.

Image: Myself, on horse, as a small child. Place: A Bar A Ranch, Encampment, Wyoming. Year: Once upon a time in the West.

Letter to the Editor: The Not-So-Pink Building

"I tried to leave a comment on your blog, but I'm not so good at figuring out how to do that.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that your article on the pink building inspired me to go out yesterday in the cold and see it for myself. It doesn't look as pink or intrusive as I thought it would. In fact, it blends in surprisingly well with the neighborhood, except for its height, of course. It is rather interesting actually. Certainly makes a statement of some sort. There are quite a few other pinkish colored buildings around, which I never would have noticed if I hadn't been put in a "pink frame of mind." I'll attach my photo, which I think renders the color much like I saw it yesterday.

Thanks for the great blog. I have discovered new places because of it."

Stephanie Luke

Photo of Julian Schnabel's Palazzo Chupi, W. 11th Street, by Stephanie Luke.

Ed. note: Thanks, Stephanie, for writing and sending such a great photo! I appreciate the building myself, and it's good to have some company. Maybe you and I can start a fan club for the building. Readers, it is hard to take an image of this building that accurately reflects its true color, and I find that the color changes during different times of the day. Stephanie did a good job here. In a follow-up communication with me, she said she was passionate about photography, and she provided a link to see her images. No kidding - she's awesome. Check out her photo work at photo.net.

Related posts:
Schnabel, WOTBA, and Venetian Masks: Most Popular Search Terms
Julian Schnabel's Tower of Pink Power

Schnabel, WOTBA, and Venetian Masks: Most Popular Search Terms

I like to know the means by which new readers come to this website, and perusing the list of most popular search terms from time to time, I begin to ascertain patterns. I am also curious how well I help new readers find the information they need and how I can better meet the needs of the global audience.

Here is the list of the five most popular search terms from the past month that have directed people to Walking Off the Big Apple. I will follow the list with a brief analysis of these findings:

1. "Julian Schnabel"
2. "Julian Schnabel building"
3. "Walking Off the Big Apple"
4. "Venetian masks"
5. "How to make Venetian masks"

Julian Schnabel: recent Academy Award nominee, major contemporary visual artist, friend of Jean-Michel Basquiat, raised in Brownsville, Texas, interior designer for the Gramercy Park Hotel, mover and shaker. I don't know Julian personally. What else do you need?

Oh. His building in the West Village. I wrote about his "Tower of Pink Power" lo, these many months ago, when WOTBA was just a wee thing, but for each new week this particular post continues to rank high on the visitor's list. Indeed, you MUST come walk the neighborhood and see his building with your own eyes. I have come to love it in every way – its whatever pink-rose-red mottled facade, its brazen Italianate trimmings, its soaring height on the western edges of the Village.

Walking Off the Big Apple: I have high confidence that people have come to the right place when they type in this search term. I imagine it's the result of a conversation involving my far-flung friends. Since 1990, the colonel (the title I give my Kentucky-born spouse on this website) and I have lived in Austin, Texas, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Columbia, South Carolina, and now Greenwich Village, USA. In that order. Beat that with a stick! So, I think the conversation goes like this:

"You hear anything from Teri lately?"
"Naw. Living in New York! Heard she had a popular blog." (Note: I tell people I have a "popular" blog as a PR technique.)
"What's it called?"
"I think it's called..."

Venetian masks: Time for the masked ball, or as a South Carolina friend commented when he saw some Venetian masks in a flower shop, "They must be having an Eyes Wide Shut party!" As I explained in one of the Weekend Frivolities, I visited the shop in Venice that made the masks for the Kubrick film. I stumbled upon the place while strolling the small streets near the Guggenheim Venice. From time to time, I make masks based on molds I made of our two dogs and deceased cat. I'm going to make more this year and will try to sell them to you.

In conclusion, Julian, raised on the Texas-Mexican border, and me, raised in Big D, and both in love with Art, sometimes dream in Italian. Prego, y'all. Welcome to the West Village. Welcome to Walking Off the Big Apple.

