MOTTO: Nullum est iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius.
Nothing is said that hasn't been said before. (Terence)
Have you ever wondered how it all started, why it happened like this and not some other way, what was the setting and the circumstances that gave life to the "concrete jungle" that is todays Manhattan? The most cosmopolite city in the world, one of the modern wonders, a sculpture so grandiose in it's violent upward pursuit of the "American Dream" that it became it's insignia. But it didn't stop there , it went on and dazzled the whole world whith it's shameless conquest of virtual realities, thus becoming the Automonument, undeniable proof that gravity itself was to fall under it's tremendeous power,a power so multivalent and unprecedented that was able to change values and aspirations,conceptions and facts people took for granted. And to think it is all based on such simple, tangible things, only increases it's value tenfold.
The real estate business and the entertainment business are two of the most capital abundent areas of international trade at the present moment. Here, in Manhattan, lay most of their glory and success. And for good reason. This paper proposes to reveal some insight on how real estate was given it's crucial touch that brought it where it is today in terms of functional architecture(as beauty descended into the "hell of functionality") and tremendeous possibilities through the power of the irresistible synthetic(tehnology of the fantastic and the skyscraper).
In 1807 Simon deWitt,Gouvernor Morris and John Rutherford came up whith the boldest urbanistic prediction of all times: the Grid. It's pragmatism and rigurosity gave the impression of harmony,order and prosperity. It's programatic devise was that of a better world , it's rule- everlasting.
"The Apotheosis of the gridiron"-"whith it's simple appeal to unsophisticated minds", lobbied for facilitating the "buying, selling and improving of real estate". The grid had the ability to neutralise and reduce the terrain it was applied on to the theoretical state of being plane, perfecting all the inconveniences of the topography which stood in the way of simple and efficient construction. It divided Manhattan in 2028 blocks by means of 12 avenues running north-south and 155 streets running east-west,excluding topographical accidents. It left little room for any spaces other than sheer construction sites appart from the designed "accidents" of Central Park in 1853, and this was possible because Manhattan was an island. The ample arms of the sea took care of Manhattans need for "pleasure and health as well as commerce and convenience". The Grid also provided the solid basis and configuration for constructing the cheapest form of housing ever: square.But the true manifesto of Manhattanism was so outrageous and unconcievable that it could never be openly declared: under its apparent neutrality, it claims the superiority of "mental construction over topography", virtual over existing, provides means for the "subjugation,if not obliteration of nature". The consequences of it's bilinear structure and the fact that Manhattan was in island left room for 3D anarchy and predicted that the city couldn't and would not grow in any conventional way-the architects and engineers that were in charge of sculpting the face of Manhattan had to come up whith innovative ways to differentiate one block from another.But the activities it framed were fictious, the population-conjectival, the buildings-phantoms,thus turning architecture into Manhattan's religion. To the present date, it is considered to be the "negative symbol of the shortsightedness of commercial intrests".
Under the pressure of constant urban developement, the need for escaping the realities of the modern metropolis was undeniable. The Central Park area was the first site to be reserved for leisure and relaxation activities, constituting the first succesful attempt to synthesize and reproduce nature. All of it's accidents were carefully planned, mature trees were transplanted there, all of it's naturality was forged by human hand and held up by an "invisible infrastructure that controlled it's assembly". Central Park was a "synthetic Arcadian Carpet", describing the way that culture outdistanced nature,blurring-like the grid itself- the line between the built and the unbuilt. It reveals the power within the philosophy of the irresistable synthetic.
In 1853, after conquering it's ambition (stirred up by the example of London's International Exhibition) and organizing it's own fair on the site which is today's Bryant Park, Manhattan fuels it's quest to bypass physical obstacles by means of innovative and, for that time, futuristic tehnological advancements. The proposal of various(undreground,on-grade and elevated) means of mass transportation, which , if layed out at the same time,would destroy each other's logic , plus numerous other new technological avantgarde products, all of which were eventually turned loose on the island, elevated Manhattan to the status of a synthetic "urban jungle" gouverned by the law of the survival of the fittest(machine) and celebrated the democtarisation of the object. But one of these inventions was to change the face of Manhattan, and to a lesser degree, that of the world: the elevator.
Primitive elevators were in use as early as the 3rd century BC, operated by human, animal, or water wheel power. From about the middle of the 19th century, power elevators, often steam-operated, were used for conveying materials in factories, mines, and warehouses.
