Decade of Fire began to take shape for me several years ago, when a friend, Julia Allen, mentioned to me that nearly eighty percent of the housing in the South Bronx burned down in the 1970s.  I was stunned by this figure, but only began to comprehend its meaning after I was introduced to people who had lived through this disaster.

One of these people, Vivian Vazquez, grew up in the South Bronx during the ‘70s. She shared stories with me about the vibrant community that existed before the fires. But by the time she was 18, her neighborhood was nearly destroyed. To her, the legacy of the fires was not just buildings lost and neighbors disappearing, but more a residual feeling of abandonment, a sense that the city purposefully turned its back as the community was destroyed.

Over the next several years the three of us became co-producers. We read up, and talked to current and former residents, defining the outlines of a story about the South Bronx that had yet to be told.  Our research turned up a history of migration, de-industrialization and racially biased development policies that shaped U.S. cities throughout the 20th century.

Although they arrived only after decades of segregation, redlining and urban renewal, the fires were immediately blamed on the pathologies of ghetto residents. In 1970, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then Nixon’s advisor on urban affairs, popularized this claim and suggested that government adopt an attitude of “benign neglect” towards unruly communities of color. During the next decade, as the fires raged on, New York cut fire service in the Bronx down to the bone.

By 1976 much of the South Bronx had burned away. City leaders like Housing Commissioner Roger Starr were proposing that the city perform “triage” and level what was left, including dislocating the 100,000 Bronxites who remained. Starr called this “planned shrinkage,” a term that is today being touted as the solution to urban malaise in places like Detroit. This technical-sounding term masks a brutal policy of abandonment, and ignores how historical forces have created poor neighborhoods of color that are now considered be extraneous and expendable.

I’ve heard that New York has a fiscal crisis every 30 years. If so, today we are right on schedule. While the Bronx has been spared the worst of Bloomberg’s proposed 2011 cuts to fire service, some of the poorest parts of Brooklyn will see their fire protection on the chopping block in the next year.

Today the South Bronx has come back, rebuilt on residents’ love, desperation and sweat equity that finally convinced government to rebuild housing there. Alongside the history of the fires, there are stories of the places and cultures — hip hop, for one — that sustained lives and even allowed them to flourish. But the South Bronx is still one of the poorest areas of the country. As Vivian says in the film, “The people who survive these policies of neglect, we survive. People survive, people cope. But at the same time, it came at a huge cost.”

Vivian Vazquez

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Gretchen Hildebran is a documentary filmmaker who has often focused on the connections between policy and human experience.  Her love of documentary was inspired by a 2002 collaboration with homeless and low-income people to create No On Prop N, a TV ad campaign that opposed cutting general assistance benefits in San Francisco. Since then, Gretchen co-produced the internationally screened WORTH SAVING (2004), which was presented in HBO’s Frame by Frame documentary showcase. OUT IN THE HEARTLAND (2005) tells the stories of gay parents in Kentucky facing a constitutional amendment banning marriage. Since graduating from Stanford University’s documentary program in 2006, Gretchen has worked in Los Angeles and New York as a cinematographer and editor for TV and independent documentary productions. Gretchen shot Ramona Diaz’s THE LEARNING (2011), and contributed camerawork to Joan Braderman’s THE HERETICS (2009) and Socheata Poeuv’s NEW YEARS BABY (2008). Still getting her bearings since moving to New York in 2006, Gretchen is currently shooting and co-producing DECADE OF FIRE, which examines the legacy of the fires that destroyed the Bronx throughout the 1970s.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

All images courtesy of Gretchen Hildebran.

Feasibility study for new ferry service | image via NYCEDC

A FERRY FEASIBLE PROPOSAL?
The Bloomberg Administration continues to make WAVES (Waterfront Vision and Enhancement Strategy) along the city’s waterfront with a ferry service to open later this year. Boats will stop in Greenpoint, Dumbo, Downtown Brooklyn and East 34th Street with the potential to expand and connect more remote sites around the city like JFK, LaGuardia, Bay Ridge, Coney Island, Hunts Point, Soundview and City Island. In hope that the ferry service will succeed where past attempts (like 2008′s $1.5 million water taxi experiment) have failed, the city’s Economic Development Corporation promises a “robust, regular service [that] will be well-integrated with existing transportation options, providing a new sustainable and enjoyable way for commuters and tourists alike to get around the city.”

CALATRAVA’S TRANSIT HUB IS EXPENSIVE
Lest the “wings” of Santiago Calatrava’s World Trade Center PATH station be compromised, Port Authority approved a $180 million budget increase for the project this week. The soaring price prompted Matt Chaban of the Observer to question the ease with which the government has freed up funds for the transit station while reneging on reconstruction of the nearby St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, destroyed on 9/11. Chaban’s piece underscores what the choice implies about how we prioritize public projects.

