Otis Pearsall, chief organizer of the campaign that led to historic district designation of Brooklyn Heights in 1965, is after a new goal: to improve the look and quality of everything built in New York City. He proposes a new, non-political review board staffed by qualified volunteers “to promote architectural creativity and quality in the thousands of new projects added permanently to our streetscapes throughout the five boroughs in any typical year.” The quote is from a speech Pearsall gave earlier this fall on being honored, along with his wife Nancy, by the Green-Wood Cemetery’s Historic Fund.
The idea of architectural quality review for all of those thousands of buildings may seem staggeringly daunting. Still, when the campaign for the Heights historic district began sixty years ago (it wasn’t achieved overnight), the city had no such districts, and the idea that ever-changing New York, of all places, could preserve a whole neighborhood seemed little more than a fantasy. But, as Pearsall observed in his Green-Wood speech, the city now has “no fewer than 96 historic districts with, I understand, perhaps 50 additional neighborhoods either already in queue or in the wings.” Pearsall pointed to “the greatly improved architectural quality of new construction within historic districts as against the prevailing quality outside,” where, he said, “so many empty lots have been filling up in recent years with architecture best described as banal” because the design has simply been left up to the developers.
Actually, as Pearsall noted, a Public Design Commission (previously known as the Art Commission) exists to review everything built on city-owned property outside the historic districts – Pearsall serves on this commission – and it has effected improvement in designs coming before it. What he believes is needed is a new review board, separate from the City Planning Department, that would absorb the function of the Public Design Commission and extend it to all new construction. He says qualified volunteers can be drawn from a “super abundance of talent” in the city to exercise the needed review.
One can certainly think of banalities, atrocities even, that were perpetrated right here on the downtown edge of Brooklyn Heights, and that might have been mitigated by such a review board. Examples include the State Supreme Court that sits depressingly on Columbus Park opposite the end of Montague Street and the ungainly bulk of One Pierrepont Plaza, inconsistently “prettified” by a spire at the top and arches at the base. The two earlier Cadman towers (140 Cadman Plaza West and 75 Henry Street) rise in uninspired fashion from low-rise surroundings; the newer tower at 111 Clark Street represents at least an attempt at quality in the then advanced style of New Brutalism. More currently, we nave the super-banality of the Beacon Tower nestling the southwest side of the Manhattan Bridge roadway and totally violating its DUMBO context (the J-Condo on the other side of the bridge is marginally better).
It is thus easy enough to name buildings one wishes had never been built as they were, but what of the more debatable ones like 111 Clark Street? The popular taste would almost surely have objected to it, while “educated” architectural opinion might have seen virtue in its New Brutalist aspirations. Or, to take a most famous example, what of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum on upper Fifth Avenue? In 1959, when it was completed, the Guggenheim was an object of extreme contention even in more sophisticated circles. Against those who saw it as a masterpiece were those who saw it as totally tearing at the character of the avenue and the fabric of its neighborhood. Today, here in Brooklyn, we are still embroiled in controversy over Atlantic Yards, although its original architect whose unconventional designs spurred at least part of the conflict has been eased out. Frank Gehry enjoys a world reputation somewhat like that Wright enjoyed, but is he just too much for Brooklyn?
As there are no strictly objective standards of architectural merit, a review board will need to arrive at consensus – a consensus that should not be too timid or reflective of confusion. A current exhibit, “Context\Contrast: New Architecture in Historic Districts” at Manhattan’s AIA New York Center for Architecture, suggests confusion in regard to two selected Brooklyn Heights examples, the innovative 5-story apartment at 322 Hicks Street (near Atlantic Avenue) with its partly angled front and angled windows for the most interesting street views, and the cardboard-thin imitation of a Romanesque Revival townhouse at 125 Joralemon Street, pitifully shamed by the real thing next door. While it’s not clear what the latter example was meant to demonstrate, one hopes that a general review board as envisioned by Pearsall not only comes about but exercises some adventurousness in its judgments.
—Henrik Krogius, Consulting Editor
Brooklyn Heights Press & Cobble Hill News
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© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2009
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