huxtable – New York at its Best

Ever since 1959, when Frank Lloyd Wright’s attention grabbing design for The Guggenheim opened its doors, architects, directors, critics, and historians have been searching for the right way to build a museum. The main question to answer, it seems, is: What is the purpose of a museum? There are, theoretically, innumerable answers to that question. I think that most, however, fall under a few big umbrellas:

The museum is a repository for art and artifacts.
The museum is a work of art in-and-of itself, and it stands as reflection of the spirit of a city and its people.
The museum is a consolidation of breathtaking design on its own merit, and for the display and understanding of arts and artifacts. It is a satisfying synthesis.
The museum is a place of wonder where one can learn from and meet works of art, but also other people. The museum is a stage in which people grow from both viewing and socializing.

The first three are ideas I’ve gathered from reading other literature. Under the first view, museums are merely backdrops for the works of art they display. Architects should, to quote James Johnson Sweeney, director of the Guggenheim from 1952-1960, “underdesign.”

Under the second view, architects take a museum commission as a way to flex their design muscles. The buildings are to become statements of architectural prowess as the architects attempt to make innovative structures suitable for importance places. This can come at the cost of acceptable exhibition spaces.

The third is a mixture of the first two, arguably what museum design has trended towards. A museum should attest to the greatness of a city and its citizens and the might of a commendable architect, but it should also provide for lively spaces that present art well. This is especially important concerning contemporary art, which may require spaces beyond the typical exhibition room for proper display.

For Huxtable, The Guggenheim Bilbao represented the culmination of this view; it is “art and architecture as one.” It and other contemporary museums have pushed the boundaries of architectural design while providing unique environments for the display of new art.

But where does this leave museums of the past? What of places like The Metropolitan Museum of Art that were built before this museum design-defining frenzy?

I don’t think that anyone would argue that The Met doesn’t serve its purpose as a repository. With over 2,000,000 square feet of floor space, it can display not just some but a considerable amount of art from innumerable disparate places and times.

Some will argue that The Met is not an architectural masterpiece. Some shortcomings? It can seem a bit long at first, and does a glass facade really go with an Egyptian Temple? Yet it is precisely these images that define The Met as a New York City icon. New Yorkers can handle big, Beaux-Arts dreams (the 5th Avenue facade) and bold, modern redesigns (the Sackler Wing) mashed into one. Not to mention the fact that the museum pays homage to its lengthy architectural history by using past facades as inside walls. Specifically, polychrome Gothic Revival masonry from the museum’s first building on the 5th Ave. site can be seen in all its splendor by looking over your shoulder when you enter the Robert Lehman Collection.

Already, we’ve check marked view three; The Met is an architectural delectation with a brilliant display of art. But just to add some might to my argument, let’s look at the experience a little bit more. On the outside, look up for four caryatids that represent the four branches of art (painting, sculpture, architecture, and music) while you stroll through a carefully articulated plaza. You walk down a row of trees as you approach from the north or south, and the lights from below add a sense of importance to your entry. As you pass the fountains and climb the grand staircase, it’s as if you are rising to the occasion of sophisticated yet public art as colossal columns proclaim your presence.

There’s something special about the stairs of The Met. Your status in society, as Blair Waldorf from the Gossip Girl series might tell you, rises as you ascend. The Met is Blair Waldorf architectonified: it is a New York heiress, grand despite her shortcomings, the “Queen Bee” and jewel of 5th Avenue, and secure in her position as keeper of knowledge and style. You cannot help but already feel exhilarated as you reach the entrance.

Inside this spirit continues. Beaux-Arts columns, arches, and vaults greet you at first, tall and grandiose as ever. As you move through the building, the designs of different wings reflect the changing moods that art from different societies affects.