In 1853, American inventor Elisha Otis demonstrated a freight elevator equipped with a safety device to prevent falling in case a supporting cable should break. This increased public confidence in such devices,practically introducing the elevator in the realm of commerce, shows the possibility to use it for human safe huma transportation. But the credit of the inventor is not limited to only this aspect;he creates a precedent for an incredibly effective marketing strategy;the presentation he puts up at the fair to advertise his invention is spectacular: he takes his elevator to a considerable height and, taking a dagger off a red cushion, cuts one of the cables, but inventor and invention remain suspended and safe. By doing this ,Otis establishes a state of mind that will influence not only real estate but ALL business indeology and ,thus, developement of Manhattan: the non-event becoming the event, the "anticlimax as deneoument", the monumental skyscraper becoming it's own brand.
In the late 19th century, the technological advancements of the industrial revolution were resources of great power for the huge population's evergrowing need for subtrefuge. But they were yet to raw to be to be transplanted directly into Manhattan. That doesen't mean that the projects in Coney Island were the results of some kind of conspiracy, but they influenced the city's very growth.
Coney Island was the host of an amazing variety of fairs, theme parks , all sorts of rides, accomodations and restaurants,it even gave the hot dog to the world. It was gradually connected to it's reservoir of visitors. The completion of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1923 turned summer sundays'Coney into the most densely populated place in the world.
In 1883 the antigravitational impulse of architecture is put to the test in a ride called Loop-da-Loop. It is the precursor of the famous wooden rollercoaster of Coney Island,ahich was built the very next season. In 1895, a mutant rollercoaster-Shoot-the Chutes, gave a new twist to this battle whith gravity.
Coney Island even had a mechanical horsetrack-Steeplechase- which allowed the user limited control over it's speed by using his weight, so it still was, in essence, a real race.
But the conquest of nature is only beginning;the first tryumphal achievements of the irresistible synthetic were a machine- The Inexhaustible Cow- (a milk dispenser shaped as a cow which had "superiour" milk due to it's constant flow, hygienic quality and controlled temperature) and a hotel shaped as an elephant,"as big as a church".
By 1890, electricity was introduced and the number of varieties exploded;the possibility of a "second daylight" arrose , announcing Coneys fertility peaking. In the years to come, this small appendix of Manhattan's yealded not only theme parks like Luna(it's surface was "not of this earth, but the moon",it even had a spaceship elevator that rose 100 feet in the air to a settlement of thousands of lights;a few numbers give an ideea of it's immensity:1.700 employees,1.300.000 lights,60.000.000 dollars in admission fees;it was the most modern fragment of the world at that time. )or Dreamland(which was it's bigger,much more refined themepark run by Sen. Wiliam H.Reynolds,also real estate promoter,who understood that his creation had to compromise it's origins-Steeplechase and Luna- by appealing to all masses, thus elevating it to an ideological plane.Among other activities, the park reproduced a fragment of venice,the vulcanic erruption of the Fall of Pompeii but also a circus and a Shoot-the-Chutes),anti-alienation devices like the Barrels of Love(two cylinders mounted in line, revolving in opposite directions, feeding men at one and women at the other end into the machine),intimacy creators(everybody knowes the Tunnels of Love) or nerve-relaxing activities (Shoot the Freak) , but also widened the gap between appearance and essence, the main impulse that strenghtened the creation of the real skyscraper.But the project that was most relevant in this case was an enourmos building, the globe tower,an enormous sphere which, through sheer size alone, would have been able to claim the status of a resort:700 feet high ,whith a total floor space of 5.000.000 square feet and the capacity of 50.000 people at one time, able to reproduce the part of the world it occupied 5000 times over. Visitors were fed to the structure by all types of available transportation devices(underground, boats,elevators) ,it hosted,among others, a hyppodrome, a revolving restaurant,casinos, circusses and a hotel.The project also implicitly used social stratification(foe example the planned Italian Garden on one of the higher levels was more expensive than the equatorial revolving restaurant). It embodied (as a metaphor,through it's shape) of the power of the skyscraper to reproduce and overpower the world it is built upon. <
In 1911,ironically enough, Dreamland burned to the ground(it hosted a fake fire extinguishing show), followed by Luna in 1914. By the mid 20th century, Robert Moses had turned half of the island into public parks-"a model for a modern Manhattan of grass".
Rebuilding Coney Island's parks was never considered, but the product that was to continue it's existence was the skyscraper.
