Midtown South Preservation Plan

In September 1998, the first-year class of Columbia University's Graduate Program in Historic Preservation was assigned to create a preservation plan for Midtown South, a large, central area in Manhattan roughly bounded by Eighth and Madison Avenues to the west and east and by 23rd and 40th Streets to the south and north.

At the time our studio began, Midtown South was, historically and architecturally, one of the least understood and documented areas of Manhattan. Due to its location near Manhattan's Central Business District, Midtown South was becoming increasingly desirable as a location for businesses and residences, creating mounting pressure for dramatic change.

Paradoxically, the source of Midtown South's vitality--its location at the geographical epicenter of important historical events and trends that have molded the city from the Civil War to the present--is also the very thing that could spell the demise of its extraordinary architecture, a majority of which lacks any kind of protection.

Purpose of the Studio

Our year-long research revealed to us a physical fabric of remarkable interest, variety, and integrity, deserving of further interpretation and understanding. The purpose of this Preservation Plan is to recognize the various identities of Midtown South, document the significance of the area's historic resources to the life of Midtown South and New York City, identify potential threats to the survival of these resources, and present recommendations for protecting the neighborhood's most valuable architecture and special sense of place and encouraging sensitivity in future interventions.

Area's Significance

The layers of history visible in Midtown South are among its primary assets. Today, among setback loft buildings and ziggurat towers, traces of the area's residential and early commercial past linger in the form of converted rowhouses, hotels, storefronts, and pre-war office and early loft buildings. Within this rich context, many individual buildings distinguish themselves, including world-famous icons such as the American Radiator Building (Raymond Hood, 1924) and the Metropolitan Life Tower (Napoleon Le Brun and Sons, 1909). Together with their less renowned neighbors, these landmarks form an ensemble that illuminates several critical eras during which New York grappled with economic power, population growth and ethnic diversity, industrial expansion, and advancements in transportation and construction technology.

Throughout the nineteenth century, the heart of Manhattan migrated swiftly northward, commandeered by the forces of real estate, industry, and commerce. By the second decade of the twentieth century, when Pennsylvania Station (McKim, Mead & White, 1910) was built and New York City's landmark 1916 Zoning Resolution took effect, demand for new construction was immense. Midtown South was poised to become the focal point for the city's economic activity.

Parts of the area were almost thoroughly redeveloped, including the Garment Center, which today presents one of the most architecturally cohesive urban landscapes in the country. Yet, by sheer momentum, the most intense development continued to push uptown, settling just north of the Study Area in today's Midtown Manhattan. As a result, Midtown South's legacy is a compelling and comprehensive mix of building types from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Geography continues to play a crucial role in the development of Midtown South. Running through Midtown South from 23rd Street north to Times Square, Broadway forms a diagonal spine that creates some of the city's most important public spaces, including Madison, Herald, and Greeley Squares. The street's angle also generates some of New York's most challenging lot configurations and inspired architectural solutions.

Major tourist sites such as the Empire State Building (Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, 1931) and Macy's (DeLemos & Cordes with additions by Robert D. Kohn, 1902-1931); shopping and hotels; nearby transportation centers including Pennsylvania Station*, Grand Central Station, and the Port Authority Bus Terminal; and a still-thriving fashion industry continue to attract visitors from all over the city and the world.

Clusters of long-lived, inter-related uses such as garment manufacturers, showrooms, and supplies wholesalers persist in Midtown South though the industry itself has changed and decentralized. Small- business owners feel rising pressure from high-profile, non-garment-related businesses and large-scale residential developers who are re-discovering the area's long-dormant market. While these new uses introduce the alluring prospect of revitalization, they also contribute to the erosion of the neighborhood's historic character--architectural and social.

The forces that shaped this "special character" influenced various parts of the Study Area in different ways. Analogously, the issues that presently challenge the survival of historic fabric throughout Midtown South--redevelopment, gentrification, disinvestment and unsympathetic renovations to older buildings--have different impacts depending on the specific physical and social makeup of particular blocks.

Early in our year-long studio, the twenty-eight students and four professors involved in the project realized that Midtown South is essentially comprised of five subareas, each with its own distinct character and each requiring a tailored preservation approach. These subareas are Madison Square, Fifth Avenue, the Garment Center, the 34th Street Corridor, and Sixth Avenue/Tin Pan Alley.