It’s these experiences that lend The Met its success under view four. The architecture is designed to enhance the meeting of art and person. You are enveloped in different scenes that make paintings, statues, artifacts, and so on all the more powerful. Just as important though, the paths that you take through the plazas, rooms, corridors, and staircases you peruse allow you, if you take advantage of it, to interact with others at every point. From the approach to the museum (the plaza is always filled with independent artists and the stairs inside and out are quite literally meeting places), to the framed views through rooms, and the emphasis on education (the ground floor) and social gathering (The Great Hall Balcony), The Met is a place of gossip, laughter, show-off, ideas, analysis, reflection, and conversations about art and life. An old museum is always new as a place of human interplay.

I don’t know what the museum of the future should look like, but I do know that they should always emulate what The Met has achieved. It is my favorite museum in New York because of the new experiences I have there every single time I visit, as I engage with art, architecture, and people. The Met, like the Guggenheim, is attention grabbing architecturally, it just takes a deeper look.

Sources:

For a short read to get yourself thinking about the duality, or lack thereof, between art and architecture see this post.
The Guardian article, “What should our museums look like in 2020?”
Art Practical’s “Architecture and the Museum.”
More about The MET on ‘New York Architecture’ here.
For a short synopsis about the museum’s architectural history, see the blog post “The Museum, Constructed,” written by an intern.
For a comprehensive overview of the museum’s architectural history, see Morrison H. Heckscher’s study, written for the museum’s 1995 bulletin.
I owe many thanks to Alexandra Lange for her thoughts and ideas in the “What Should a Museum Be?” chapter in her book Writing About Architecture, and to Ada Louise Huxtable for her musings in the “Museums” section of her book On Architecture.

[This post is a response to Huxtable’s critique of the Marine Midland Building and its surroundings in her article “Sometimes We Do It Right.” I agree with her assessment of the space, but I think that the space has not been corrupted, as she predicts, and that it continues to be a remarkable planning ideal despite the changes in society’s predilections.]

Ada Louise Huxtable was not staring at the screen of her iPhone, like I was, as she made her way to the Marine Midland Building at 140 Broadway in 1968. Fast-forward 50 years and New York is still “very, very good,” but it is different, and so are its people. Five decades after the completion of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s (SOM) landmark building, there is still much to see, but a lot to miss as well.

Most New Yorkers today will reach downtown Manhattan by way of the subway. And every New Yorker is an expert at navigating this confusing and dirty system that delivers them to some of the best urban experiences in the world. But en route to your final destination, much of what New York has to offer goes by unnoticed when you’re sending a message or selecting a song from your playlist; especially when your phone has mapped out your whole route, and you just need to follow the blue line to get that Instagram-ready photo you’ve been waiting for.

I don’t claim to be above this. I didn’t realize that I’d be passing through Calatrava’s Oculus on my way to follow in Huxtable’s footsteps. It didn’t matter to me where I got off, just that it was the fastest way to reach where I was going.

But Calatrava is an attention grabber, and I couldn’t help but feel excited walking through his immaculate and pristine transportation hub another time. When I stepped out into the bright, warm day, I turned around to take a look at the winged structure- One World Trade rising gloriously in the background. This wasn’t what I came to see, but I was happy that Calatrava took me out of my digital euphoria.

That’s the thing, though: Calatrava demands your attention. His creations are hard to miss or ignore. The space I was interested in, and that Huxtable lauded as a “stunning success in urban design,” is more subtle. Although selfie sticks and tourists pretending to be professional photographers abound, the pictures they take aren’t meant to capture the graceful flow of the plaza and buildings at 140 Broadway.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Calatrava knocked sense back into me and made me pay attention to the urban fabric I was walking by. A city may be defined by the discrete places that conjure in people’s minds when its name is mentioned, but a city is only forged by the unnoticed structures and voids that knit these places together.

Directly across from the Oculus on Church Street stands the 55-story Millennium Hotel, stable after the structural problems it faced following the 9/11 attacks. On its left, across Dey Street, is a Century 21 Department Store clad in masonry, and southwest of that along Church is a city-mall with the likes of H&M, Eataly, and Banana Republic emboldened on its glass facade.

