Milliken Memorial Community House

Transcription

>> Architecture is a living, breathing entity that represents a culture and identity of a civilization or people. >> Architecture is a much larger idea, and they're usually buildings that represent us as a society, represent us as a culture. They embody all of the attitudes, values of our society. >> Architecture is part of a thoughtful process, in which decisions are made and explorations occur, both aesthetically and mentally, if you will. >> Architecture is important, because it lifts ordinary buildings and therefore the experiences of everybody to a higher plane. >> TINABETH PINA: 2015 marks the 50th anniversary of the New York City Landmarks Law. I'm Tinabeth Piña, and welcome to the celebration "Landmarks50" at the City University of New York. >> OTIS PEARLSALL: Let me tell you a little bit about historic preservation. Once upon a time, 50 years ago there wasn't any in New York City. It did exist throughout the country, in many other places. It was not invented here. It's amazing that we arrived in 1965, before anyone was worried, before anybody achieved a rule, or set of rules, that would preserve future generations, the important, historic and architectural treasures that we then had. >> TINABETH PINA: For the past 50 years the Landmarks Preservation Commission has been protecting New York City's architecturally, historically and culturally significant buildings and sites by granting them landmark or historic district status. >> OTIS PEARLSALL: It was not an idea that we created. It was an idea others had created. Beacon Hill in Boston, Georgetown in DC, Vieux Carré, a famous one, in New Orleans. These were all attempts to preserve future generations a cultural experience of architectural history and history itself. >> HUGH HARDY: I think it's essential for us to know where we came from. It's a measurement in time and it helps reinforce our contemporary values. It helps kids to understand, that the world changes and their challenged, that they look at this place that think, "Well now why don't we do that?" And there are many reasons. I'm not promoting that people live the way people did in the 19th century or some other century, but it helps to see how far removed we are from that time in the same physical place. >> TINABETH PINA: The Landmarks Commission was created in April 1965 by Mayor Robert F. Wagner. Although the desire for such a commission had been present for many years, the destruction of Pennsylvania Station gave the movement the political clout it needed. >> GEORGE RANALLI: Destruction of Pennsylvania Station is a wound that the city has never really recovered from. It was a period in American architectural history, when we were taking everything down that was old. The belief was that new was better. There was a belief that modern meant the destruction of old and this I think as time has gone by proven to be a probably not a very good idea. There are buildings that are substantial. There are buildings that are consequential in our history and our society and it became the function of the Landmarks Preservation Commission to be able to try to evaluate which buildings could be demolished and which buildings needed to be saved. >> TINABETH PINA: The City University of New York owns about 300 buildings. Those buildings combined equal 26 million square feet of space across all five boroughs, all dedicated to the social and intellectual betterment of every New Yorker. Within those millions of square feet are 25 architectural landmarks and sites. As guardians of this rich collection of architecturally distinctive and important buildings we believe they reflect and symbolize New York City's magnificent history, and CUNY is devoted to their preservation. The CUNY Graduate Center is located in the stately, landmarked B. Altman & Company building at 34th Street and Fifth Avenue since 1999. Benjamin Altman bought his first lot on 34th and Fifth in 1896, and the flagship department store designed by Trowbridge & Livingston opened in 1906, catering to the upper crust of New York society. The Fifth Avenue facade is nine bays wide and eight stories tall, faced in limestone, which has been repaired with cast-stone patches. >> HUGH HARDY: It's interesting, isn't it? Because it was not built as a public monument. It was built to make money but it also was an idea about civic virtue - well virtue is too strong a word perhaps, but the civic importance of a major masonry structure on Fifth Avenue at that time had a certain social and historic cache, even though it was brand new. It had something to do with the place and the time and the idea of including in a single structure all the opportunities that a department store represented. And they were invented in America as an idea. >> TINABETH PINA: Upgraded into a state-of-the-art academic facility, the Italian Renaissance palazzo-style classic today provides a distinguished and centrally located campus for the Graduate Center in the heart of midtown Manhattan, while preserving a legendary multifaceted gem of New York City history. Interestingly Benjamin Altman, the store's founder, shared many values espoused by CUNY today. Altman was the first major employer to install restrooms and a subsidized cafeteria for his employees, the first to inaugurate a shorter business day and Saturday closings in the summer, and the first to provide funding for