How the Berlin Wall Worked: The Engineering & Structural Design of the Wall That Formidably Divided East & West

in Architecture, History, Politics | April 16th, 2024

More than thir­ty years after the for­mal dis­so­lu­tion of the Union of Sovi­et Social­ist Republics, few around the world have a clear under­stand­ing of how life actu­al­ly worked there. That holds less for the larg­er polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic ques­tions than it does for the rou­tine mechan­ics of day-to-day exis­tence. These had a way of being even more com­plex in the regions where the USSR came up against the rest of the world. Take the Ger­man cap­i­tal of Berlin, which, as every­one knows, was for­mer­ly divid­ed into East and West along with the coun­try itself — but which, as not every­one knows, but as clar­i­fied in a nine­teen-eight­ies infor­ma­tion­al video pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, was entire­ly sur­round­ed by East Ger­many.

You can learn much else about life on the edges of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic of Ger­many and the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic from the new neo video above, “How the Berlin Wall Worked.” The first thing to clar­i­fy is that, even after the divi­sion of Ger­many, the Berlin Wall was­n’t always there; for a time the nar­ra­tor explains, with “social­ism and cap­i­tal­ism, two dif­fer­ent nations, and even two dif­fer­ent cur­ren­cies, were sep­a­rat­ed only by streets.”

Many “lived in one part of the city but worked in the oth­er: East Berlin­ers took jobs in the West in order to ben­e­fit from the stronger cur­ren­cy, while West Berlin­ers got their hair­cuts in the East at prices that were much cheap­er to them.” Kur­fürs­ten­damm’s shop win­dows dis­played the pur­chasable glo­ries of cap­i­tal­ism; just a few streets away, Stali­nallee swelled with proud­ly social­ist archi­tec­ture.

But on August 13th, 1961, “Berlin woke up to a divid­ed city.” The GDR imme­di­ate­ly began on a wall between East and West “made out of con­crete and topped off with barbed wire,” though it could­n’t com­mand the resources to build its whole length quite so solid­ly right away. Over time, how­ev­er, the wall was “con­sis­tent­ly upgrad­ed with more and more increas­ing secu­ri­ty fea­tures.” By 1975, it had become the struc­ture we remem­ber, con­sist­ing of not just one but two con­crete walls, and between them a barbed-wire sig­nal fence, tank traps, mats of steel nee­dles known as “Stal­in’s grass,” and watch­tow­ers manned by armed guards. “Vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble to cross” in its day, the for­mi­da­ble Berlin Wall now exists pri­mar­i­ly as a cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non: a mem­o­ry, a series of tourist sites, a some­times-mis­used cul­tur­al ref­er­ence. Liv­ing in South Korea, I can’t help but ask myself if the same will ever be said of the DMZ.

Relat­ed con­tent:

See Berlin Before and After World War II in Star­tling Col­or Video

Google Revis­its the Fall of the Iron Cur­tain in New Online Exhi­bi­tion

The Dos & Don’ts of Dri­ving to West Berlin Dur­ing the Cold War: A Weird Piece of Ephemera from the 1980s

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Watch Samuel Beck­ett Walk the Streets of Berlin Like a Boss, 1969

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Oldest Known Photographs of India (1863–1870)

in Architecture, History, Photography | March 26th, 2024

After about a cen­tu­ry of indi­rect com­pa­ny rule, India became a full-fledged British colony in 1858. The con­se­quences of this polit­i­cal devel­op­ment remain a mat­ter of heat­ed debate today, but one thing is cer­tain: it made India into a nat­ur­al des­ti­na­tion for enter­pris­ing Britons. Take the aspir­ing cler­gy­man turned Not­ting­ham bank employ­ee Samuel Bourne, who made his name as an ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er with his pic­tures of the Lake Dis­trict in the late eigh­teen-fifties. When those works met with a good recep­tion at the Lon­don Inter­na­tion­al Exhi­bi­tion of 1862, Bourne real­ized that he’d found his true méti­er; soon there­after, he quit the bank and set sail for Cal­cut­ta to prac­tice it.