TRASH TRACKED
The National Science Foundation recently announced the winners for its 2010 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, awarding first place in non-interactive media to the urban researchers at MIT’s SENSEable City Lab who created TRASH|TRACK, one of the five projects commissioned for the League’s fall 2009 exhibition Toward the Sentient City. The project maps the route of discrete pieces of garbage as they travel through the waste management system over two months. Not only is their concept a clever investigation into the life of our forgotten waste, the resulting maps and video visualizations reveal the surprising journeys of items like a banana peel or empty ink cartridge as they traverse the country, displaying the patterns of our wastefulness and illustrating that garbage doesn’t exclusively end up in the local landfill. TRASH|TRACK also demonstrates the potential of ubiquitous computing to help us understand urban space. For more information from Science Magazine, click here. For information about Toward the Sentient City, click here. And to buy a copy of Sentient City, the new book documenting the exhibition, click here.

THIS JUST IN: PEOPLE ARE MOVING TO DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN
Downtown Brooklyn, that collection of new condos and skyscrapers hailed to shepherd the “Manhattanization of Brooklyn,” according to Councilwoman Letitia James, is apparently booming. According to the New York Post, the neighborhood’s population has doubled over the past year to 12,000 residents — thirty times what it was in 2000.

Greene Street, 1768 | image via aidwatchers.com

THE HISTORY OF A CITY BLOCK
Did you know that the Apple Store on Prince Street used to house a brothel? William Easterly of NYU’s Development Research Institute breaks the history of development down to the city block in a blog post that looks at Soho through the ages, beginning with much less dense days of light habitation by the Delaware ethnic group and continuing through epidemics, prostitution booms and art movements to its upscale present day. As fascinating as this snapshot of history is, even more interesting are the possible untold stories in every city block. Easterly asks, “we usually analyze Development at the national level. Why not other levels?” A question that in the very least should inspire some internet research projects.

SUSTAINABLE TAXIS FACE ROADBLOCK
Mayor Bloomberg’s quest for more sustainable transport options in New York City has fallen afoul of the feds. Because only federal agencies are allowed to regulate fuel economy and emission standards, the Supreme Court refused to consider the City’s appeal. This latest blow to the City’s attempts to green its cabs follows two other proposals rejected by lower courts: the first, in 2007, would have mandated all taxis get at least 30 miles to the gallon by 2009 (most of our 13,000 cabs get about 16 miles per gallon); the second, in 2009, would have replaced the entire fleet with hybrids by 2012. According to Inhabitat, the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which brought the original suit, maintains that “the mandate was impossible for taxi owners since most currently available hybrids wouldn’t have been able to go through the beating most cabs get on a daily basis.”

THINGS TO DO THIS WEEKEND
The arts community has converged on New York this weekend for the major international art fairs held throughout the city. While only the most ambitious art enthusiast would think of bustling between the Armory at Pier 94, Scope at Pier 40, Pulse on W. 18th St., and Verge in Brooklyn, we are eager to see any if any new visions for the urban environment emerge from all this contemporary art.

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The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

Few would argue with the notion that a robust cultural life is good for cities as well as neighborhoods. But how best to support it — through investments, incentives, philanthropy and public policy – is up for debate. Create new institutions and venues? Fund specific artists or projects? Incentivize cultural groups to move into your development or neighborhood from outside? Or learn from those examples where cultural opportunities emerged from the ground up? Fourth Arts Block, an organization comprised of 17 arts organizations located on a single block of East 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery, is a powerful example of the latter. It’s also a unique case where the complex histories of immigration, labor organizing, urban renewal and eminent domain intersect with the resourcefulness of New York’s artists. And as Manhattan’s only officially designated cultural district, FAB is a natural partner to work with the Arts + Community Change Initiative to increase recognition and support for NOCDs. To that end, FAB and Arts + Community Change have convened a series of roundtables in New York City with arts leaders, policy makers, and academics to develop a definition, identify support strategies, share effective case studies and initiate a working group that will continue advocating for policies to support existing NOCDs, while offering technical assistance to nascent organizing efforts in New York City. Read more about their initial findings in the interview below, and, while you’re at it, get a history lesson on one of New York’s most storied blocks. -C.S.

In 1775, what would eventually become East 4th Street was near the southern edge of the Stuyvesant farm (pictured left). By 1920, it was home to a number of theaters and social halls (including Astoria Hall, pictured right) catering to the needs of immigrant populations and labor unions. Click to enlarge.

First off, what is a Naturally Occurring Cultural District? How is it different from institutionally organized arts and culture districts and why is the distinction important?

Tamara Greenfield: A Naturally Occurring Cultural (or Arts) District is distinguished by both its origins and organization. A NOCD (for lack of better term) supports existing neighborhood cultural assets rather than imposing arts institutions somewhere new. Traditional cultural districts are often used as a promotional tool to import visitors to a downtown shopping or commercial district and are generally centered on large institutions. The difference is important because each idea represents a distinct set of public values about what’s important to cities and what’s worth supporting. Understanding NOCDs can provide a framework to recognize and support a more inclusive, equitable vision of a neighborhood’s culture.

Caron Atlas: Another important reason to make the distinction is that institutional arts districts are often more visible, whereas naturally occurring ones are more rooted in the neighborhood fabric and might therefore be invisible to those outside the neighborhood. If a cultural district has emerged “naturally,” then it grows from, builds on and validates existing community assets rather than importing assets from outside a community.

Historical highlights of Fourth Arts Block properties over the years, adapted from a lot-by-lot history of East 4th Street compiled by the Lower East Side History Project | Diagram: Purva Jain. Click to enlarge.

What are some common reasons for diverse cultural opportunities to cluster in particular urban areas?

