FEBURARY 2006 » book review

The City with No Lid

Building New York: The Rise and Rise of the Greatest City on Earth
by Bruce Marshall
Universe Publishing, a div. of Rizzoli International Publications, New York, NY; 2005
304 pp.; hardcover; 300 illustrations; $49.95
ISBN 0-7893-1362-6

Reviewed by Nicole V. Gagné

In 1934, after having lived in France for more than 30 years, the great American writer Gertrude Stein visited the United States for a lecture tour, which she described in her 1937 book Everybody's Autobiography. Struck by the architecture of New York City, she noted, "European buildings sit on the ground but American ones come out of the ground. And then of course there is the air. And that air is everywhere, everywhere in America, there is no sky, there is air and [...] because there is no sky, there is no lid on top of them."

Observing the once lofty Flatiron Building dwarfed by newer and taller skyscrapers, she concluded, "you look up and you see the cornice way on top in the clear air, but now in the new ones there is no cornice up there and that is right because why end anything." With her usual acumen, she grasped an unspoken principle of American urban architecture in general and New York City buildings in particular. The building that sits on the ground stays there; the building that comes out of the ground keeps going. It may go all together and be razed and replaced, or it may just keep going up and up. The sky's the limit – but when there's no sky and only air, there is no limit, and so nothing ends.

Bruce Marshall's new book, Building New York, is almost an illustrated history of Stein's thesis – even down to its clever Stein-like subtitle, "The Rise and Rise of the Greatest City on Earth." The author and his researchers have pored through literally millions of archival photographs to compile a dazzling collection of hundreds of stills, which documents the history and personality of architecture during New York City's unstoppable growth during the 19th and 20th centuries. This handsome tome overflows with unforgettable images, especially of the erection of buildings, from St. Patrick's Cathedral and the Flatiron Building (seen before the addition of its cornice!) to the late and lamented World Trade Center. Especially memorable is one amazing shot of the Empire State Building as a work in progress – photographed from the vantage point of one of the triangular windows in the spire of the then newly completed Chrysler Building.

To his credit, Marshall fully appreciates that building a city means more than just making buildings, and his book provides ample coverage of the creation of New York's parks, playgrounds, monuments and cemeteries. He also wisely depicts the expansion of the city's infrastructure, with majestic photos of bridges, tunnels, subways, airports, expressways and that cherished New York innovation, the parkway: The author delights in describing how a 15-mile highway, completed in 1923, provided "a gently curving, tree-lined, landscaped route into the city for the affluent commuters of Scarsdale and White Plains. It was a 'parkway,' the Bronx River Parkway. Both the word and the idea are particular to New York. No other American metropolis has so carefully fitted so many miles of access and exit so homogeneously into the landscape."

Marshall's depiction of New York's infrastructure also becomes a survey of how a city grows. The Queensboro Bridge, for example, was completed in 1909, and "by 1930 the population of Queens had quadrupled, [and] the assessed value of its properties had increased sixfold." By the same token, the decision to extend the subway lines into what were then "vacant, rural tracts" in the outer boroughs wound up "sparking the development of Astoria, Flushing, Flatbush."

Although Marshall's book is fabulously rich in historical imagery, it often lacks informational detail in its captions; most of the archival photographs are undated, and readers are often left to scrutinize car models and clothing styles to get a better sense of what period they are seeing. This parsimoniousness extends to the text itself – Building New York is rather light on words – and so the redundancies that crop up become all the more glaring.

However, there is some justice in Marshall's pointing out twice the racism that underscored Robert Moses' sweeping alterations to New York City, as typified by his having built "more than 250 children's playgrounds in the city (but only two of them in black neighborhoods)." More tiresome are the repetitions of such data as "New York's reason for being was the pursuit of wealth," or how, in the construction of the Seagram Building, architects Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson "spent more money per square foot than had ever been spent before."