It was in the city of Shim­la that Bourne estab­lished a prop­er pho­to stu­dio, first with his fel­low pho­tog­ra­ph­er William Howard, then with anoth­er named Charles Shep­herd. (Bourne & Shep­herd, as it was even­tu­al­ly named, remained in busi­ness until 2016.) Bourne trav­eled exten­sive­ly in India, tak­ing the pic­tures you can see col­lect­ed in the video above, but it was his “three suc­ces­sive pho­to­graph­ic expe­di­tions to the Himalayas” that secured his place in the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy.

In the last of these, “Bourne enlist­ed a team of eighty porters who drove a live food sup­ply of sheep and goats and car­ried box­es of chem­i­cals, glass plates, and a portable dark­room tent,” says the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art. When he crossed the Manirung Pass “at an ele­va­tion of 18,600 feet, Bourne suc­ceed­ed in tak­ing three views before the sky cloud­ed over, set­ting a record for pho­tog­ra­phy at high alti­tudes.”

Though he spent only six years in India, Bourne man­aged to take 2,200 high-qual­i­ty pic­tures in that time, some of the old­est — and indeed, some of the finest — pho­tographs of India and its near­by region known today.

In addi­tion to views of the Himalayas, he cap­tured no few archi­tec­tur­al won­ders: the Taj Mahal and the Ram­nathi tem­ple, of course, but also Raj-era cre­ations like what was then known as the Gov­ern­ment House in Cal­cut­ta (see below).

Colo­nial rule has been over for near­ly eighty years now, and in that time India has grown rich­er in every sense, not least visu­al­ly. It hard­ly takes an eye as keen as Bourne’s to rec­og­nize in it one of the world’s great civ­i­liza­tions, but a Bourne of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry prob­a­bly needs some­thing more than a cam­era phone to do it jus­tice.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Some of the Old­est Pho­tos You Will Ever See: Dis­cov­er Pho­tographs of Greece, Egypt, Turkey & Oth­er Mediter­ranean Lands (1840s)

The Old­est Known Pho­tographs of Rome (1841–1871)

The Ear­li­est Sur­viv­ing Pho­tos of Iran: Pho­tos from 1850s-60s Cap­ture Every­thing from Grand Palaces to the Ruins of Perse­po­lis

Behold the Pho­tographs of John Thom­son, the First West­ern Pho­tog­ra­ph­er to Trav­el Wide­ly Through Chi­na (1870s)

Around the World in 1896: 40 Min­utes of Real Footage Lets You Vis­it Paris, New York, Venice, Rome, Budapest & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Plan to Turn Ellis Island Into a Futuristic Jules Verne-Esque City (1959)

in Architecture, History | March 19th, 2024

The very words “Ellis Island” bring to mind a host of sepia-toned images, shaped by both Amer­i­can his­tor­i­cal fact and nation­al myth. Offi­cers employed there real­ly did inspect the eye­lids of new arrivals with but­ton­hooks, for exam­ple, but they did­n’t actu­al­ly make a pol­i­cy of chang­ing their names, how­ev­er for­eign they sound­ed. You can learn this and much else besides by pay­ing a vis­it to the Nation­al Immi­gra­tion Muse­um on Ellis Island, which opened in 1990, 36 years after the clo­sure of the immi­grant inspec­tion and pro­cess­ing sta­tion itself. But if Frank Lloyd Wright had had his way, you could live on Ellis Island — and what’s more, you’d nev­er need to leave it.

“After Ellis Island was decom­mis­sioned in 1954 as the nation’s gate­way to the world’s hud­dled mass­es, the U.S. Gen­er­al Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion (GSA) chose an all-Amer­i­can path: open­ing the site to devel­op­ers,” write Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin at the Gotham Cen­ter for New York City His­to­ry. When NBC radio and tele­vi­sion announc­er Jer­ry Damon and direc­tor Elwood Doudt pitched to Wright the ambi­tious idea of rede­vel­op­ing the dis­used island into a “com­plete­ly self-con­tained city of the future,” the archi­tect replied that the project was “vir­tu­al­ly made to order for me.” Alas, Wright died just before they could all meet and ham­mer out the details, but not before he’d drawn up a pre­lim­i­nary but vivid plan.