Caron Atlas: I find an ecological perspective to arts and culture to be helpful in thinking about this. Healthy systems are composed of diverse and interdependent parts. In this way, NOCDs often demonstrate more decentralized, and resilient, support networks than conventional institutions. Like any community of common interest, they can also respond to both threats and opportunities with a louder voice and more unified actions.

When I was doing interviews with the Urban Institute around artist support systems in nine cities across the country, what really struck me was how often artists spoke about the importance of being in places where they can share and be challenged by other artists and audiences – this was often as important as monetary support. They not only stimulated each other’s creativity, they supported one another in many different ways ranging from barter to social networks to hiring one another.

Club 82 was a legendary drag cabaret club located at 82 East 4th from 1958 to 1978.

Tamara Greenfield: The story of Fourth Arts Block is perhaps illustrative of some broadly shared trends. Of course, over the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, cultural groups clustered activity because artists collaborated, socialized, shared information and resources, passed spaces on to each other, promoted each other and lived in the community. But another key reason was the appropriateness of spaces for their needs: many of the buildings were City-owned in what was at the time an undesirable neighborhood and many had initially been built as social halls and theaters for immigrant communities, including German music societies, Italian theaters, Yiddish publishers, Union organizing (ILGWU was founded at 64 East 4th Street), film and television sound stages, Puerto Rican and Ukrainian social clubs, and drag clubs.

In the 1950s, Robert Moses proposed an urban renewal plan for the area that would have torn down most of the buildings, many of which were being used for light manufacturing and low rent housing. Cooper Square Committee formed to fight this plan, which they ultimately defeated, and replaced it with a new plan for low-income housing, which did not include the buildings that had previously housed cultural and manufacturing activities. That’s how the buildings came into city ownership — through eminent domain — but they sat unused until La MaMa and Millennium Film Workshop secured temporary, month-to-month leases from the City. Gradually other small groups moved in, and the Off-Off-Broadway and experimental arts movement took off.

This arrangement continued more or less fluidly for the next 30 years, until the artists and arts groups on East 4th Street became concerned about their future tenancy during the Giuliani administration. Cooper Square Committee and 11 arts groups started meeting in 1999 and founded Fourth Arts Block in 2001 to develop a unified plan for the publicly owned buildings. Due to their advocacy and the support of local residents and elected officials, in 2005 the City sold eight properties to the arts groups for $8, all of which are protected for nonprofit use in perpetuity.

East 4th Street

Currently, we are Manhattan’s only “official” cultural district and, along with the BAM Cultural District, one of only two designated in the city. What does this mean? Not much yet. One participant in our roundtable suggested that this was a mechanism for the City to transfer ownership of public property. Otherwise, there is no official policy or set of benefits (or restrictions) for cultural districts. FAB uses the designation to help us navigate across sectors and access resources that otherwise might not be available – street closings, streetscape improvements, funding and investment. FAB also utilizes the cultural district designation for marketing and organizing, to draw attention to smaller cultural groups who disappear in a City this size.

We hope that the work that we are doing on 4th Street will have applications to other neighborhoods that want to support networks of independent artists and small cultural groups. We know there are dozens of actual cultural districts in New York even if they have not been made “official” yet.

Lets talk about the role of placemaking in the context of the NOCD conversation. Can you tell me a little bit about the Fourth Arts Block masterplanning and streetscape improvement project? I’ve read that the goal was to make East 4th Street “even more of itself.” What aspects of the block’s unique ecology would you like to see enhanced? In other words, to what extent do you want the block’s “district-ness” to be legible?

Tamara Greenfield: FAB and Cooper Square Committee led a community design process to engage the primary stakeholders in developing a master streetscape plan for East 4th Street. We did separate focus groups with merchants, residents, and arts groups to identify specific issues or needs before bringing everyone together to develop a unified vision. Since most agreed that they loved the eclectic nature of the block, we identified some modest, incremental interventions that could increase visibility and access, as well as improve overall appearance and flow through the District. Improvements included the removal of large scale planters that blocked the sidewalks, more trees, restoration of artist-designed tree guards, public art installations, more welcoming entrances and signage at the theaters, more attractive lampposts that improve lighting on the block, district signage, kiosks and a visitors center, and changes to the street geometry to create better entrances to the street and accommodate audience overflow mid-block. We would like to help people to see and support the neighborhood’s arts and artisans by using specific placemaking tools that draw attention to what’s in front of them.

Pedestrian activity diagrams. Prepared by Starr Whitehouse as part of the Revisioning East Fourth Masterplan. Click to enlarge.

The emerging literature on Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts uses words like “cultivate” and “nurture” as the bywords for philanthropic and public policy strategies to benefit these clusters. Is policy planning for something “natural” a contradiction in terms? Why not?

Tamara Greenfield: In terms of foundation funding, traditional arts funding models tend to focus on discipline or outcome (often “high art” presented in large institutions) rather than process or relationships. In my experience, community development funding tends to be more open to funding process than product, understanding that investment in neighborhood networks could leverage long term social capital and empowerment. I would like to see more cross-sector and refined funding strategies that encourage long term community collaboration and leadership.