The 6th most popular search term is "cupcakes."

Image: Julian Schnabel's Palazzo Chupi, W. 11th Street, with cupcake and coffee from the nearby Magnolia Bakery. Photo from the morning of February 26, 2008. Walking Off the Big Apple –"Giving readers what they want since 2007."

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk, and a Map

Visiting the four major building projects of architect Raymond Hood - the Daily News Building, the Radiator Building, Rockefeller Center, and the McGraw-Hill building, constitutes a pleasurable midtown stroll of approximately 2.5 miles. I'd throw in another mile for wandering around Rockefeller Center.

I haven't included Hood' earliest project here, the renovation of the small building on Bleecker Street, on this map, because after repeated alterations throughout several decades, the building is undistinguished. On the other hand, I enjoy shopping at the new art supply store that occupies the space (the other storefront occupant is the ubiquitous Duane Reade).

The walk presents opportunities to explore other landmarks along the way, including Grand Central Station and the New York Public Library. Keeping with the theme of Art Deco architecture of the 1920s, I also recommend a visit to the beautiful Chanin Building at 122 E. 42nd. Murals such as "The City of Opportunity" are in character with the optimism and boom-time cheerleading that characterized the age.


View Larger Map

Images of Rockefeller Center by Walking Off the Big Apple. February 2008.
See the NYT story of February 21, 2008 about the installation of "Electric Fountain"at Rockfeller Center by artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster.

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts

Raymond Hood did not live to see the completion of the vast Rockefeller Center complex. An untimely death in 1934 at the age of 53, he had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. His architecture practice had already slowed down, largely due to the economic effects of the Great Depression. He worked on a project to house the poor, but the finances for the project didn't materialize. More shocking, he received a letter threatening to kidnap his children. Gravely concerned, especially at the time of the Lindbergh tragedy when others received such threats, Hood sent his family to Bermuda and followed them a short time later. Upon hearing the news that the perpetrator had been caught, he collapsed, and after returning to his home in Stamford, Connecticut, he never regained full health.

Rockefeller Center is still unequaled as a grand modern urban plan, at least one so popular with the public. Though the buildings share some uniformity, the variation of taller and smaller buildings within the development, the art deco visual touches, and the artful design elements of the plaza combine to create just the right amount of theatricality. It's not too much. It's what we mean when we use the word "elegant."

In thinking about comparable urban developments of our own era, the kind that fuse private economic power with state ambition, the extraordinary projects in Abu Dhabi and Dubai come to mind, or maybe, the building of contemporary Berlin. But what new projects await Gotham? Well, several developments of some scale are in the works - the High Line/Hudson Yards redevelopment projects on the west side of Manhattan, Atlantic Yards in downtown Brooklyn, designed by Frank Gehry, and the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site downtown.

Still, whichever of these large projects come to fruition in this uncertain economy, contemporary architects and urban planners could learn a few lessons from Raymond Hood's skills and visionary design. A trip to Rockefeller Center is a start, watching people take pictures of friends and family in front of the fountain and enjoying the scene of people falling down on skates. Sure, the Rock's often crowded, but isn't that precisely the point?

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center

Walking the long cool dimly-lit black and gold power corridors of the GE building in Rockefeller Center, beginning my journey at the west entrance on the Avenue of the Americas and moving toward the east, I feel like I've fallen into a liminal pre-death dream state, a wandering soul pushed toward the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. The cool black hallways and the low lighting, the main source of which are illuminated numbers, discourage sounds above a whisper. "Shhhh....that's NBC over there...and look!, over there - if you've been good in your mortal life, you may ascend to the Rainbow Room." The darkness continues unabated, enveloping the visitor with the signifiers of a higher power. This must be the work of a medieval-loving man of great largesse, I think, someone who has inherited an empire.