Damon and Doudt car­ried on with what the late Wright has named the “Key Project.” “Its Jules Verne-esque design, based on Wright’s sketch­es, was res­olute­ly futur­is­tic,” write Lubell and Goldin. A “cir­cu­lar podi­um” on the island would sup­port “apart­ments for 7,500 res­i­dents, ris­ing like a stack of off­set, alter­nat­ing dish­es. Above these dwelling floors, and sep­a­rat­ed by sun­decks, would be a cres­cent of sev­en cor­ru­gat­ed, can­dle­stick-shaped tow­ers con­tain­ing more apart­ments and a 500-room hotel.” At the cen­ter of it all, Wright placed “a huge globe, seem­ing­ly pock­marked by eons of mete­or col­li­sions, and held aloft by plas­tic canopies pro­tect­ing the plazas below.”

It’s easy to imag­ine the exe­cu­tion of this Space Age urban utopia not quite liv­ing up to Wright’s vision — and, indeed, to imag­ine it hav­ing fall­en by now into just as thor­ough a state of dilap­i­da­tion as did Ellis Island’s orig­i­nal build­ings. But it’s also fas­ci­nat­ing to con­sid­er what could have been Wright’s final com­mis­sion as the acme of the evo­lu­tion of his think­ing about the urban space itself. A quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ear­li­er, he’d been obsessed with the qua­si-rur­al devel­op­ment he called Broad­acre City; just a few years before his death, he came up with the Illi­nois Mile-High Tow­er, a megas­truc­ture that would prac­ti­cal­ly have con­sti­tut­ed a metrop­o­lis in and of itself. The Key Project, as Damon and Doudt pro­mot­ed it, would have offered “casu­al, inspired liv­ing, minus the usu­al big-city clam­or”: the kind of mar­ket­ing lan­guage we hear from devel­op­ers still today, though not backed by the genius of the most renowned archi­tect in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

The Unre­al­ized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tions

Take a 360° Vir­tu­al Tours of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Archi­tec­tur­al Mas­ter­pieces, Tal­iesin & Tal­iesin West

Why Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Gas Sta­tion in Min­neso­ta (1958)

Por­traits of Ellis Island Immi­grants Arriv­ing on America’s Wel­com­ing Shores Cir­ca 1907

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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An Architectural Tour of Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí’s Audacious Church That’s Been Under Construction for 142 Years

in Architecture, History, Religion | March 18th, 2024

In less than a year and a half, the cen­te­nary of Antoni Gaudí’s death will be here. Faced with this fact, espe­cial­ly ded­i­cat­ed enthu­si­asts of Cata­lan archi­tec­ture may already be plan­ning their fes­tiv­i­ties. But we can be sure where the real pres­sure is felt: the Basíli­ca i Tem­ple Expi­a­tori de la Sagra­da Família, Gaudí’s most famous build­ing, which — as of tomor­row — has been under con­struc­tion for 142 years. When it first broke ground in 1882, Gaudí was­n’t involved at all, but when he took over the project the fol­low­ing year, he re-envi­sioned it in a dis­tinc­tive com­bi­na­tion of the Goth­ic and Art Nou­veau styles. The rest, as they say, is his­to­ry: a trou­bled, unpre­dictable his­to­ry con­tin­u­ing to this day, explained by archi­tec­ture-and-his­to­ry Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo in the video above.

Though it isn’t yet com­plete, you can vis­it Sagra­da Família; indeed, it’s long been the most pop­u­lar tourist attrac­tion in Barcelona. The expe­ri­ence of mar­veling at the basil­i­ca’s aston­ish­ing degree of detail and not-quite-of-this-Earth struc­ture is worth the price of admis­sion, which has helped to fund its ongo­ing con­struc­tion. But you’ll appre­ci­ate it on a high­er lev­el if you go with some­one who can explain its many unusu­al fea­tures, both archi­tec­tur­al and reli­gious — some­one with as much knowl­edge ad enthu­si­asm as Bra­vo, whom we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his videos on Pom­peii, Venice, the Great Pyra­mids of Giza, and the Duo­mo di Firen­ze.