Madison Square

The environs of Madison Square, New York's most fashionable Gilded-Age residential and later commercial address, provides a coherent starting point for the story of Midtown South. The park, long neglected, has been recently refurbished, strengthening real estate interest and auguring change for the area.

Fifth Avenue

Extending northward, Fifth Avenue contains a representative assortment of building types, from converted rowhouses to early loft and office buildings to majestic department stores. Buildings' various heights and small lot sizes make them vulnerable to assemblage and redevelopment. Meanwhile, many of them, including the Gorham Building (McKim, Mead & White, 1906) have been defaced by insensitive commercial alterations.

Garment Center

In the Garment Center, many dramatically massed and embellished setback loft buildings still contain garment- or fashion- related uses. The buildings' bulkiness virtually ensures that they will not be demolished, but they are unprotected against alterations and many are under-maintained. In addition, the area's proximity to Times Square is increasingly evident in the proliferation of billboard signage, which threatens to diminish the area's special character.

34th Street

With Pennsylvania Station, the Empire State Building, and Macy's department store, 34th Street is one of the most visited streets in the world. Its "buzz," augmented by nearby development projects, such as the proposed transformation of the Farley Post Office (McKim, Mead & White, 1913) into the "new" Penn Station, has sparked new investment and redevelopment in this mostly low-scale retail district.

Sixth Avenue/Tin Pan Alley

The radical transformation of the stretch of Sixth Avenue between 23rd and 31st Streets has already begun. At the time of this writing, at least one historic structure, the former Racquet Court Club, later the Coogan Building (Alfred H. Thorp, 1875), has been demolished to make way for high-rise residential development. This type of new construction also threatens to obliterate part of Tin Pan Alley (along 28th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway), once the heart of sheet-music production in America.

Focus and Methodology

The Studio's urgent mission was to identify cultural and architectural resources in Midtown South and devise methods of protecting and celebrating them. Our methodology involved on-the-ground survey and visual documentation of buildings, archival research, and analysis of building materials and architectural form. The class also focused on conservation and planning issues, assessing the potential of historic resources to survive given a variety of environmental and development pressures. In absence of local designation, many of Midtown South's treasures are vulnerable to inappropriate alteration and, worse, demolition. Many of Midtown South's buildings are also in obvious need of physical repair and maintenance.

General Recommendations

Intense examination of Midtown South's resources within the context of the area's physical and social development led to an investigation of appropriate preservation planning tools.

This plan proposes 58 buildings for designation as New York City individual landmarks, plus 7 interior landmarks, and listing on the National Register of Historic Places. Many other buildings merit designation as part of local and national historic districts. Designation brings recognition, protection, and opportunities to channel investment for historic rehabilitation of properties via tax credits and grant programs.

Landmarks and historic districts can serve as keystones for educational programs geared towards bolstering community advocacy for preservation. The plan also recommends various strategies for drawing public attention to this area, its history and architecture, including publications, walking tours, signage and exhibitions. This information can be circulated through existing business channels, fostering increased sensitivity to historic resources and the growth of a core preservation community.

Design and conservation guidelines will help this community learn about preservation values while encouraging better upkeep and more sensitive renovations and new construction.

On a neighborhood scale, the plan also recommends zoning tools to cope with change that we anticipate will be too drastic and disruptive of the existing fabric.

General Aims of the Studio

As preservationists, we do not seek to "freeze" Midtown South in time. New York City owes much of its fascination to the rich and complex overlays of history that are revealed in its diverse structures, nowhere more clearly manifest than in Midtown South. However, cold realism informs us that, without conscientious planning to retain the area's outstanding buildings and the viable uses they contain, both resources will almost certainly be diminished.

Urban critic Lewis Mumford noted, "In the city, time becomes visible." Our vision for Midtown South is a place where the physical evidence of time survives not by chance, but by design. Midtown South already has many of the necessary components for implementing preservation: active community boards, business improvement districts with ambitious goals and substantial budgets, property owners and users with long-term vested interests in the area, and landmark-quality buildings around which to focus energies. Now, efforts must be coordinated to revitalize the neighborhoods of Midtown South without sacrificing the qualities that make them truly extraordinary.

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Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Columbia University 1172 Amsterdam Avenue New York, New York 10027