Caron Atlas: And in terms of public policy, some of our conversations have raised concerns from people in the arts who see policy as something imposed from the top that you have little voice in, and something rigid that will not allow for the flexibility and organic nature of the districts. But I think there are other approaches to public policy that can provide the conditions for NOCDs to flourish without boxing them in or dictating what they need to be. This is policy that is built from community-based input and is created in ways that are responsive and accountable to communities. Cultural policy is both a product and a process based on social relationships and values. Too often it becomes a de facto policy that excludes much of this work because it doesn’t fit into conventional definitions of the arts or community development. We need to be clear about what we want, and what we need to change.

Tamara Greenfield: Right. And we certainly understand the fear of overbearing public policy solutions. I do think, however, that there are tools already in existence in other sectors that could better support NOCDs. NYC Small Business Services (SBS) offers funding to support BID development, with the understanding that it can take many years and a support system to organize an inclusive coalition that represents multiple interest in an area. SBS also supports placemaking strategies for festivals, publications, signage and other activities that could support NOCDs. The NYC Parks Department has the Partnerships for Parks program, which was established to support organizing and involvement by local stakeholders in their public spaces and helps them navigate the Parks Department’s bureaucracy. Industrial Development Areas often have organizations that offer support and advocacy for networks of small manufacturing firms.

What other precedents from other sectors could benefit the NOCD conversation?

Caron Atlas: This is an area we still need to go further into. We’re interested in learning more about naturally occurring retirement districts, historic districts and there is some interesting work about the public health benefits of clusters and community efficacy. There’s also a lot we can learn from other countries that better integrate culture into other policies.

Is it possible that a better understanding of Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts can help distinguish between what is valuable and what is not in the literature about the cultural economies of cities?

Tamara Greenfield: We certainly hope so! Usually when the arts are discussed now as part of the economy of cities, they are framed either as a Cultural Attraction (large museum, aquarium, performing arts complex) or Cultural Production (high value art, high volume traditional handicrafts, music, film). There is little understanding of the value of diverse levels of creation and cultural activity to the cohesion and economy of a specific neighborhood, rather than to a larger creative ecology or regional economy. FAB’s members range in size from volunteer-run art collectives to nationally renowned theaters, and have long histories of community outreach, racial and ethnic diversity, low cost programs, and training for emerging artists and youth. Each year, FAB’s member arts groups serve more than 1,250 artists and attract an audience of more than 250,000 to our neighborhood. Some artists and productions are developed here and move into a more commercial realm; other dance and theater is experienced exclusively by neighborhood residents or drawn from a focused, regional network (Spanish-language theater, Gay & Lesbian performance art) that serves an important (though less visibly commercial) purpose to those communities.

Caron Atlas: I would say that NOCDs can be useful in helping to reframe the discussion of the creative economy in a manner that factors in equity and considers how creativity is defined and validated and how economic benefits are shared throughout communities. I think NOCDs are a great way to think about culture and creativity as part of grassroots resilience and sustainable development – rather than top down, and often unsustainable, development strategies.

East 4th Street today.

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Caron Atlas is a Brooklyn-based consultant and cultural organizer working to support and stimulate arts and culture as an integral part of social change. She is the project director of Place + Displaced, Fractured Atlas’s NYC community mapping project, and also of the Arts & Community Change Initiative and the Arts & Democracy Project. Additionally she is a faculty member in New York University’s Art and Public Policy program. Caron worked many years at Appalshop, the Appalachian media center; was the founding director of the American Festival Project, a national coalition of activist artists; is a consultant to foundations, including Ford and Nathan Cummings; and also worked with, amongst others, National Voice, Animating Democracy, and the Cultural Blueprint for New York City.

Tamara Greenfield has been the executive director of Fourth Arts Block since 2006, the organization’s first paid staff person. She has 18 years of arts administration, program planning and production experience, ranging from overseeing Partnerships for Parks’ Catalyst for Neighborhood Parks Program to developing performances, exhibits and lectures at the Interfaith Center of New York. Previously, she directed the ZviDance company and school and co-founded the grassroots DanceNOW[NYC] festival, curating and producing the work of 40-75 choreographers annually in multiple sites, ranging from theaters and cabarets, to galleries, gyms, parks, a firehouse and boxing ring.

In celebration of my birthday, a sunny three-day weekend, and the acquisition of a brand-new bike, I decided to take a ride out to visit the Candela Structures on Flushing Bay.

The Candelas are two fiberglass prefab shells that sit at the World’s Fair Marina, just north of the Mets’ new stadium. These relics of the 1964/5 World’s Fair were designed by architect and industrial designer Peter Schladermundt (not Félix Candela as the names and nearby signs might lead you to believe). A year ago, journalist Paul Lukas and I researched and produced a show about them at the inimitable City Reliquary in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Paul and I had first found out about the structures from a Mets fan message board. I’m a sucker for any kind of adventure, great or small, so as soon as I found them on Google Maps’ satellite view (they’re hard to miss once you look), I knew I had to see them in person. And once we did (on our way to a game at Shea Stadium shortly before it was demolished) we developed a crush on them that snowballed into a crazy-long research project, the exhibition, and a website documenting everything we know.