employee education. And the building he commissioned is now a monument to those ideas. >> HUGH HARDY: Those blocks of stone, have you ever looked at the base of this building? The size of those granite blocks is absolutely incredible and the way the columns meet the bases, the profiles, that all classical columns have profiles on their bases. I think the ones here are some of the sexiest I've ever seen. They're really glorious. And of course the canopied entrances which have now been restored are delicious. It holds this corner in ways that nothing else could. If it vanished and some contemporary building were put up you would feel a loss. >> TINABETH PINA: But does architecture matter in education? >> HUGH HARDY: It empowers students, that they feel that they're important if the place they're in is important. They're not second-rate. I mean sitting around in a slum you don't feel empowered, you feel debilitated. And so the character of these buildings can be very affirming. >> TINABETH PINA: The building was, and remains, a powerful presence on the avenue, an eloquent testimony to B. Altman's position as a pioneer in the development of Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. The iconic North Campus at City College, built more than a century ago, is considered one of the finest examples of neo-gothic architecture at any institution in the United States. The site features five landmark structures designed by distinguished American architect, George B. Post, on a scenic campus between Saint Nicholas Terrace and Convent Avenue, stretching from 138th Street to 140th Street in upper Manhattan. Completed in 1907 the campus became the new home for City College, which had outgrown its original facility at 23rd Street and Lexington Avenue. The buildings, as well as four great arches, were constructed as one complete project resulting in a unique harmony and architectural cohesiveness. >> GEORGE RANALLI: All universities were built on the model of Oxford and Cambridge. The medieval concept of a university was something that's been upheld in almost all major American universities. And when the City of New York and Townsend Harris decided to embark on moving the college uptown from 23rd Street, they were part of a trio of universities that were building campuses uptown. Columbia University had already embarked on the Morningside campus, NYU had already built the campus in the Bronx on the Hall of Fame Terrace--both by McKim, Mead & White--and the City of New York held a competition, which McKim, Mead & White were one of five or six firms entered, and George B. Post. They picked I think the best scheme. The Post buildings are exceptional and extraordinary. And it's important because they were looking for buildings that would symbolize the very profound event that was taking place, which is the first public university in an urban center in the United States. The symbolism was terribly important and the buildings in their rugged roughness certainly correspond to the rugged roughness of the New Yorkers who came to go to school here, and the profound education that was provided by the City University of New York. Buildings eventually carry the history. They carry it in their facades, they're carried in the excellence, and they embody the greatness of the institution, the authority of the institution, and certainly the philosophy of the institution in the architectural character of the buildings. >> TINABETH PINA: By using Manhattan schist, dark stones pulled from the excavation of the expanding subway line, Post forever connected the City College of New York to the city it serves. >> GEORGE RANALLI: And of course one of the secrets were all the gargoyles that adorn all the buildings. There are dozens and dozens of different gargoyles on all--each of the buildings, each one different, each one slightly different to the next. >> TINABETH PINA: City College's newest architectural marvel, the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, also hopes to one day become a future landmark through it's innovative architectural design bridging CCNY's architectural past to it's future. The University Heights campus of Bronx Community College, a nineteenth-century gem, is the first community college campus to be named a national historic landmark. Announcing the designation on October 17th, 2012, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called the original buildings a nationally significant example of beaux-arts architecture in the United States and among the most important works by Stanford White. The Hall is one of three buildings that provides a panoramic view of the Harlem River and the college is hugely important to the community. >> MICHAEL J. MILLER: We're in an urban area that has a population that has various challenges, if you will. So a lot of people talk about BCC campus as a sanctuary, if you will, a place where people can find space and time to think where they might not be able to, especially as nontraditional students. They have children or a dense family situation at home so they really can come here separately and do study and academic pursuits like they wouldn't be able to otherwise. >> TINABETH PINA: The buildings that would eventually become Bronx Community College were originally built as NYU's suburban campus. >> SAM WHITE: This is not just one building. This is the kind of skeletal backbone and ribs of an entire college