After the dark journey through the long corridor, the pilgrim enters the Grand Lobby. Enveloped now by golden images of muscular semi-nude figures, the mythical workers of José Maria Sert's mural American Progress tumble down staircases, soar across the ceiling, and in several cases look as if they may trounce anyone below. I am less than nothing. I marvel at my insignificance.

Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel appears. Just as I suspected, the doors to heaven are those damn revolving doors. And beyond I see...Joy beyond joys! Light! Space! So many flags! People! And behold! Wouldn't you know it? Heaven has a sunken ice rink and places to eat some lunch.

At the beginning of creation, the center's site, owned by Columbia University and leased to John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was originally intended as a new home for the Metropolitan Opera. When the opera pulled out, Junior's architecture team, Reinhard and Hofmeister; Corbet, Harrison and MacMurray; Hood and Fouihoux, spent months drawing up hypothetical configurations. When the Radio Corporation of America, NBC, and then RKO decided to become the principle tenants, the project started to make sense.

Raymond Hood, as head of the team, bore the main responsibility for negotiating among the many interests to make "the City within a City" a reality in limestone. While speaking the language of cost and efficiency, he argued that Rockefeller Center needed roof gardens, open spaces, and works of great art if it was going to succeed. Almost everyone else at the time thought it was going to fail. They were wrong.

Photos of Rockefeller Center by Walking Off the Big Apple, from February 18, 2008.

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building

The McGraw-Hill Building at 330 West 42nd Street, built in 1930, is unusually blue-green. In fact, architect Raymond Hood's use of glazed terra cotta tiles in shades of blue-green constitutes one of the most ambitious applications of this material in the history of architecture.

A splendid example of the streamlined moderne style, the McGraw-Hill Building, built on a steel frame skeleton, sports plenty of light along its striped exterior and linear decorative stripes throughout the lobby.

Many architecture historians consider the McGraw-Hill building to embody the transition from Art Deco to the International Style largely due to its lack of ornamentation. Hood was a follower of the modernist master Le Corbusier, especially in his advocacy of a city of towers, and, certainly this building is a far cry from the Gothic idiom of the Radiator Building.

When I visited the building a few days ago, I was surprised at all the hustle and bustle around the lobby. Many kinds of businesses, art groups, labor unions, and civic organizations rent out space in the building. Given all the activity, I thought the building, especially the exterior near the entrance, looked a little worn and in need of some TLC.

1221 Avenue of the Americas, built in 1969 as part of the expansion of Rockefeller Center, is also known as the McGraw-Hill Building and serves as headquarters for the McGraw-Hill Companies, a Fortune 500 company. 1221, one of the three "XYZ" buildings, is gargantuan, bureaucratic, oppressive and boring. (See New York City Skyscrapers site for image.)

Images here of McGraw-Hill Building, 330 42nd Street, by Walking Off the Big Apple. 2008.
See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building

In 1919 Chicago Tribune co-publishers Joseph Medill Patterson and Robert R. McCormick couldn't agree over the content of the newspaper, so they decided Patterson should start a different newspaper in New York. Inspired by the popularity of a London tabloid, The Daily News emphasized photography, celebrity news, and a focus on city politics. New York commuters loved the paper because it was easy to hold and read on a subway.

John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, the architects of the Chicago Tribune building, were tapped to build the new building for The Daily News. Patterson initially wanted a large enough facility to hold the paper's staff and printing facility, but Hood talked him into the lucrative proposition of building an office tower on top. It hadn't occurred to Patterson that he could make money from rent-paying businesses.

In designing the tower Hood had to deal with a new city zoning law, one that prohibited the construction of large massive buildings that blocked light from the streets. The setback requirements of new building construction encouraged the tiered design of all the new New York skyscrapers of the 1920s and 1930s. It's this wedding cake formula that characterizes the older New York skyline. The soaring Daily News building, one that mild-mannered reporters could leap at a single bound, was completed in 1930, roughly the same time as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.