The Candela Structures: A New York City History Mystery at the City Reliquary

Our show was subtitled “A New York City History Mystery,” partly because up until the last minute (when we got a major detecting-assist from New York Times reporter Susan Dominus) we couldn’t confirm Peter Schladermundt as the structures’ designer (though we knew he had designed the overall marina), but also because the narrative of the show was as much about us unraveling the mystery of the structures as it was about the structures themselves. The buildinglets (as I like to call them) raised so many questions from the moment we first saw them. How had we never seen them or heard about them? How on earth could they be bus shelters (as the nearby signs claim) when they’re so far from the road and not at all closed off from the elements? Why were they named after Félix Candela? As we started researching them, we found more questions than answers, which just drew us in deeper. Why were they not mentioned in Candela’s archives? Why did his widow not remember them? We discovered there had been a third structure in the center that had housed a Coast Guard exhibit, but it disappeared soon after the Fair ended. Whatever became of it? And why did the other two survive when so many of the buildings built for the Fair were demolished when it closed?

This illustration was used on a promotional postcard for the Fair. The structures shown on the dock were never built, but the illustration has circulated among World's Fair collectors, creating confusion about how many structures actually existed. (Courtesy of Owens Corning)

Architecture is just another kind of storytelling, and stories are what make a space into a place.The structures are minimal surfaces, a topic that Candela researched extensively. But beyond looking like they might have been designed by him (though they weren’t), we never found any solid connection. They were, in fact, designed by Peter Schladermundt, an architect and industrial designer, and were made of prefab panels — a sandwich construction of fiberglass reinforced resin surrounding a 2-inch foam core — that snap together. As far as I was able to determine, they are the oldest standing fiberglass structures in the city.

Despite that, I know these structures aren’t central to the history of architecture or the history of New York (and they don’t even appear to have made the cut for the new AIA Guide—drat), but I love them nonetheless. They’re so unexpected, so unlike anything else in New York City, and so utterly charming. They’re not pretentious, they just stand guard by the bay, watching the sailboats come and go, the planes take off and land at LaGuardia, and the cars drive by. They were there long before I arrived in New York in 1993, waiting to be discovered. How many other pieces of New York history are hiding in plain sight, with stories to tell? Architecture is just another kind of storytelling, and stories are what make a space into a place and connect all the disparate pieces of the metropolis.

The structures sit at the water’s edge, on the northern end of Flushing-Corona Park — not the most convenient location to get to from North Brooklyn via public transportation — so I decided to pay my respects by bike, with the added incentive of a stop at Timmy O’s Frozen Custard in Corona on the way. What a ride! Grand Avenue passes by some beautiful old factories, but the roads are a mess and drivers are not particularly interested in slowing down for bikes. In Maspeth the traffic increased, the quality of the road decreased, and buses are ever present. But I made it across the L.I.E. on-ramps, past a Memorial Day observation, and crossed Queens Boulevard. There are some amazing views from this area back toward the towers of Manhattan, but admiring them requires stopping and clambering onto the sidewalk, as the roads are unforgiving of lapses in concentration.

Partway into Corona I lost the thread of Corona Avenue’s many curves. I managed to find my way back, though, and even found my way to Timmy O’s for a much needed break. A large frozen custard from Timmy O’s is huge, but I ate it all and headed for the home stretch. After a few wrong turns and dangerously pothole-filled roads I finally came to the edge of the huge fields of parking lots around the baseball stadium. I dismounted and walked along the narrow sidewalks to the one spot I knew led across the spaghetti of roads to the marina.

At last! My first glimpses of those two old friends were as delightful as ever. I’ve seen them now in all seasons: surrounded by cherry blossoms, dusted with snow, and capped with autumn foliage, but they really look smashing against the deep green of summer leaves. I was happy to see people enjoying the shade under the eastern shell, and I was only too happy to collapse under the shade of the western one and enjoy the breezes off the bay.

The Candela Structures are very much in need of repair. While from a distance they are pristine and white — an almost shocking sight in a city of grey concrete, grey asphalt, and bricks of various earthy hues — up close rust, cracks, gaps, and graffiti mar their graceful symmetry. The gaps reveal the seams of the prefab pieces and, in a couple of places, the metal clips that hold them together. It’s clear that rain and ice have invaded the interior. How much longer can they stand without a major overhaul? They’re amazingly resilient — a function of both their elegant geometry and their lightweight material — especially considering they were built for a temporary event. They no longer sport their angled glass walls and the middle structure is gone without a trace, but the remaining two fiberglass shells still stand as architectural icons on the waterfront.

I feel a real affinity for these quirky little structures. They’re elegant, but odd — they seem to belong to some other city — and they aren’t nearly as grand in scale as the other survivors of the two World’s Fairs in the park, but there’s something charming about that. And even though Paul and I had solved so many of their mysteries (it was a real pleasure to speak with Peter Schladermundt’s children who confirmed him as the designer after we had followed so many false leads), we never did find out what happened to the third one that once stood in the middle, but that mystery only adds to their appeal.

I’ll continue to visit them whenever I have time, hopefully to see them restored and enjoyed into the future, though I worry I’ll just be watching them fall further into disrepair. They lie in that unfortunate gap that swallows a lot of urban artifacts — the space between history and the too-recent past, out of fashion but as of yet unrecognized as part of our cultural heritage. I hope the Candelas survive that awkward transition and find a permanent spot in the cityscape, and that by uncovering part of their story I’ve helped in some small way.

