New York has always been a tear-down,
build-up city: tear down the old, build something new on the site. In the nineteenth century there was a
constant rattle and screech and grind and thud as workmen hammered and sawed
and bolted materials into place, or hauled them in wagons, or hoisted them by
means of a horse-powered windlass or derrick: operations that raised up clouds
of dust and plaster, and sent avalanches of brickbats and splintered wood and
slate down upon the heads of luckless pedestrians, or when blasting, even on one
occasion dropped a boulder through the roof and three floors of a mansion to
lodge between two ceiling beams in a gentleman’s parlor.
And if such an intrusion violated that
revered sanctum, that shrine of Victorian gentility, what can one say of the
cemeteries, those sanctified refuges of the dear departed, when development
decreed their closing, and workmen excavating the site shoveled out onto the
pavement shreds of grave clothes, bones, and bits of skull with tufts of
hair. Yes, the kin of those buried there
had been notified of the cemetery’s closing and been given time to remove the
loved ones, but sometimes no kin could be located, with desecration the result.
What was the city up to? It was called Go Ahead: the passionate belief
then gripping the nation that More and Bigger and Faster = Better, that the
city and the nation were vehicles of Progress, that old fogyism and reverence
for the past must yield to Young America and its fervent embrace of the
New. And who could doubt the cult of
Progress, since in a single lifetime a citizen could witness the coming of
gaslight, replacing candles and whale-oil lamps, and then the electric light;
steamboats and railroads and the telegraph, making travel and communication
easier; and that undreamed-of amenity, the flush toilet, right inside one’s
abode? Americans were gaga over material
progress, and for New Yorkers this meant tearing down old buildings to replace
them with new and better ones, while pushing the city’s limits farther and
farther north on the cigar-shaped island of Manhattan, and, with the coming of
better construction materials and the elevator, pushing it up as well – up, up,
up to eight-, ten-, and twelve-story buildings, and who knows how much farther
up one could go into the blue vault of heaven?
And today?
When I go out on errands, I am constantly forced into detours because of
construction; I pass graffiti-adorned scaffoldings masking construction or
renovation within; I see trucks coming and going with lettering on their flanks
announcing
PLUMBING HEATING
ELECTRICAL
LUMBER
INSTALLATIONS
DEMOLITION & CARTING
INTERIOR DEMOLITION
When I get a glimpse of an excavation
site, I see a deep pit with rubble and debris, and an outsize dumpster at the
curb overloaded with bricks, bits of wood and plaster, twisted steel, and heaps
of bent nails and rubble. Or I get a
peek through the open doorway of an old brownstone, its façade intact, its
interior gutted and strewn with debris, a glance that often goes the depth of
the building to a gaping window frame in the rear wall that affords even a
glimpse of the back garden, or what remains of it. Yes, the West Village is a historical
district, but interiors can be revamped to one’s heart’s content, as long as
the exterior is preserved.
And the cranes – those towering devices
whose installation may cause the closing of a whole block to traffic, and whose
soaring spikes reach up high to remove debris from the topmost floors of a
building, or to hoist materials onto the structure, or to do whatever is
necessary at those dizzying heights.
Like most passersby, I always pause a few minutes to watch them in
operation, staring in disbelief at the compact power house at street level, amazed
that this little structure can command the metal giraffe neck of a monster
reaching so high into the sky.
Do these towering monsters ever
collapse? You bet! At about 8:00 a.m. on the morning of February
5, 2016, when falling snow was accompanied by wind gusts, the crew of a crane
rising 565 feet into the air in TriBeCa in Lower Manhattan decided to lower the
crane to a more secure level. But as the
crane descended, it suddenly toppled over and came crashing down on Worth
Street, killing a pedestrian, injuring three others, shaking nearby buildings,
and littering the surrounding blocks with debris. Thinking a bomb had exploded, people going to
work panicked and fled from the area.
Firefighters, policemen, and utility workers flocked to the scene to cope
with the resulting damage to a water main and a number of gas lines. Gas was shut off in the immediate area,
streets were closed, and subway lines skipped nearby stops – and this during
the morning rush hour. Photographs show
the toppled crane stretching the length of a city block.
The sole fatality of this incident was a
Czech-born immigrant of 38 who had a mathematics degree from Harvard. To die in a crane collapse strikes me as one
of the weirdest possible deaths in this city, topped only, perhaps, by being
killed by a falling branch while crossing Central Park on a windy day. And what was the crane doing there? Installing generators and air-conditioning
units atop the building at 60 Hudson Street.
As a precaution, city officials ordered 419 other cranes then operating
in the city to be secured, and the Mayor promised that inspectors would be
tough on the companies responsible for construction site accidents.
Will cranes continue to be a feature of
life in the city? Of course. Moving horizontally instead of vertically
because it’s the only way it can expand, Rockefeller University on the Upper
East Side is building over (yes, over)
the F.D.R. Drive, and a huge crane has already hoisted a prefabricated 800,000-pound metal structure from a barge in
the East River and lowered it into place over the Drive. This is the first of 19 such structures, and
the crane is the largest marine crane on the East Coast, able to reach as high
as a 21-story building and carry up to 2 million pounds. The hoisting will be done at night, and the
Drive will be closed for the operation.
Even so, good luck, East Side motorists! Heavy heavy hangs over thy head.