The overall design of the building was guided by the windows. The architects decided that the average office worker needed to easily open a window, so the windows should be small enough to handle. Moreover, the worker most likely to open a window would be a female secretary (or Lois Lane). The architects figured that an average woman could manage opening a window four feet and six inches wide. In addition, after one of Hood's associates designed the red and black pattern for the brick spandrels, Hood decided that all the window shades needed to be red.

The Tribune Company owned The Daily News (website) until 1991. Mort Zuckerman bought the paper in 1993, and in 1995 the paper relocated to 450 W. 33rd Street.

Image: The Daily News Building. 220 E. 42nd Street. photo by WOTBA. February 2008. See related posts with images of the famous lobby. Still to come on the Raymond Hood walk - the McGraw-Hill building, Radio City and Rockefeller Center. Wow - some serious walking ahead of me. I hope I'll have strength left to open a window.

See this breaking story on the Daily News plan for color on all pages (New York Times, Feb. 14, 2008).

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building

After architect Raymond Hood finished the renovation of Mori's restaurant in Greenwich Village in 1920, he found success designing radiator covers for the American Radiator Company. The income allowed him to move with his bride and growing family to an apartment on Washington Square. In 1922 John Mead Howells invited Hood to join him on a design competition for the Chicago Tribune Building, and when they won the $50,000 award, Hood finally emerged out of debt.

Winning the prestigious Tribune competition allowed Hood to secure his first important New York commission - the new building to house the American Radiator Company at 40 West 40th Street. In designing a tower that would symbolize the company, Hood designed several unusual features, including the use of black brick. He didn't want anyone to work after dark in the building, thinking that the illumination would disrupt the overall impression of mass and solidity. He couldn't control the workforce, of course, and George O'Keeffe (see related post) made the building famous by painting it at night.

After the building was completed in 1924 Hood moved his offices into the building's fourteenth floor. He partnered with J. André Fouilhoux, a French engineer, and Frederick A. Godley. The firm also designed the National Radiator Building in London, also a structure of black brick.

Increasingly successful in a time that coalesced with the national building boom of the 1920s, Hood enjoyed a long four-hour lunch every Friday at Mori's with Viennese designer Joseph Urban, his best friend and architect of the Ziegfeld Theater, and architects Ely Jacques Kahn and Ralph Walker. Among them they built a significant part of the famous New York skyline.

For Hood, after the Radiator Building, he would soon leave his Gothic designs in favor of sleeker and less ornamental work. The Daily News building provided reasons to move on to something more modern.

Image: The American Radiator Building, 1924. The carousel in Bryant Park is in the foreground. photo by WOTBA. 2008.

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of

Born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on March 21, 1881, Raymond Hood attended Brown University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. Hood returned to the United States and established an architectural practice in New York in 1914. He didn't have much work, but he got a lucky break in 1920 when his landlord, Placido Mori, commissioned him to redesign his popular Greenwich Village restaurant on Bleecker Street. According to biographer and architect Walter H. Kilham, Jr.'s account, Mori gave Hood the assignment because, as Mori said, "He must be a genius–he eats so much!"*

As part of her epic journey documenting a vanishing New York, photographer Berenice Abbott took a photo of the restaurant in 1935 (see Museum of the City of New York website), and comparing her image with the image here it's easy to notice that some of the details of Mori's remain today. Hood added the top apartments, the Federal lintels above the windows, and the Doric columns.

Image: 144 Bleecker Street, February 12, 2008. WOTBA. Originally two Federalist era townhouses at 144 and 146, the facade of the building was resigned for Mori's Italian restaurant by Raymond Hood in 1920. The restaurant went out of business in 1938. The building hosted a variety of tenants until 1962. In that year the Bleecker Street Cinema, an indie art house, beloved in its era, opened in the building. After the cinema closed, a series of music venues occupied the building including the Elbow Room and Nocturne, as well as Kim's Underground Video. Most all of these businesses departed the location due to rising rents. It's an eternal New York story.