campus and MacCracken, who was the Chancellor of NYU at the time that this building was commissioned, had multiple agendas. The Gould Memorial Library is the foreground element in a campus. It is the, both physically and visually as well as symbolically, the element that holds the entire campus plan together. And that is why inside the building, even though I think it was designed only for 110 seats which is a relatively small capacity for a reading room in the library, the level of finish is so extraordinarily high because it had to kind of carry that symbolic weight for the entire university. This was the center of the University. In terms of the architecture, the building is based on the Pantheon in Rome, a domed spherical plan, but what White was interested in was very much not what McKim was interested in. Charles McKim, when he was doing Columbia University at the same time, was quite interested in this Pantheon form as sort of bulk and mass and volume, and what White is interested in in this building is the Pantheon as a kind of an opportunity to deal with the surface, to use this wonderfully multi-colored iron-spot brick--this Roman brick, long thin bricks--to create this sort of incredible texture on the cornices and the roof line from the copper shapes, and then to have this combination of the Greek and Roman and Renaissance elements that are sort of assembled into this collage of representing the achievements and two thousand years of Western civilization. So this is--White was really swinging for the fences on this building and I'd say he cleared them pretty well. >> LISA EASTON: I just think it's a must-see by every architecture student in the United States. It's a fantastic structure that is unique in the way that it unfolds and it represents on the outside the very classical, rigid, more rigid formal structure but the inside is a jewel box. It's a jewel box designed by great artisans and artists the day, and what I love about it and appreciate and would love to share with everyone is the fact that the entire interior, planned by Stanford White, was executed by Tiffany & Company and most people associate glass and jewelry with Tiffany and they're unaware that all of it--mosaics, book stacks, gilding--was all done by the Tiffany studio. And the fact that it's still there today is, it's amazing and we are so very fortunate that no one has come along and modified or renovated that interior. >> SAM WHITE: You come in the front door and you're immediately compressed into this narrow, actually relatively steep, staircase and you get to the top and what's pulling you to the top is that door that's at the very top. And when you go through the door you experience this incredible release of compression, which is the sort of symbol, or signifies that you've arrived. And this is really related to Stanford White's interest in processional architecture and this sort of sequence of compression and release that make movement an essential part of really reading and understanding his buildings. >> TINABETH PINA: The Gould Memorial Library currently lacks the minimum number of exits necessary to operate as it was intended. And so CUNY continues the tradition of inspiring architecture by hiring Robert A.M. Stern to create a functioning library for the students of Bronx Community College. >> MICHAEL J. MILLER: What I hear the other faculty on this campus saying about this new building is that the students seem to be walking taller. They are happy to be, especially, in this facility. If you come here during club hours every week it's crazy busy. >> ROBERT A.M. STERN: Well I'm happy to hear that students walk a little taller in the library because it is a noble space. It is based on human proportions and the celebration of human proportions. It has light streaming in from above. You have prices of privacy but you also can work in a kind of collective environment, which the great libraries of the past have always been, from the Laurentian library of Michelangelo forward probably back to the library in Alexandria, I have no idea. And it's a wonderful place to learn. >> TINABETH PINA: Sometimes a simple building is important for what's happened there. Louis Armstrong lived for nearly three decades in the modest, brick-faced Corona, Queens home that today is the Louis Armstrong House Museum. >> DAVID REESE: He grows up in great poverty. The idea of owning a house and being stable is new to Louis. He's used to life on the road. >> TINABETH PINA: But Armstrong's wife Lucille, a Queens native, wanted a home and she bought one in the Corona neighborhood where she grew up. >> DAVID REESE: Louis is still on the road. He hasn't even seen the place. He comes back from the road, lands in Manhattan, takes a cab out here to Corona. It stops at the bottom of the steps and Louis says to the cab driver-- >> WYCLIFFE GORDON: "Park in front of the house," because if he didn't like it he was going to go back and stay in the hotel. >> DAVID REESE: "You got the wrong place. This is too fancy for me. Quit kidding around." And the driver said, "No, I have a telegram from your wife. This is the right address." Louis said, "Nah, take me to the real place." They have an argument, Lucille hears it, it's late at night, she comes down the stairs, opens the front door and sees her new husband arguing with a cabbie and she calls out, "Louis, come inside. You're home." >> TINABETH PINA: The house was designed by Corona native, architect R.W. Johnson, and built by Thomas Daly in 1910. This three-story home was originally a two-family, two-story frame structure. The house retains its original bracketed cornice and frieze. The original projecting bay at the front of the house is concealed by a first-story addition pierced at the front and sides by double-hung windows, which are topped by faux keystone treatments. The appearance of the house today is essentially the same as when the Armstrong's lived there. