On the left: John Massengale protests the destruction of the neighborhood around Penn Station.
On the right: Jane Jacobs and Philip Johnson protest the destruction of Penn Station.
FIFTY-ONE YEARS AGO, the Pennsylvania Railroad tragically tore down Pennsylvania Station. Not only was it the best building ever torn down in New York, but in the combined Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, we got the worst building in New York.
Today, the railroads, Mayor Adams, and Governor Hochul want to tear down the block to my left. The Governor represents the Real Estate State: they believe the biggest donors get to build the biggest buildings. Like Vornado and the Related Companies. Mayor Adams represents the City of Yes, which has 4,000 pages of zoning changes that say “yes” to Big Real Estate.
If you want to see what the new block will look like, just walk over to Hudson Yards, the poster child for the City of Yes. New York City taxpayers spent over $5 billion to help Steve Ross — or maybe Stephen Roth, I get them mixed up — build that pile of unsustainable glass towers that make you feel like you’re in Dubai, Mumbai, or Shanghai. Dubai-on-Hudson, they call it. Whatever you call it, it’s not New York.
These things matter. “We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us,” Winston Churchill famously said. It’s the most quoted line in architecture because it’s true. Neuroscientists, psychologists, and sociologists confirm this. Architecture matters.
Cities and the buildings and streets and squares that make them are among the greatest achievements of humanity. We want to pass them on to our descendants. We don’t want to pass on inhumanly-scaled, energy-hog glass towers that increase climate change and make the world worse now and in the future.
New Yorkers love New York City. Our city needs buildings like the one on this block, Music Street. The block houses hundreds of residents and thousands of workers. New Yorkers like Eugene Sinigliano and Steve Marshall live and work and work here. So I close with a quote I got from today’s organizer John Mudd. It’s my new favorite quote.
“The question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from the question of what kind of people we want to be, what kinds of social relations we seek, what relations to nature we cherish, what style of life we desire, or what aesthetic values we hold.” – David Harvey, Rebel Cities.
Video of short presentations by Layla Law-Gisiko, Eugene Sinigliano, George Calderaro, John Massengale, Tom Lurka, and Sam Turvey.