For a curious story about some lost murals from 144 Bleecker's wartime years and the history of the building, see this November 4, 1990 article from The New York Times archives.

* Raymond Hood, Architect: Form Through Function in the American Skyscraper by Walter H. Kilham, Jr. NY: Architectural Book Publishing Co., 1973.

Part of a series of posts relating to the New York buildings of architect Raymond Hood (1881-1934).

Lesson: If you want to design some place like Rockefeller Center, you gotta start somewhere.

See also:
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

The New York of Raymond Hood, Architecthttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

During the heady years of the late Jazz Age in New York, architect Raymond Hood (1881-1934) presided over some of the city's most dazzling projects. Catapulted to fame after winning the 1922 competition to design the Chicago Tribune building with partner John Mead Howells, Hood quickly built a reputation in New York. Architecture critics and historians denounced Hood's winning Chicago Tribune design as too safe and too neo-Gothic retro, especially in comparison to the competition of European modernists, but he would come to shed these retro design sensibilities, embracing the sleeker lines of art deco and simpler geometries.

Hood's American Radiator Building at 40 W. 40th Street in New York, his first major New York commission, echoed the Gothic lines of the Tribune building but with the added drama of black brick and gold trim. With the Daily News building and the McGraw-Hill Building on 42nd Street, and as lead architect for the team that designed Rockefeller Center, including parts of Radio City and the monumental RCA building, he helped bring modernism to the United States.

Hood was a late bloomer, and he didn't get a lucky break until he was 40. He started out broke. He was persuasive with clients, logical, and mischievous. A man of slight stature, Hood nevertheless put his faith and hopes in the future of tall buildings.

His buildings are worth a close look. They're hopeful and utopian and full of fun. He would have called them simply practical. So, a walk begins - 42nd Street, Rockefeller Center, and environs, with a detour to a little building on Bleecker Street.

Images: Raymond Hood, architect-in-chief, Rockefeller Center, July 3, 1931. Gottscho, Samuel H. 1875-1971, (Samuel Herman), photographer, Library of Congress, and McGraw-Hill Building, 330 W. 42nd Street, photo by WOTBA.

See related posts:
Raymond Hood Designed My Duane Reade, Well, Sort Of
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Radiator Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The News Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The McGraw-Hill Building
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Rockefeller Center
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: Final Thoughts
The New York of Raymond Hood, Architect: The Walk

WOTBA's Walking News Digest: Walking Felon Preachers, Maryland's Issues With Walking, and No One Walks in Arlington

Florida Man Shoots Himself While Walking His Dog
Florida Today.com. When I'm walking my dogs, I try not to carry too much in my pocket. I don't advise packing heat.

Walking Preacher Is Really a Felon
Natchez Democrat. This guy was walking around the country, he explained, because God told him to. Turns out he was walking away from some hard time.

No One Walks in Arlington, Texas
Fort Worth Star Telegram. Arlington, Texas was built as a car-friendly suburb, with the residential areas far away from places of employment. Ergo, Arlington comes in last place in the number of people walking to work, according to a study conducted by hr.blr.com, a human resources web site. NYC comes in a fourth place behind Boston, Washington, and San Francisco.

Walking in Snowy Fond du Lac, Wisconsin is No Fun
Fond du Lac Reporter. Recent snow storms have left snow piling up on the sidewalks, and some folks in the land of the Frozen Tundra are mad they have to walk in the streets.
Same for Idaho Local 8 News (Idaho Falls, etc.)

Maryland's Experiment in Making Walking the State Exercise
(AP) Some people in Maryland don't think walking is Maryland-specific enough to warrant adoption as the state exercise.

Image: The globe inside the Daily News building on 42nd St. Walking Off the Big Apple is fixin' to put together a themed self-guided midtown walking tour of the buildings designed by architect Raymond Hood. See also The Building That Would Glow at Night.