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Lecture series features unique venues, speakers
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In the grand lobby of the former Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway, essayist Phillip Lopate transported a packed audience to a time when New York City was a bustling port as he presented his vision for keeping the city's waterfront thriving.
The fourth lecture in the "Downtown Third Thursdays" series sponsored by the Alliance for Downtown New York, Lopate,a professor of English at Hofstra University, spoke about achieving fuller use of New York City's waterfront and read excerpts from his 2004 book, Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan.
"The waterfront really is where it was happening for New York and for a lot of cities," Lopate said addressing the crowd gathered for the April 21 lecture. "Now we are faced with ports that are divorced from cities and moved away from the metropolis."
Lopate suggests that we can try to hold onto some of the city's waterfront history by bringing back what once was, like the open food markets in South Street Seaport. "We should be striving for much more variety and smaller projects," he went on to argue. Calling himself an advocate for "an impure waterfront," Lopate maintained that a redeveloped waterfront should not be filled with just greenery and shrubs, but should include a commercial component as well. There's nothing wrong with "bringing the city to the river's edge," he said. "The pulse of the city is conveyed through private enterprise."
Lopate's idyllic vision for the city's waterfront is to have fishing tables, bait and tackle shops, and "pleasure piers" filled with handball and racquetball courts and dotted with fish and chip shops.
As part of his research for the book, Lopate walked all around the city's shoreline. Interspersed among the chapters describing his rambles are excursions into the history of the waterfront's architecture, geology, literature, and development. Underlying his explorations are several fundamental questions: Will the colorful history of the New York shoreline shape the future? What is the changing meaning of public space? Can we still come up with bold, integrated visions? What forces of resistance stand in the way of redeveloping the waterfront?
Waterfront planning is just one of several topics that have been or will be covered by a roster of distinguished authors and historians as guest speakers for Downtown Third Thursdays. Additional topics range from the emergence of skyscrapers to rebuilding at Ground Zero to ticker-tape parades in the Canyon of Heroes.
"As a whole, the lectures have presented a comprehensive view of downtown," said Valerie Lewis, vice president of marketing at the Downtown Alliance. "From the lectures, you can really see why Lower Manhattan is so important. Downtown is a premier business district and a vibrant community that is an engine for the economy of New York City and the nation."
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| The popular lectures have drawn large crowds |
The free monthly lecture series began in January and will run through next month. Given the public's overwhelming response, which has resulted in several standing-room-only events, the Downtown Alliance plans to host the five-month series again in 2006.
Each lecture explores themes and issues that are every bit as important today in Lower Manhattan as they have been over the course of history. To further highlight the area's rich past and architecture, the lectures have been held in rarely seen private spaces and grand landmarks: the U.S. Custom House Rotunda, the 60th floor of One Chase Manhattan Plaza, the lobby of the Equitable Building at 120 Broadway, and the former Standard Oil Building lobby at 26 Broadway.
The inaugural January lecture featured Paul Goldberger, architecture critic for the New Yorker and author of Up From Zero: Architecture, Politics and the Rebuilding of New York. Goldberger spoke about the struggle to create and build one of the most challenging urban-design projects, the 16 acres where the former World Trade Center stood.
In February, Carol Herselle Krinsky, a professor at New York University, delivered a lecture entitled "Rockefellers, Architects, and Renewing Lower Manhattan." She discussed how the Rockefellers reshaped midtown with the creation of Rockefeller Center and MoMA and how they catalyzed the renewal of Lower Manhattan with the World Trade Center and Chase Manhattan Plaza. The following month, Sarah Bradford Landau, an author and NYU professor, discussed key New York buildings of the first great skyscraper age in regard to the evolution of metal framing and elevator transport, financial motivation, relevant site conditions, and architectural form and style.
On May 19, the series' final lecture provided an illustrated history of New York City's famous ticker-tape parades presented by city archivist Kenneth Cobb. In 200 parades spread over more than a hundred years, the city has bestowed this unique tribute on the heroes and heroines of the day. The parades, which began as "spontaneous" celebrations during the 19th century, have become the ultimate mark of approval for a job well-done, honoring Charles Lindbergh and other aviators of the 1920s; soldiers, royals, politicians, and astronauts in the post-war era; and victorious athletes in recent years. To accommodate a larger audience, this event was held in Trinity Church.
For more information about Downtown Third Thursdays, contact the Downtown Alliance at (212) 835-2789 or click here.
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