If dying in a crane collapse is weird, how
about being buried alive? On April 6,
2015, when a 14-foot trench at a construction site on Ninth Avenue collapsed,
an Ecuadorean immigrant working on there was crushed under thousands of pounds
of dirt. The machinery of justice grinds
slowly, but on June 10 of this year the contracting company was convicted of
second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide, both felonies,
and of reckless endangerment, a misdemeanor; sentencing will be done at a
future date. No date has been set as yet
for the trial of two construction managers and an excavation subcontractor, but
the company itself faces possible fines of up to $35,000. When the jury verdict was announced,
relatives of the victim, including his mother who had come all the way from
Ecuador, broke down in tears and were hugged by the prosecutor. The verdict was significant, since criminal
liability in such cases is hard to prove.
And when buildings are torn down in the
city, what becomes of the debris? It is
carted off, one assumes. But what of the
ornamental fixtures and furnishings that once adorned them – the ornate
fireplaces, carved oak paneling, stained glass, vintage plumbing, terra cotta
curlicues, and antique lighting fixtures?
They are rescued by a special breed of scavengers who, by prior
arrangement with the demolisher, rush in to collect architectural artifacts and
either preserve them or offer them for sale.
And where do they end up? One huge trove is in a sprawling complex of
buildings on Main Street in the sleepy little town of Ivoryton, Connecticut, a
two-hour drive northeast of New York.
Inside the buildings is a vast array of scavenged artifacts:
· carved oak transoms from the first Helen Hayes Theater
on West 46th Street in Manhattan
· seven phone booths covered with band stickers and
graffiti from the Roseland Ballroom, which closed in 2014
· antique carved oak paneling from Gertrude Vanderbilt
Whitney’s Fifth Avenue mansion
· marble fireplaces from the elegant Plaza Hotel
· Tudor-style stained glass from a penthouse on 57th
Street where actor Errol Flynn once lived
· bars from Gino’s restaurant on Lexington Avenue, which
closed in 2010
· the reception counter and display cases from Manhattan’s
prestigious 21 Club
· the terra cotta façade of the Savoy Theater on Bedford
Avenue in Brooklyn
And this is only a fraction
of the trove.
So what is all this stuff doing in
Connecticut? It is the collection,
assembled over many years, of Evan Blum, who calls it the “Sixth Borough,” and
the items are for sale at prices you might not want to pay. And how does he get the stuff? By making an agreement, often for a fee, with
the company doing the demolition. Some
preservationists criticize him for selling the artifacts, arguing that this
creates a market for items that should be placed in museums. But he insists that he hates to see old
buildings demolished, and that he is rescuing the stuff from a trip to the
landfill. The Connecticut trove isn’t
open to the public, but a sampling of his collection can be seen at Demolition
Depot & Irreplaceable Artifacts, his showroom on East 125th
Street in Harlem, well known to collectors and designers. But demolition keeps Mr. Blum busy. He told a Times
reporter recently that they’re taking down and gutting buildings faster
than he can keep up. “I have 25 churches
to do before the end of the year.”
Source note: For information on Evan Blum’s collection of
artifacts in Connecticut, I am indebted to Corey Kilgannon’s article in the New York Times of June 14, 2016.
First gay monument: Last Friday, June 24, President Obama issued a proclamation making the Stonewall Inn, the site of the 1969 riots that began the gay rights movement, the Stonewall National Monument, the first National Park Service unit dedicated to gay rights. The monument comprises 7.7 acres, protecting not just the bar but the Christopher Park across the street, and several other adjacent streets and sidewalks involved in the riots. This comes soon after the mayhem in Orlando, and just in time for today's annual gay parade, which always comes down Christopher Street past the Stonewall, before disbanding at Christopher and Greenwich Street, near the Hudson River. And why a monument, rather than a park? To create a national park requires action by Congress, whereas a monument does not. Given the chronic inaction of the current Congress, the choice was obvious. (The riots and parade are chronicled in chapter 31 of my book.)
First gay monument: Last Friday, June 24, President Obama issued a proclamation making the Stonewall Inn, the site of the 1969 riots that began the gay rights movement, the Stonewall National Monument, the first National Park Service unit dedicated to gay rights. The monument comprises 7.7 acres, protecting not just the bar but the Christopher Park across the street, and several other adjacent streets and sidewalks involved in the riots. This comes soon after the mayhem in Orlando, and just in time for today's annual gay parade, which always comes down Christopher Street past the Stonewall, before disbanding at Christopher and Greenwich Street, near the Hudson River. And why a monument, rather than a park? To create a national park requires action by Congress, whereas a monument does not. Given the chronic inaction of the current Congress, the choice was obvious. (The riots and parade are chronicled in chapter 31 of my book.)
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| The Stonewall in 1969. Nothing special to look at, until history intervened. |
The book: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received two awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction, and first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. (It also got an honorable mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, but that hardly counts.) As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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Coming soon: “Slick Willie,” the
gentlemanly thief who for 40 years preyed on the banks of Philadelphia and New York. But before “Slick
Willie” I’ll probably reblog the ever popular and much visited post on “Man/Boy Love:
The Great Taboo.” What better way could there be to celebrate Gay Pride Day, albeit a day or two too late?
©
2016 Clifford Browder
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