New York City

In 1992, Victoria Thornton was able to successfully organize the first Open House London in which public buildings that were generally closed to the public, were open to Londoners and visitors, allowing unprecedented access to beautiful architectural works within the city. In 2001, organized and founded by a former Open House London volunteer who had returned to his home stateside, Scott Lauer, the first Open House New York was held, based on the same principals as the London weekend, again allowing unprecedented access to many of New York City’s architectural landmarks and has been held on one weekend every October annually ever since, the second such city in the world. It’s now become a more widespread in other cities globally. In the past I’ve attended the Open Houses in New York, but this year, 2016, I volunteered for the first time, a wonderful experience I must say. Where did I get to volunteer? Well, I ‘worked’ at the location of the Manhattan Municipal Building, a remarkable piece of architecture located at the southern end of Manhattan, just north of the Brooklyn Bridge.
After the American Civil War, New York aka Manhattan continued to grow at an unprecedented rate, 70% of American exports passed through its harbor. It’s twin across the East River, Brooklyn also continued to grow, with fully a third of its population employed in New York, it was the first suburb in the world, ruled by crooked politicians and it’s growing population drying up the very limited supplies of clean drinking water making it vulnerable to concept of unification that was being kicked around in the late 1880’s. Brooklyn had grown to be the United States third largest city behind New York and Philadelphia and many held steadfast to holding on to its unique identity, so much so that when the first vote for consolidation was held in 1894, it was vetoed and unsuccessful. However, in 1896, by a narrow margin in Brooklyn in particular passing by only 300 votes, on May 4 a successful vote subsequently signed off by then New York Governor Frank Black, New York or Manhattan County, it’s rebellious twin across the East River, Brooklyn or Kings County, were joined by western Queens County and Staten Island aka Richmond County to form the largest city in the world with a population of over 3 million, Greater New York. Eventually the northern portion of Manhattan County would become the Bronx eventually, so New York City would be composed of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx and became quickly evident that the existing municipal government buildings in the five boroughs would be inadequate to serve the greater city. Despite what Brooklynites still refer to as “The Great Mistake of ’98”, the plans began to evolve to building a municipal building that would centrally house the new megalopolis’s many civic offices. As with Central Park, an open competition with proposals was held, the chosen firm was McKim, Mead and White with architect William M. Kendall doing the design. As the building was designed and built in the early twentieth century, New York was in the throes of the City Beautiful movement, so the municipal building was to be an elegant center piece for the new mega city. The building at 1 Center Street was built over an existing subway, in what was essentially landfill. So part of the amazing design utilized the technology of bridge building, on its side though to hold up the 25 story main building which has 33 elevators with an additional 15 story central tower. The remarkable steel undercarriage was necessary to hold up the first building built in New York that incorporated a subway station at its base. In 2015, current Mayor Bill de Blasio renamed the building after former New York Mayor David Dinkins, the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building. My volunteer work had me on the Manhattan Borough Presidents Office where there was a presentation with much more detail of the events that I’ve briefly outlined here and the design and building of this remarkable edifice. There were also beautiful views of lower Manhattan from that floor and also, a first, by reservations, Open House visitors were taken up to the 15 story central towers cupola and got to see unprecedented view the open tower which for the most part had been closed to the general public and the buildings employees for many many years. In fact many of the folks that went up were city employees that wanted to see the view; that one of the wonderful things about the Open House New York weekends, it opens up things that are not available to be seen.
At the end of the day, those of us volunteers that worked the later shift got an unexpected bonus. We were taken up to the cupola too for brief look, I grabbed my Tamrac camera bag a fired off a bunch of frames of the view. This on image I’ve posted shows the level of detail that went into this beautiful tower, the tiles which match the tiles down on the ground level subway station entrance are lovely, a truly remarkable building and the ornate capital of each column. Elevated open observation areas were common in the early twentieth century ‘skyscrapers’ in New York City, here, the Woolworth Tower just to the west, 40 Wall Street, 70 Pine, the Chrysler Building and even the Fuller Building now know as the Flatiron building on 23rd had a rooftop observation deck. Of course the Empire State has remained opened all along while all the other closed their doors until 30 Rockefeller reopened their rooftop this century to add a second location that offers open air public viewing.
Image captured using an Olympus E-5 using an Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 12-60mm F2.8-4.0 SWD lens processed in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom .

www.ohny.org/

Posted by Themarrero on 2016-11-19 16:51:47

Tagged: , NYC , NEWYORK , NEWYORKCITY , MANHATTANMUNICIPALBUILDING , OLYMPUSE-5 , OPENHOUSENEWYORK , OHNY , MCKIMMEADWHITE , OLYMPUSZUIKODIGITALED1260MMF2.84.0SWDLENS