With Sagra­da Famíli­a’s pyra­mi­dal shape, Bra­vo explains, Gaudí “hoped to sug­gest a con­nec­tion between the human and the divine.” Its three façades are ded­i­cat­ed to the birth, death, and eter­nal life of Jesus Christ, to whom the cen­tral and tallest of its planned eigh­teen tow­ers will be ded­i­cat­ed. The cathe­dral’s exte­ri­or alone con­sti­tutes an “authen­tic Bible of stone,” but it can hard­ly pre­pare you to step into the inte­ri­or, with its “beau­ti­ful play of space, light, and col­or.” As Bra­vo puts it, “the pro­tag­o­nist here is the space itself,” envi­sioned by Gaudí as “a huge for­est” involv­ing no un-nature-like straight lines. All of it show­cas­es “the com­bi­na­tion of aes­thet­ics and effi­cien­cy” that defines the archi­tec­t’s work.

Bravo’s video runs a bit over twen­ty min­utes, but you could spend much, much longer appre­ci­at­ing every aspect of Sagra­da Família, those com­plet­ed in Gaudí’s life­time as well as those com­plet­ed by the many devot­ed arti­sans who have con­tin­ued his work for almost 100 years now. The archi­tect “knew quite well that he would not live to see the tem­ple com­plet­ed,” says Bra­vo, hence his hav­ing “left behind so many mod­els and draw­ings” for his suc­ces­sors to go on. They’re work­ing on a 2026 dead­line, but as Bra­vo notes, giv­en the inter­rup­tions inflict­ed by COVID-19, “that date seems unlike­ly.” But then, has there ever been as unlike­ly a build­ing as Sagra­da Família?

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Incred­i­ble Engi­neer­ing of Anto­nio Gaudí’s Sagra­da Famil­ia, the 137 Year Con­struc­tion Project

The Japan­ese Sculp­tor Who Ded­i­cat­ed His Life to Fin­ish­ing Gaudí’s Mag­num Opus, the Sagra­da Família

Venice Explained: Its Archi­tec­ture, Its Streets, Its Canals, and How Best to Expe­ri­ence Them All

Take a High Def, Guid­ed Tour of Pom­peii

How the World’s Biggest Dome Was Built: The Sto­ry of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi and the Duo­mo in Flo­rence

What the Great Pyra­mids of Giza Orig­i­nal­ly Looked Like

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How Engineers Straightened the Leaning Tower of Pisa

in Architecture, History | March 11th, 2024

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Con­struc­tion on the Tow­er of Pisa first began in the year 1173. By 1178, the archi­tects knew they had a prob­lem on their hands. Built on an unsteady foun­da­tion, the tow­er began to sink under its own weight and soon start­ed to lean. Medieval archi­tects tried to address the tilt. How­ev­er, it per­sist­ed and incre­men­tal­ly wors­ened over the next eight cen­turies. Then, in 1990, Ital­ian author­i­ties closed the tow­er to the pub­lic, fear­ing it might col­lapse. For the next 11 years, engi­neers worked to sta­bi­lize the struc­ture. How did they put the tow­er on a bet­ter foot­ing, as it were, while still pre­serv­ing some of its icon­ic lean? That’s the sub­ject of this intrigu­ing video by the YouTube chan­nel Prac­ti­cal Engi­neer­ing. Watch it above.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Behold a 21st-Cen­tu­ry Medieval Cas­tle Being Built with Only Tools & Mate­ri­als from the Mid­dle Ages

The Age of Cathe­drals: A Free Online Course from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Venice Explained: Its Archi­tec­ture, Its Streets, Its Canals, and How Best to Expe­ri­ence Them All