Post script:  While I wouldn’t recommend the bike route I took — though it was convenient for frozen custard on the way out and lemon ice on the way back — I definitely recommend a visit to the marina to see the Candelas in person. You can reach them by bike more easily, I think, using the 34th Ave bike lanes (what I plan to do next time), by subway from the number 7 stop at Willets Point, by car via Northern Boulevard, or by sailboat in Flushing Bay. And look for them next time you fly in or out of LaGuardia. Directions, photos (including historic photos from the World’s Fair), and all kinds of other information are available at candelastructures.org.

UPDATE 11.3.10: The third Candela structure has been found. It is now serving as a cabin in the Adirondacks.

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All photos by Kirsten Hively. Kirsten Hively received her MArch in 2007 from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Together with journalist Paul Lukas, she recently co-produced a show at the City Reliquary on the ersatz Candela Structures in Queens, and when not architecting she can often be found photographing or writing about New York City, where she lives and works.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Image courtesy of the Department of Design + Construction.

Contemplations of New York City’s past, present and future are everywhere this spring. The League’s new exhibition The City We Imagined/The City We Made, now in its second week at 250 Hudson St., is an opportunity to reflect on the most recent chapter of New York’s development history (2001-2010). On Monday 5/17, the second in a series of public programs related to the exhibition will take place, this time exploring the city’s Design + Construction Excellence program, initiated in 2004. Panelists, including Charles McKinney (Dept. of Parks and Recreation), David Resnick (Deputy Commissioner of the DDC), Thomas Balsley (Thomas Balsley Associates), Scott Marble (Marble Fairbanks) and Jennifer Sage (Sage & Coombe Architects), will explore how a policy of emphasizing design quality has influenced the planning for, commissioning of, and shape of public architecture during the past six years. Tickets still available!

An analysis in exhibition form of another period of urban transformation is on view at the Museum of the City of New York. The Times and Places both look at America’s Mayor: John Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York.

Meanwhile, Newsweek is imagining what the city’s future might look like. They commissioned Cooper Robertson & Partners, Richard Meier & Partners, and HOK to speculate on how we will live, work, commute and play in New York City in 2030. Taking the conversation national, The Atlantic has produced what they call a “special report on the changing national landscape,” entitled “The Future of the City.”

Panorama, Queens Museum. Photo by Flickr user bankbryan.

In order to plan more effectively for New York City’s future, a new map is in the works, and an incredibly detailed and technologically-advanced one at that. The City and CUNY have partnered to use Lidar (light detection and ranging) laser technology to collect data about the topography and structures of the five boroughs over a series of late-night flights last month. According to The New York Times, the project is “expected to yield the most detailed three-dimensional picture of New York City to date, with an emphasis on structures, elevations, sun and shade, and nooks and crannies relevant to the city’s emergency response system and its environmental goals.” Rohit T. Aggarwala, Director of the NYC Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability, compares the project to Robert Moses’ Panorama (a favorite of the Omnibus team), just “more accurate and digital.”

If you prefer your city planning virtual, with a hefty dose of real-life problems, you might be interested in IBM’s new “serious game” CityOne. Fast Company takes a look, calling the game “much like Sim City, only the problems are scarily real, ranging among energy, water, banking, and retail.”

The History Channel is currently airing a 12-episode history of the shaping of the United States called America: The Story of Us and this Sunday’s installment chronicles the rise of the early industrial city. In ‘Cities,’ “Americans conquer a new frontier–the modern city–with Carnegie’s empire of steel as its backbone. Skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty are symbols of the American Dream for millions of immigrants. Urban life introduces a new breed of social ills, set against the backdrop of stunning skylines and ambitious innovations.” (via Planetizen)

Do cities need a creative director? Of course, Tyler Brûle thinks so. The Urbanophile has a more sober analysis, likening such a position to that of a high profile czar with limited ability to change anything, and makes a revealing comparison to the White House Office of Urban Affairs, the leadership of which was recently vacated by former Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión, Jr., leading some to claim a major opportunity for a coordinated urban policy at the national level has been wasted.

Don’t forget – Sunday, 2pm, Roosevelt Island. See you there!

The Roundup keeps you up to date with topics we’ve featured and other things we think are worth knowing about.

New York Times Headline. March 13th, 1888.

122 years ago today, on March 11th 1888, it started snowing. When the snows finally came to a stop three days later, over forty inches were reported in New York and New Jersey and some snowdrifts grew as high as 50 feet. All major cities between Washington and Montreal were completely isolated from each other. The damage was so severe – collapsing wires caused fires, melting snow caused floods, at least 400 people lost their lives – that as soon as New Yorkers dug themselves out of what came to be called “The Great White Hurricane” they went about ensuring that no future weather event would cause as much injury, death or destruction to property and livelihoods. One of this legislative regime’s longest-lasting legacies is its effect on mass transit.

The Great White Hurricane of 1888. The New York Historical Society

Among the laws enacted that year, one prohibited catenary in Manhattan, meaning no more overhead lines were permitted to transmit electricity to trams, trolleys and buses. Some argue that the storm is what pushed Northeastern cities to finally move ahead with plans to start building public transit underground (Boston’s subway, the first in the nation, opened nine years after the storm). That law is still in effect, which still hampers the City’s ability to install light rail or certain kinds of electrical bus systems.

