Good historians know that history rarely teaches clear lessons. When it does, we should heed them. In the 1920s, urban visionaries completely refashioned midtown Manhattan, making it the most modern and economically vibrant downtown in the world. Their work can serve as an inspiration and example for businessmen, city officials, and residents who are currently struggling to find ways to keep midtown – now an aging business district – the center of world capitalism, without destroying its historic character or creating impossible pedestrian and vehicular congestion.
So far, leaders of the 21st century campaign to remake Manhattan have paid little heed to what urban critic Lewis Mumford called “usable history.” In 2013, Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a sweeping plan to rezone a 73-block area surrounding Grand Central Terminal, which would allow for the construction of super-size skyscrapers, some of them taller than the Chrysler Building. This would make New York more competitive with Hong Kong, Shanghai, and London in the fiercely contested battle to attract and retain businesses with global reach, Bloomberg argued.
Opposition from New York’s City Council and community leaders forced Bloomberg to withdraw his plan. They argued that it would increase already intolerable congestion in the area and that it failed to provide sufficient funding for transit improvements to handle the massive increase in commuter traffic generated by a surge of new skyscraper development.
Back to the Drawing Board
But the rezoning issue isn’t dead. Mayor Bill de Blasio has promised to introduce a comprehensive proposal of his own. In September his administration unveiled one part of it: an agreement between the city and developer SL Green Reality Corporation that would permit the developer to build a tremendous skyscraper one block west of Grand Central Terminal. Designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, the new office behemoth – One Vanderbilt – would occupy an entire city block. At 1,450 feet, it would be the second tallest building in New York City, behind One World Trade Center.
For this municipal dispensation to scrape the sky, SL Green had to promise $210 million in transit improvements. Before construction can begin, however, the plan must pass through a labyrinthine municipal land-use review process. If approved, the promised transit updates must be finished before January 2020, the anticipated completion date. In the interim, as the new mayor and his planners fashion their much broader midtown rezoning plan, New Yorkers should be attentive to their own history.
Some Lessons From the Last Century
Nearly a century ago, in the 1920s, audacious developers, architects, and city officials built the world’s first twentieth century downtown around Grand Central Terminal. And they did it right, merging skyscraper development of unprecedented scale with transit projects to swiftly move pedestrians and vehicles. They built high without creating paralyzing congestion below.
It was one of the boldest private construction projects in the history of cities, and its anchor institution was the new Grand Central Terminal, completed in 1913. Compelled by the state legislature to electrify its steam trains, the New York Central Railroad buried them, eliminating a blighted, fourteen block marshaling yard north of the terminal that pedestrians were forced to traverse on iron catwalks, braving swirling smoke and hot ash.