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A Walking Tour of Los Angeles Architecture: From Art Deco to California Bungalow

in Architecture | February 26th, 2024

When archi­tec­tur­al his­to­ri­an Reyn­er Ban­ham wrote Los Ange­les: The Archi­tec­ture of Four Ecolo­gies (1971), quite pos­si­bly the most influ­en­tial book pub­lished about the South­ern Cal­i­forn­ian metrop­o­lis, he saw fit to dis­miss the cen­ter of the city with what he called “a note on down­town.” He con­cedes that it has its land­marks, like the Cathe­dral of San­ta Vib­iana and the much-filmed Brad­bury Build­ing, “one of the most mag­nif­i­cent relics of nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry com­mer­cial archi­tec­ture any­where in the world.” But he finds the urban scene that sur­rounds them hope­less­ly deplet­ed: “Many US cities have had their down­town areas fall into this kind of desue­tude,” but “in none of the oth­ers does one have quite such a strong feel­ing that this is where the action can­not pos­si­bly be.”

Things have changed since The Archi­tec­ture of Four Ecolo­gies came out more than half a cen­tu­ry ago. After count­less abort­ed attempts at revival, down­town Los Ange­les seems final­ly to have found its way to becom­ing a true city cen­ter once again.

This has to do with a num­ber of fac­tors, includ­ing its posi­tion­ing as the hub of the rail tran­sit that’s been open­ing in stages since the ear­ly nineties, its lev­els of com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial den­si­ty at which today’s zon­ing laws make dif­fi­cult or impos­si­ble to build, and the sheer diver­si­ty of its built envi­ron­ment. In the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, Los Ange­les archi­tect Valéry Augustin pro­vides a walk­ing tour of that diver­si­ty, intro­duc­ing a strik­ing build­ing from each era of the city’s devel­op­ment.

Ban­ham and Agustin agree on the impor­tance of Los Ange­les’ City Hall and Union Sta­tion. But Augustin also high­lights the Art Deco East­ern Colum­bia Build­ing, the Chur­rigueresque Mil­lion Dol­lar The­ater, and a cou­ple of major struc­tures that Ban­ham did­n’t live to see, the Broad Muse­um and Ramon C. Cortines School Of Visu­al And Per­form­ing Arts. (Notably absent is Frank Gehry’s Walt Dis­ney Con­cert Hall, whose once-shock­ing metal­lic curves have per­haps been over­ex­posed over these past cou­ple of decades.) But what­ev­er the won­ders of down­town, it’s long been argued that Los Ange­les’ has more of a pri­vate archi­tec­tur­al her­itage than a pub­lic one; to under­stand the city’s archi­tec­ture, in oth­er words, you can’t ignore its hous­es.

Hence Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s hav­ing also put out a video in which Augustin breaks down the five most com­mon types of Los Ange­les home. These include exam­ple of the roman­ti­cized Mis­sion Revival style, the idyl­lic Cal­i­for­nia bun­ga­low, the board­walk beach house (as seen in ocean enclaves like San­ta Mon­i­ca and Venice), and more cul­tur­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive hous­ing forms such as bun­ga­low courts (as seen in Par­ty of Five) and post­war ding­bat apart­ments. With their broad car­ports, their play­ful­ly exot­ic names, and their box­like con­struc­tion front­ed, as Ban­ham observes, by a range of styles from “from Tacoburg­er Aztec to Wavy-Line Mod­erne, from Cod Cape Cod to un-sup­port­ed Jaoul vaults, from Gourmet Mansardic to Poly­ne­sian Gabled and even — in extrem­i­ty — Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture,” they may well be the most Los Ange­les build­ings of all.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Sto­ry of Goo­gie Archi­tec­ture, the Icon­ic Archi­tec­tur­al Style of Los Ange­les

That Far Cor­ner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Ange­les – A Free Online Doc­u­men­tary

1,300 Pho­tos of Famous Mod­ern Amer­i­can Homes Now Online, Cour­tesy of USC

Take a Dri­ve Through 1940s, 50s & 60s Los Ange­les with Vin­tage Through-the-Car-Win­dow Films

Watch Randy Newman’s Tour of Los Ange­les’ Sun­set Boule­vard, and You’ll Love L.A. Too