Over the past few months, the City has been looking at a number of different options – including light rail and streetcars – for improving mass transit service in Midtown Manhattan. And in last week’s roundup, we relayed the news that the DOT plan for Midtown includes dedicating a bus lane, or transitway, along 34th Street river to river. By invoking the precedents of Curitiba and Bogotá, we implied that this move signifies Manhattan’s first foray into the world of Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT. Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic has a comprehensive analysis of why, for better or worse, BRT is not the most accurate way to characterize the transitway, and he also makes reference to the 1888 law about overhead wiring. To be sure, the plan will speed up the journey considerably. But the project says more about the priority DOT places on improving pedestrian experience of the street than it does about the DOTs willingness to experiment with more efficient modes of transit. “Despite the fact that the DOT has been on an all-out crusade to improve bus service, has no money for more subways, and has demonstrated little interest in light rail or streetcars, it evaluated all four in its recent study for the 34th Street corridor.” Its recommendation to create a dedicated bus lane, which is cheaper than the alternatives (“between $30 and 125 million, versus $250 million and up for light rail or several billion for a full-scale subway line”), is not about making bus service rapid. “With 13 stations end to end — roughly every 800 feet — buses will average a miserable six miles per hour, hardly faster than a person can walk the route.” It’s about improving “the streetscape for pedestrians, who until recently have been put in last place by New York City decision-making.”

Earlier this week, the Omnibus continued its look at how standards and codes, inflexible by nature – such as the code prohibiting living units in cellars – may be developed in the public interest but are often enforced at the public’s expense. In other words, if we don’t continuously evaluate how technological, cultural and demographic shifts change the way people live, urban development will continue to outpace governance. I’m not saying we should insist on a return of overhead wires. But we should certainly arm ourselves, as concerned urban citizens, with the knowledge of where the laws that limit urban innovation originate.

Map of proposed bus transit along 34th Street, from New York City DOT.

The value of conceiving criticism in this way, it seems to me, is that it allows for and acknowledges that certain buildings and projects may be perfectly elegant or beautiful solutions to perfectly trivial questions (think Meier’s tower on Grand Army Plaza) and, conversely, that there may be difficult or unsuccessful designs which nevertheless engage questions that have much greater relevance or significance to the values the critic prizes. Because criticism is perforce a statement of values; it is in that sense that criticism is at root a utopian venture and a bully pulpit. If we weren’t interested in remaking the world it wouldn’t matter much what we said about it.

In this vein, it is also important, from time to time, to write about bad buildings and failed projects, to use them as counter-exemplars and to explicate what it is in their design and realization that makes them a negative standard. This is difficult for a profession bred on the false politesse of ‘if you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything’. We need to understand what makes bad buildings bad, and what the steady accretion of poorly conceived, boring, venal and badly built projects does to our cities and our souls. We need to name names. Or else, give up altogether.

There is also an element of time in all this; Henry A. Millon, one of the best critical historians of his generation, used to say that history could not be written before 50 years had passed, the implication being that the circumstances which frame a project’s gestation could not themselves be looked at historically until a certain contemporaneous reverberation had dissipated. The prerequisite of history is distance and a consequent lack of immediate familiarity; context must become strange again, or more precisely, we must become estranged from it, for the methods of historical analysis to be deployed. By this standard we are only just able to begin to analyze the projects of the 1960’s, to look seriously at Saarinen’s TWA terminal for example. And, in fact, this is exactly what is happening, the Museum of the City of New York’s revisionist Saarinen exhibition and the current reappraisals of Rudolph and Stone following by a few years the welter of texts and exhibitions that had us look afresh at the icons of the previous decade, Lever House and the Seagram Building, etc. (to look only within the limits of Manhattan for examples).

Criticism of course is but the first draft of history, not the thing itself. It is journalistic in the original Latin/Francophone sense of the word — ‘of today.’ Its historical aspirations, such as they are, can only be to serve as the raw material of some future, more dispassionate, analysis. But in exchange criticism can — must — make full claim to passion, to the convictions, enthusiasms and biases that animate discussion today, now, in full understanding that once our passions are spent they too will become the subject of more broadly contextual and quieter historical methods. Deprived of any pretense to history, criticism has nothing left but bias: without bias criticism is worthless.

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This is the sixth in an ongoing series of posts that ponders the state of architecture criticism. To read all posts on this topic, please click here.

As with all review and opinion pieces posted on Urban Omnibus, the views expressed are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.

Stephen Rustow is the founding principal of SRA/Museoplan, a consulting practice working with arts institutions and design professionals on the presentation of cultural collections.  An architect and urban planner, he is also a Professor of Architecture at Cooper Union and has written criticism for Praxis, JSAH and other publications. He lives in Manhattan.

Click any image to view a slideshow of all images.

Every building or neighborhood has a story to tell. As self-admitted archi-nerds, whenever we travel we often find ourselves wanting to know more about the places we pass. Yet as a genre, architectural information graphics seem arrested in the nineteenth century forms of the plaque and the guidebook – modes that are didactic and technologically primitive. We wondered how ubiquitous mobile devices might be harnessed to make the city’s hidden stories visible.

