It’s a shame it took a while for people to wake up. They slowly came to their senses when they finally looked around to only see metal and brick akin to the crooked tiles of an upstate high school cafeteria; I personally feel looking back that most of the more memorable losses come from the 1960s, when people attempted to protest or realized the wrongdoings but could do nothing to stop it. I could only imagine how many real pretty buildings were razed for lazy office stacks, that people cared so little about due to it still being a dime a decillion.
A few examples of buildings the 50s secretly claimed:
The double domed Cable Building, from 1897, lost to annex the Stock Exchange
While there are a lot of examples of forgotten ghost buildings, I’m happy that the majority of the office stack invasion and urban renewal sprees only hit tenements and slum buildings.
Same here. For the longest time I thought every ugly modern building replaced a beautiful old one. That’s because I only focused on those early 20th century promotional pics of all the beautiful ones.
It was only when I started looking at 50’s and 60’s more tourist pics then I was able to see most of the modern buildings were built over crappy tenements.
I would argue that only 50 or so modern buildings replaced grandiose/beautiful pre war buildings (city wide).
In the end I’m ok with beautiful old buildings replacing other beautiful old buildings. I would love to see a list of modern buildings that replaced beautiful pre war buildings. I wonder how many there are. Because that’s the real travesty.
I can’t wait until a picture of the Gotham Nat’l Bank in color pops up. I’m happy the Coliseum is gone.
I tried to formulate a list of prewar-replacing structures from exclusively downtown: I included the ones that replaced interesting prewar structures, which had varying effects. For example I included 250 Broadway as it was on the site of the beautiful Broadway Savings Bank, even though everything else was a tenement.
Even if that number (city wide) became 200 that’s still not that bad. Germany lost entire cities worth of architecture during WWII. That must feel awful.
I’m so jealous of people 100 years from now. They are going to have such and easy time looking into the past by using google maps.
I think 28 Liberty is my least favorite building in the entire city. Purely because of its size and location. I would love to see that one get redesigned over any other.
The design isn’t the worst but it’s up there.
I can stomach some of post war buildings (especially the all glass ones) but those early modern buildings are just awful.
Honestly I like One Chase and 140 Broadway, they were pretty sleek and complement each other oddly but surely. The buildings I hate are the more brutal ones that came in at the end of the 1960s that focused on sloppy brick and brutal metal over the curtain wall buildings like those. One Liberty Plaza I hate with a passion, it’s kind of an oddball to me since even overlooking what it replaced, it just seems brutal, depressing, pathetic, almost out of place, being it broke the sort of stairway vibe the other two set up. Even with the twin towers there it never seemed to be a good segway between the old skyline and the new.
I also hate the brutal buildings like the Home Insurance Plaza building and those setback Emery Roth piles.
That’s the weird thing about my preference. I’m far more focused on groups of old buildings than any one individual building.
If you ask me I think 5th Ave from the Flatiron all the way to Washington Park is one of the best cityscapes in the entire world. I obsess over trying to find good streetscapes in any city really.
In fact over the years I’ve made a path that takes you through most of NY in a way that you hardly see any modern buildings.
When I find a decent size neighborhood with minimal 1950-2000 buildings I get excited.
Two half buildings circa 1930: Due to delays with certain parcels, The long wing of 40 Wall St and the other half of 30 Pine Street weren’t completed until about 1932, while both opened in 1930. 30 Pine Street was demolished in 1962 for One Chase Manhattan Plaza.
It says this was 1880? Not sure how accurate that date is but when I see pics like this I don’t get as upset that modern buildings now dot the shoreline. All the good stuff has always been closer to Broadway.
I mean that’s 1880. Imagine what Paris and London looked like in 1880.
NY came a looooong way in a really short timeframe.