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Architect Breaks Down the Design Of Four Iconic New York City Museums: the Met, MoMA, Guggenheim & Frick

in Architecture, Art | February 16th, 2024

Con­text may not count for every­thing in art. But as under­scored by every­one from Mar­cel Duchamp (or Elsa von Frey­tag-Lor­ing­hoven) to the jour­nal­ists who occa­sion­al­ly con­vince vir­tu­oso musi­cians to busk in dingy pub­lic spaces, it cer­tain­ly counts for some­thing. Whether or not you believe that works of art retain the same essen­tial val­ue no mat­ter where they’re beheld, some envi­ron­ments are sure­ly more con­ducive to appre­ci­a­tion than oth­ers. The ques­tion of just which design ele­ments make the dif­fer­ence has occu­pied muse­um archi­tects for cen­turies, and in New York City alone, you can direct­ly expe­ri­ence more than 200 years of bold exer­cis­es and exper­i­ments in the form.

In the Archi­tec­tur­al Digest video above, archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his exege­ses of New York’s apart­ments, bridges, and sub­way sta­tions, as well as Cen­tral Park and the Chrysler Build­ing) uses his expert knowl­edge to reveal the design choic­es that have gone into the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art, the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, and the Frick Col­lec­tion. No two of these famous art insti­tu­tions were con­ceived in quite the same peri­od, none look or feel quite the same as the oth­ers, and we can be rea­son­ably sure that no sin­gle piece of art would look quite the same if it were moved between any of them.

Occu­py­ing five blocks of Cen­tral Park, MoMA is less a build­ing than a col­lec­tion of build­ings — each added at a dif­fer­ent time, in a style of that time — and indeed, less a col­lec­tion of build­ings than “a city unto itself,” as Wyet­zn­er puts it.  (No won­der Clau­dia and Jamie Kin­caid could run away from home and go unno­ticed liv­ing in it.) The com­par­a­tive­ly mod­est MoMA has also grown addi­tion-by-addi­tion, begin­ning with a “stripped-down form of mod­ernism” that stood well out on the West 53rd street of the late thir­ties. It opened as the first of the many “clean white box­es” that would appear across the coun­try — and lat­er the world — to show the art of the twen­ti­eth and twen­ty-first cen­turies.

The orig­i­nal MoMA build­ing remains strik­ing today, but it’s now flanked by expan­sions from the hands of Philip John­son, Cesar Pel­li, Yoshio Taniguchi, and Jean Nou­v­el. Much less like­ly to have any­thing attached to it is the Guggen­heim, with its instant­ly rec­og­niz­able spi­ral design by Frank Lloyd Wright. Based on an idea by Le Cor­busier, its nar­row atri­um-wrap­ping gal­leries do present cer­tain dif­fi­cul­ties for the prop­er dis­play of large-scale art­works. Wyet­zn­er also men­tions the oft-heard crit­i­cism of Wright’s hav­ing “cre­at­ed a mon­u­ment to him­self — but it’s one hell of a mon­u­ment.”

Last comes “the orig­i­nal build­ing for the Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art, which lat­er became the Met Breuer, which now has become the Frick. Who knows what it’ll become next.” The sec­ond of its names refers to its archi­tect, the Bauhaus-trained Mar­cel Breuer (he of the Wass­i­ly chair), whose mus­cu­lar design “slices off” the muse­um from the brown­stone neigh­bor­hood that sur­rounds it. With its “open, loft-like spaces,” it pro­vides a con­text meant for the art of its time, much as the Met, MoMA, and the Guggen­heim do for the art of theirs. But all these insti­tu­tions have suc­ceed­ed just as much by carv­ing out con­texts of their own in the open-air muse­um of archi­tec­ture and urban­ism that is New York City.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Archi­tect Breaks Down Five of the Most Icon­ic New York City Apart­ments

The 5 Inno­v­a­tive Bridges That Make New York City, New York City

How Cen­tral Park Was Cre­at­ed Entire­ly By Design & Not By Nature: An Archi­tect Breaks Down America’s Great­est Urban Park