Expensive hotels, clothing stores, and ‘bougie’ food places abound but most people walk by all of these without batting an eye. They’ll stop and marvel at Calatrava, but the humdrum of everyday modernity doesn’t interest them. That’s okay, and the stores aren’t architectural wonders, but what’s interesting is that the world we live in didn’t have to be this one. The path to 140 Broadway, from all directions, is much different now than it was 50 years ago, and these paths are a not-so-subtle reminder of the consumerist society we’ve grown accustomed to. What could this place have looked like if the world went in a different direction? Today, you can almost feel the money being spent all around you, if you’re paying attention.

All of that melts away, though, as you turn left on Liberty Street and Isamu Noguchi’s “Red Cube” comes into view. Suddenly, there’s barely a store in view. One Liberty Plaza, another SOM building which can be easy to miss along Church, rises on your left, and Zuccotti Park, not yet completed in March 1968, opens up on your right.

At last, standing between Cedar and Liberty Streets and facing east, I took a moment to take it all in. This was where Huxtable wanted someone like me to experience, and I was happy to be there, but at first, it all just felt so normal. Noguchi, as Huxtable foresaw, was the main attention grabber. Group after group of giddy adventurers stopped to snap their pictures before hurrying on their way.

At first, I wanted to yell at them: “Yes, the cube is marvelous, but look at what else you’re missing!” But then I realized that their inclinations were okay. As long as Noguchi, and Calatrava a few blocks away, could grab attention, Marine Midland and 140 Broadway will be content to sit in the background, happy to provide refuge and beauty in a more understated way. That realization was, for me, when “this small segment of New York” went beyond normal.

I took the path that Huxtable had laid out for me, though admittedly, snapped over one-hundred pictures along the way (I just couldn’t help myself). I let her words flow through me as I walked the travertine plaza and identified the buildings she mentioned in her review. All of this was under appreciated by everyone else buzzing around, I thought, and what should that make me feel? The urge to yell was back, but I found respite in what I saw that Huxtable had left out.

Something about this plaza matters to people, even if they don’t realize it. Is it the elegant curtain wall of Marine Midland, the properly sized marble blocks, the varied style of the buildings, the accent of the cube, and the brilliant views that mattered to Huxtable? Or is it the warm copper glow of the windows, the benches shaded by birch trees, and the wafting, delicious smells of the various food-carts lined up along Broadway?

The correct answer, I think, is that it’s all of those things. The better answer, though, is that just like me, other people want to be here, too.

People bought their lunch from the food-carts and went across to Zuccotti to eat and chat. Some sat beside Marine Midland and took a glance at their reflection in the window as their children spun in circles with innocent glee. A business woman had a smoke at the corner of the plaza while a teenager jumped in a bragging attempt to touch a corner on the cube. Why were these people here?

For five decades this “carefully calculated channel of related space and buildings” has persisted and the destruction that Huxtable warned us of has not come to bear, for the time being, at least; but the city, and the world, has changed. The Twin Towers have come and gone, leaving behind waterfalls and bollards in their wake, David Childs’ ‘beautiful yet compelling’ creation has been topped off, Calatrava has had his fun, iPhones and Androids capture our lives even as we’re oblivious to the hotel-clothing-food jamboree that envelopes us. But New York’s spirit remains, neatly and thoughtfully expressed at 140 Broadway and its immediate environs.

Not everyone will stop to appreciate this spirit, or put it into words, or capture it on their phones save for its most provocative features. But “color, size, style, mass, space, light, dark, solids, voids, highs and lows” work together, from subway stop to plaza, so that they can sense it, and that keeps them coming back.

One cannot believe in cities if one does not believe in life. – Anonymous

Tag: huxtable

The Met: Architecture for What?

re: Sometimes We Do It Right