Such speculations led us to develop the Museum of the Phantom City: OtherFutures – an iPhone app that lets users browse visionary designs for the City of New York on their phones. The app is now available in beta form on the iTunes store, thanks to the efforts of a multidisciplinary team of programmers, researchers, a graphic designer, and an architecture historian.

Mobile Media and Urban Experience
iPhones and mobile devices are undoubtedly transforming the way we navigate the city. Apps like Google Maps and Urbanspoon put an unprecedented amount of information about the city at one’s fingertips. Most of these programs, however, are purely functional in purpose: they seek to clarify the city, to demystify and make it more legible. In contrast, we are interested in how mobile media can deepen and intensify urban experience, perhaps even introducing new pleasures and mysteries of the metropolitan condition. We are inspired by the work of artists and urbanists like Janet Cardiff and the Situationists, who strived to make ordinary landscapes appear unfamiliar and strange again. How might mobile media be used to reveal dimensions of the city veiled from everyday experience – to manufacture an augmented reality?

We are also interested in how architects might capitalize on the ubiquity of personal digital devices to reach an audience beyond the world of design, to inspire a greater interest in urban and design issues in the general public. Fortunately, this desire to reach a broader audience coincided with the Van Alen Institute’s mission to promote emerging works of “public architecture,” and we were able to develop the Phantom City project through the generous support of their New York Prize Fellowship.

The inaugural exhibition of the Museum of the Phantom City is OtherFutures, and it features speculative and sometimes fanciful visions of the city that were never realized. We launched the project on October 3 with a scavenger hunt sponsored by the Van Alen that began on Roosevelt Island.

How it works
When you open the app, the first screen to appear after the initial credits is a dark, nearly black, field punctuated only by several pink and white “bursts.” The screen is intended to be a kind of terrain vague, to make you feel like you are groping through some unknown territory. On closer inspection, you might notice that the black field conceals a Google map underlay, and that it is centered on your current location. The bursts indicate sites for which a designer has created a visionary proposal at some point in the past. A pink burst means you are close enough to access the site—to see the designer’s images and words. A white burst means you are not within range: venture closer to unlock that site’s content.

(Users outside of New York City are out of luck for now, until we can get additional funding to expand the project to other cities. Though the entire archive of utopian projects is also accessible on the Museum of the Phantom City website.)

The sites include well-known projects such as Buckminster Fuller’s Dome over Midtown Manhattan and Superstudio’s Continuous Monument, as well as less famous proposals like Fuller’s “Mini-Earth”—a miniature globe that would have been suspended by cables across from the United Nations building, constantly reminding diplomats of the “bigger picture” of their actions. Or Raymond Loewy’s 1941 proposal for a helicopter landing field to be built on steel pylons over Bryant Park, which he claimed could double as an air raid shelter.

Phantom City in prospect
Combing through the archive of OtherFutures, one becomes aware of certain generational preoccupations: Visions at the turn of the twentieth century are full of soaring towers, bridges between skyscrapers, and flying machines, while mid-twentieth-century proposals, not surprisingly, reveal Cold War disquiet about bomb attacks. The 1960s generated myriad megastructures composed of prefabricated units that would purportedly leave the existing urban fabric intact.

On one level, such proposals can be viewed merely as quaint curiosities – the detritus of bygone hopes and anxieties. But on another, they serve as a pointed contrast to present-day urban proposals. Sure, an airport over Bryant Park seems far-fetched, but are we necessarily happy with the current status quo in urban transportation systems? How does the Related Companies’ West Side Railyards proposal appear when juxtaposed with Michael Sorkin’s whimsical, elegiac scheme for a homeless colony on the same site? OtherFutures provokes the question of whether our current designs for the city are imaginative enough, whether we are thinking big enough.

Users are free, however, to interpret the content of the app as they wish. A rating function allows one to vote on each proposal, and to see how others have voted: Was Paul Rudolph’s Lower Manhattan Expressway project utopian or dystopian? Beauty or beast? Yawn or yell? You decide. Then roam elsewhere and discover another city that could have been.


Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder are founders of Cheng+Snyder, a multidisciplinary design studio based in New York City and Philadelphia. Brett teaches design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and Irene is a doctoral candidate in architectural history at Columbia University.

Photos from project launch on Roosevelt Island © Van Alen Institute, 2009. All other images courtesy of Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder.

Project Credits:
Museum of the Phantom City is a public art project designed by Cheng+Snyder with generous support from the Van Alen Institute New York Prize Fellowship.

PROJECT COLLABORATORS
Ray Cha, website programming and user interface
Michelle Chang, research and project development
Noah Keating, iPhone programming and interactive design
Olivia Wright, research and project development

Cheng+Snyder gratefullly acknowledges the following for their contributions and input: Alexander Arroyo, Inbar Barak, Maria Berman, Jessica Blaustein, Christy Cheng, Adam Dayem, Chris Dierks, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Sam Feldman, Abby Hamlin, Jamie Hand, Elizabeth Hodges, Steven Holl, Brad Horn, Joan Ockman, Brian Schulman, Liz Shearer, Michael Sorkin, Deborah Tchoudjinoff, Alie Thomer, and Bernard Tschumi.

The views expressed here are those of the author only and do not reflect the position of Urban Omnibus editorial staff or the Architectural League of New York.