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1977, six years after Armstrong's death. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the house as a New York City landmark in 1988, due to its connection to the "foremost genius of American Jazz." The Museum holds troves of Armstrong memorabilia, from photographs and letters, to his trumpet and recordings. >> WYCLIFFE GORDON: And when you go into the house you feel the warmth and love in that house. All of the things are still there and just to be in that room where he sat, where he talked, where he wrote, you know, where he would listen, and sometimes practice. It's just amazing and I think that everyone should go there and visit that house. It's just, you know, it's beautiful. The essence of the house is there. The essence of Louis Armstrong is still there. >> TINABETH PINA: The Landmarks Preservation Commission finds that the Louis Armstrong House has a special historical interest and value as part of the development, heritage, and cultural characteristics of New York City. Partnered with Queens College, Armstrong House is open to the public for events, school tours, research, and simple homage to Satchmo's life. The museum is an incomparable contribution to American culture. The dignified, landmarked, Georgian-style double townhouse, now the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, was the Manhattan home of FDR and his wife Eleanor from its completion in 1908. >> BLANCHE WIESEN COOKE: It's two houses, 47-49 East 65th Street, that Sara Delano Roosevelt had built for her son, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and his new wife, Eleanor Roosevelt. And they lived in it together. Sara Delano Roosevelt at 49, FDR and ER at 47. The bad part of it, from Eleanor Roosevelt's point of view, is that there were sliding doors and Sara Delano Roosevelt could walk into their rooms at any time, day or night, whenever she wanted to. Eleanor Roosevelt did not love Roosevelt House and did not choose really to live there very much. >> TINABETH PINA: Architecturally, the five-story double residence is well conceived. It's built of brick laid up in Flemish bond with limestone used at the basement and first floor and as trim at the upper stories. A handsome stone cartouche is set in the center of the brick wall between the third and fourth floors. >> BLANCHE WIESEN COOKE: FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt decided to sell it and it was on sale during the war. It was really not going to be an easy sell and the President of Hunter College, George Shuster, had the great idea to make Roosevelt House an interfaith center for Hunter College. And it became the great community center for interfaith activities, plus political activities, for Hunter College. >> TINABETH PINA: In 1942 a group of citizens raised funds to purchase the brick townhouse and gave it to Hunter College for use as a social and interfaith center, an act that so pleased President Roosevelt that he furnished its library and donated books for it. >> BLANCHE WIESEN COOKE: Roosevelt House, for me, was a great meeting place. Eleanor Roosevelt would come and inspire generations of students. When I was president of the student government in 1961 she came in and she inspired us when she said, "Go South for freedom," and we took two buses and went to North Carolina to sit in. So one of the things that really excites me about Roosevelt House today is the way the past and the present and the future merge. So we have Sara Delano Roosevelt creating this beautiful, splendid environment. And then we have the legacy of Roosevelt House in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt's work for the dignity of all, and Julius C.C. Edelstein, who worked with the Roosevelt's, who was part of the Roosevelt administration, and his motto, "It's better for everybody when it's better for everybody," and so we have open enrollment, and the SEEK program, the commitment to educate the future, the commitment for excellence, and it's all--there it all is in Roosevelt House, in one incredible building with this great legacy. >> TINABETH PINA: The double townhouse was designated a city landmark within the Upper East Side Historic District in 1973 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Today, after an extensive renovation by the University, the landmark has been restored and modernized to serve as an educational center and public policy hub for the 21st Century. As CUNY builds its legacy, architectural sites such as the Graduate Center, the iconic Neo-Gothic North Campus of City College, the Gould Memorial Library at Bronx Community College, the Louis Armstrong House, and the Roosevelt House join a growing portfolio of inspirational new structures by prominent architects that support the educational needs of the City of New York. Thanks for watching. I'm Tinabeth Piña. ♪ [theme music] ♪