Whith the elevator beeing a reliable tool for conquering progressively higher grounds and the inexhautible "demand for business" in the city, the skyscraper started to grow,and so, slowly injecting it's philosophy-the metropolitan paradox- into social aspirations: the further away from the ground, the closer to what remains of nature(eg.light,air),the more undesirable circumstances left behind/below. The 1909 theorem presents the skyscraper as an utopian formula for the creation of an indefinite number of virgin sites on the same urban location, separated and independent of each other,over the contents of which the architect had no control, thus forging a form of unknowable urbanism. But the true nature of this creation- it's unpredictable performance- was not acceptable to it's makers;an aliby was needed, and it was built on two aspects: the"supposedly insatiable demands of business" and the fact that Manhattan was an island, thus lateral expansion beeing not an option. This gave the skyscraper errection the status of inevitable.
The "paraphernalia of illusion" tested in Coney Island's artificial paradise (electricity,air- conditioning,tubes, telegraphes,tracks,elevators) now became merely agents of accomodation of business, beeing able to turn raw space into offices. So, the fantastic technology is now disguised as pragmatic technology. There followed:
Flatiron Building-22 floors
World Tower Building-30 floors
Benson(City Investing)Bulding-32 floors
By 1911, the "conceptual stratosphere" of the 100th floor was reached: "when the real estate brokers shall have found a suitable city block,the men and millions will be ready".
But the real Skyscraper is not yet completed. Starting in 1853 whith the Latting Observatory,continuing whith Luna Park bright towers and minarets in 1904, Dreamland's Beacon Tower in 1905 and the Globe Tower project in 1906, the tower has achieved the connotations of self contained universe,marker of pleasure zones, and was elevated to the subconsciously percieved rank of symbol of tehnological progress. So, it's transplantation on the rectiliniar skyscraper of the moment created a matured product, a building that not only had the functional capability to create virgin sites on the same block, but also gives meaning and beauty to the creation, upholding it's promise to conquer new realities. Fusion examples of that time are the Singer Building tower, finished in 1908,the Metropolitan Building, finished in 1909 and the Woolworth Building("Cathedral of Commerce") in 1913.
So , the transplanted technology from Coney Island preserved, whithin it's very essence, the ideology of the science of the fantastic, incubated and cultivated it it's vast variety of projects. But yet another mutant of architecture was to add it's contribution to the skyscraper's achievement of it's programmed unpredictability.
Madison Square Garden hosts at the end of the 19th century a series of exhibitions (replicas of old Nurrenberg, London,Venice) but they do not prove to be intense enough to justify the volume of the building.
In 1905, Thompson, the creator of Luna, buys a block between 43th and 44th streets and turns it into a high-tech set for a show-"A Yankee Circus On Mars" in his ambition to "reproduce" a spacecraft.
In 1908. on 42 street( so-called "Dreamstreet" ) Henri Erkins lays out a project called "Murray's Roman Gardens", "the realistic reproduction(...)of the roman residences". He makes the recognition of the perception of real volume impossible by using a big number of mirrors, prooving once again the victory of the virtual space and mental projection, over the laws of nature, showing that possibilities of space transfiguration whithin the block and thus block interdifferenciation were unlimited,claiming the monumental supremacy of the synthetic.
The status of the Automonument skyscraper was set. But it was one of it's symptoms that made it ideologically correct and consequently viable in the real infrastructure of Manhattan. To make the Automonument which inspires serenity and permanence inhabitable, tactics were developed to efficiently accomodate life,which is by definition antimonumental. As the interior volume needed to accomodate such grandiose activities as well as the growth of business,it grew in cubic leaps,but the exterior could only grow by square surfaces. This fact gave way to the architectural equivalent of a lobotomy,a surgical process that disconnects thought process from emotions."In Western Architecture there has been the humanistic assumption that it is desirable to establish a moral relationship between " the exterior and the interior of a building."The <
To the present date, the developement of real estate business along whith the growth of the skyscraper has presented no furhter inovations, just plain developement. It is in places like Madison Square Garden that we see the interconnection between real estate and entertainment in America. It is in places like the "potential Globe Tower" that we see it's economical finality ,it is in every square foot of a skyscraper that we feel the entertaining exaltation of endless possibilities . But the best example of entertainment and real estate fusing into a subtle masterpiece is, in my oppinion, the Empire State Building,a building accomodatind millions of dollars of business but providing the observation point on top, which allowes masses to marvel at the Automonument itself- MANHATTAN. It's fame turned it into an iconic brand,powerful enough to represent New York worldwide. Now that is what I call profitable business!
Bibliography- Rem Koolhas- "Delerious New York"
Links:
http://project1.caryacademy.org/TurnofCentury/NYLeisureTime.htm
http://www.esbnyc.com/tourism/tourism_history.cfm?CFID=14220&CFTOKEN=1408
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blelevator.htm
http://www.westland.net/coneyisland/articles/globetower.htm
http://www.coneyisland.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=news;action=display;num=1172621400;start=3#3