An Archi­tect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Sub­way Sta­tions, from the Old­est to Newest

A Whirl­wind Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of the New York Pub­lic Library — “Hid­den Details” and All

A 3D Ani­ma­tion Shows the Evo­lu­tion of New York City (1524 — 2023)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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A 3D Animation Shows the Evolution of New York City (1524 — 2023)

in Architecture, History | February 14th, 2024

Near­ly two and a half cen­turies after its found­ing, the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca is still both cel­e­brat­ed and derid­ed as a young coun­try. Exam­ined on the whole, the US may or may not seem less mature than oth­er lands in any obvi­ous way, but the dif­fer­ence man­i­fests much more clear­ly on the lev­el of cities. For even among those found­ed before the inde­pen­dence of the coun­try itself, no Amer­i­can city has yet attained 500 offi­cial years of age. But in the case of New York City, we can trace its for­ma­tion through half a mil­len­ni­um of his­to­ry, as ren­dered in the 3D ani­mat­ed video from Info­Geek above.

The long ver­sion of New York’s sto­ry begins in 1524, the year Gio­van­ni da Ver­raz­zano com­mand­ed the French ship La Dauphine into what we now know as New York Har­bor. While he and his crew did not, of course, get the dra­mat­ic for­est-of-sky­scrap­ers view for which that approach would lat­er be cel­e­brat­ed, they would, per­haps, have seen an actu­al for­est, as well as oth­er ele­ments of a nat­ur­al land­scape that would have appeared sub­lime­ly untouched. A cen­tu­ry lat­er, the Dutch there found­ed the trad­ing out­post of New Ams­ter­dam, which com­menced the writ­ten his­to­ry of New York — as well as the aggres­sive devel­op­ment that would even­tu­al­ly come to char­ac­ter­ize the city and its cul­ture.

New Ams­ter­dam became New York in 1664, one of the many his­tor­i­cal events that scroll past in the win­dow at the video’s low­er-left cor­ner. At that point in time, the pop­u­la­tion had grown to about 3,600, a fig­ure count­ed at the bot­tom of the frame. Yet even as we see streets roll out, build­ings rise, and trees sprout rapid­ly around us over the next 150 or so years of our stroll, and even after New York becomes Amer­i­ca’s largest city in 1790, we must bear in mind that its cen­tu­ry has­n’t even begun. It’s some­thing of an irony that the huge­ly destruc­tive Great Fire of 1835 pre­cedes a devel­op­men­tal push that makes the city, even to our twen­ty-first-cen­tu­ry eyes, look almost mod­ern.

Lat­er in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, we wit­ness the appear­ance of Cen­tral Park and the intro­duc­tion of motor­cars; by the turn of the twen­ti­eth, New York’s pop­u­la­tion approach­es three and a half mil­lion. Walk­ing down Wall Street (and into the Great Depres­sion), we pass just-mate­ri­al­iz­ing land­marks that remain icon­ic today, like the Chrysler Build­ing, the Empire State Build­ing and — after a some­what dra­mat­ic fast-for­ward in time — Frank Lloyd Wright’s Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um and Minoru Yamasak­i’s ill-fat­ed World Trade Cen­ter. We’re now well into the New York of liv­ing mem­o­ry, and even when the ani­ma­tion has passed the cre­ative decrepi­tude of the sev­en­ties and eight­ies and arrives at the city as it was last year (pop­u­la­tion: 7,888,120), we sense that its evo­lu­tion has only just begun.

Relat­ed con­tent:

New York City: A Social His­to­ry (A Free Online Course from N.Y.U.)

Immac­u­late­ly Restored Film Lets You Revis­it Life in New York City in 1911

Scenes of New York City in 1945 Col­orized & Revived with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence

The Lost Neigh­bor­hood Buried Under New York City’s Cen­tral Park

How Cen­tral Park Was Cre­at­ed Entire­ly By Design & Not By Nature: An Archi­tect Breaks Down America’s Great­est Urban Park

An Archi­tect Demys­ti­fies the Art Deco Design of the Icon­ic Chrysler Build­ing (1930)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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