That last reiteration points out a further weakness in the text, namely the author's addiction to superlatives. Granted, it's hard to avoid them when discussing New York City's famed construction projects. One can feel a certain glory in the fact that the caissons for the Brooklyn Bridge were "the two most massive manmade structures on the continent," or that the bridge's central walkway was "the highest manmade promenade in the world." Civic pride can also be excited by appreciating that the Verrazano Narrows Bridge was "the longest suspension span of its day," or that the first Grand Central Depot train shed, completed in 1871, was "the largest covered space on the continent," or even that the American Airlines Building in JFK Airport has "the world's largest stained-glass window, a 317-ft. curve, 22 ft. high."

The catalog of extremes can make readers flinch, however, when they are asked to gasp in awe at the news that Radio City Music Hall has "the world's largest theater," "the world's biggest Christmas Tree" and "the world's largest cinema screen, the heaviest proscenium arch, the largest orchestra pit." Drearier still is the news that the Museum of Modern Art received "the most expensive makeover in museum history" in 2001, and its "admission charge is now $20, thought to be the highest museum entrance fee in the world."

Marshall also recognizes the dark side of the city's increase, and in his prologue he acknowledges, "Opportunism and exploitation, wealth and misery overlaid [New York City's] progress right from its founding." That undercurrent informs some of the book's catalog of extremes; far from evoking wonder, the statistics often remind readers of the self-congratulatory extravagance, wastefulness and rapacity that define many of the city's structures.

The saddest superlative in the book, however, must be the fact that New York "holds the record for the highest building ever to suffer a wrecker's ball: The elegant Singer Building, at 612 ft. once the world's tallest, was demolished in 1968." Marshall's book covers other great losses of historic architecture that the city has suffered, particularly the razing of the first Pennsylvania Station, a 1911 Neoclassical-style masterpiece designed by the architects McKim, Mead & White. Just as distressing are the glimpses of the now-lost Roxy Theater and the Astor Hotel on Long Acre Square. Alongside its focus on the construction of the city, Marshall's book also serves as a memorial to these vanished works of art. Happily, he includes some room for hope, and observes that the public's outrage over the annihilation of Penn Station in 1963 – a crime that included the dumping of its columns and statuary into a New Jersey swamp! – led to the formation in 1965 of the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

After examining several of the city's lost gems, Marshall concludes, "What all these victims had in common, of course, was modest height. And if profit was to be squeezed out of every inch of dirt on this finite island, taller was better." As land space became scarce, especially on Manhattan, the question of air space became more important, and the great age of skyscraper construction took off in New York.

This book traces its origins to two technological developments of the 19th century. The first was the construction innovations pioneered in Chicago, where "architects were bolting together columns and crossbeams of wrought iron, soon to be steel, to take the strain in taller buildings." The other breakthrough came when the engineer Elisha Graves Otis "devised a safety device for an elevator so that it would not crash to the bottom of its shaft if the pulley rope broke." Once the buildings could support their own weight and enjoy easy and safe movement from floor to floor, they were able to become much, much taller.

In response, zoning restrictions arose that modified the design and appearance of skyscrapers. Setback regulations, instituted by 1916, were related "to the width of the adjoining streets – usually one-and-a-half times. Then further graduated setbacks were required until the tower was allowed to rise unhindered, but on no more than 25 percent of the area of the plot." The high-style results of these limitations were such architectural triumphs as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.

The later era of modern, International Style skyscrapers – those characterless slabs of steel and glass, which have proliferated since the 1950s – were likewise informed by new restrictions from the ground. "Instead of the 'wedding cake' setback style of earlier skyscrapers," Marshall explains, "these straight-sided monsters brought the 'plaza bonus.' They could rise, sheer, but their size was limited by how much space at ground level was given over to plazas, malls, arcades, and terraces open to the public." Of course, no amount of public space below can adequately compensate for an eyesore above, and Marshall is quick to note that the Pan Am Building (now owned by Metropolitan Life Insurance) "is, by common consent, New York's least-liked building."

But even an unlikable building can be the subject of some remarkable photos, and the book's images of the Pan Am Building are every bit as impressive as the shots of such architectural beauties as Manhattan's Temple Emanu-El or the New York Stock Exchange building. Celebrating the wonders of New York City architecture – and investigating its origins and implications – is the true purpose of Bruce Marshall's Building New York, and the author has succeeded admirably. TB

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