Results tagged “nationaltrust”

Day One doesn't mean everything changes, but Governor Spitzer's administration has now offered a new idea for the so-called survivors' staircase at Ground Zero. The NY Times reports that the stairs would be kept "whole and intact" and "set into a long flight of steps leading from the visitors’ center at ground zero to the underground World Trade Center memorial museum, which is to open in 2009." And the Times has this picture of the model!

It's the future, now! The Daily Intelligencer posted this Skidmore, Owings & Merrill/SWIM rendering of Freedom Tower's lobby, and finds out from SOM's TJ Gottesdiener that the lobby will shed "light into the memorial pool." Notice how the way light falls in Freedom Tower's lobby mimics how light would fall in the World Trade Center's lobby. It's wild to think there's a lobby rendering - remember when Freedom Tower was just redesign upon redesign?

Yesterday was the opening of an outdoor display of sculptures on Brooklyn's waterfront. The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition (BWAC) invited artists from around the world to contribute to a show called "Still Flying." It's BWAC's 25th anniversary outdoor sculpture show and a good number of works can be viewed while visiting Empire-Fulton Ferry and Brooklyn Bridge Parks. BWAC puts on four shows a year with the volunteer efforts of its members.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation released its 20th annual list of the 11 Most Endangered Places in the United States and Brooklyn's Industrial Waterfront topped the 2007 list of sites. The organization describes the industrial waterfront's history:

For more than a century, the New York City region was one of this country’s dominant manufacturing hubs. Due to its location on the East River and the New York Harbor, Brooklyn was the city’s industrial center with scores of maritime operations, factories, warehouses and sugar refineries. In the second half of the twentieth century, industry declined, and what’s left of that striking architectural and historical legacy is now at risk. Also at risk are the places that make Brooklyn “work,” the buildings and sites that house manufacturing and industrial jobs.

According to the National Trust for Historical Preservation, developers eager to cash in on a hot real estate market threaten to destroy Brooklyn's industrial legacy and the organization urges people to encourage Mayor Bloomberg to adequately fund New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission. The New York Times looks at the Trust's designation and notes that in 2005, 1,740 new building permits and 1,924 demolition permits were issued in Brooklyn. We have a list and photographs of the endangered Brooklyn sites after the jump.

The divergent fates of two historic stable buildings on the Upper West Side crystallized yesterday, following votes by the Landmarks Preservation Commission. The former New York Cab Company Stable on Amsterdam and West 75th Street (pictured, right) will survive as a designated historic landmark, while the former Dakota Stable, just up the street at West 77th and Amsterdam (pictured left), will be demolished to make way for a new condominium building to be designed by the architect Robert A.M. Stern.

Before the September 11 attacks, the Vesey Street Staircase was seen and used by the public on a daily basis. Located near the intersection of Vesey and Church streets, it consisted of two granite-clad outdoor flights of stairs and an escalator that led from the World Trade Center plaza to Vesey Street. When terrorists crashed two planes into the Twin Towers, the staircase provided a path of escape for hundreds of individuals. The staircase now leads nowhere and consists only of concrete slabs and blocks, a few remaining pieces of stone cladding, and steel supports – but it is nonetheless an authentic and invaluable reminder of the World Trade Center that once stood here.

The NTHP suggests that people write letters to Larry Silverstein, architect Norman Foster (who is designing Tower 2) and other officials to have them incorporate the stairs into the design. The NY Times notes that Foster has said "[the staircase poses a design challenge] that has to be addressed."

Kate Wood, executive director, LANDMARK WEST!