It's a little bit late notice, but for anyone who might be interested, on Thursday April 10th at 6:30PM, I'll be giving a short talk on the 1939 World's Fair at the New York Transit Museum, focused on Transportation. The fully extended remix of it will eventually appear here, but this will be sort of a sneak preview. More information.

Here, Loeb

I suppose it may seem as if I'm on a Harrison & Abramovitz kick lately. It's true that, like I said, I've been trying to see all the buildings by Lincoln Center's architects in the tri-state area that I can. But really it was just by chance that I got around to seeing this one. It's directly adjacent to Kips Bay Plaza, so I figured the day I went there would be a great opportunity to see this one.

I asked the DOCOMOMO folks if they knew where it was, because I had tried to look it up myself and it was surprisingly difficult to figure it out. Much like Philip Johnson's East Wing of the MoMA, this building is not as much on the radar of works by H&A in New York. In fact, I'm not even sure I could tell you how I knew it was there. I feel like someone mentioned it to me at some point, but I have no idea why it would have come up. It's small, for one thing, and it's also sort of hidden in the huge complex of NYU's Langone Medical Center. I just got the Victoria Newhouse book about Harrison in the mail. I had read most of it back when I worked at Rockefeller Center, but I never owned a copy myself. I'm very much looking forward to reading it cover-to-cover. It barely mentions this building at all.

Built in 1957, stylistically, it's sort of halfway between the United Nations and the Metropolitan Opera House. It was originally called the Loeb Student Center and is now evidently called Alumni Hall.

Yes, I know the United Nations includes a roster of architects far greater than Wallace Harrison, but there are some similarities that can't be ignored that I'll get to below. It's a wonderful modestly-sized mid-century building--in fact, not much larger than a very large house. Fortunately, since I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, as soon as I walked into the hospital's front lobby, it was immediately obvious that this was the work of H&A.

Newhouse attributes this solely to Abramovitz. I'm quite sure the author knew what she was talking about. I'm just always a bit reluctant to attribute the work of a firm to any one, single practitioner in it. It may very well have been predominantly his responsibility, but the idea that Abramovitz created this building start to finish without even the slightest input from Harrison just doesn't fly with me, somehow. We do say the same about Avery Fisher Hall, myself for the sake of simplicity more than anything, but to me that's even less plausible because it was so much larger of a project. Granted, Harrison was probably busy pulling out his last remaining hairs trying to deal with Rudolph Bing, the Met's General Manager at the time, and was happy to leave the majority of Fisher (and this little project) in Abramovitz' hands.

Like the United Nations tower, Alumni Hall has two transparent (long) walls and two solid (short) walls.

I'm going to ignore the large window on the north wall for the time being. I don't believe the masonry wall is supporting much, which I'll also get to below, but it gives this building and the others like it by them an extremely primary form. It's as if the entire structure is nothing more than two posts and a beam, stretched out deep enough to form an enclosure. It's simple, but in the best and most straightforward possible way. By separating them so sharply, it also amplifies the two aspects of building, one as old as architecture itself--the masonry wall--the other not much more than a generation old--the steel and glass curtain wall.

It's nice to see the window mullions at this early stage, also. They're not quite as evolved as they would become in later projects. But they still beg questions. Why bother to include them at all? They're obviously not supporting much more than perhaps the glass itself; you can see the columns supporting the roof right inside the window line--also the reason the masonry end walls don't exactly work as posts. And why have the mullions protruding outward? Most buildings using this technology did their best to emphasize the shiny sleekness of the glass in perfectly flat planes (as with Lever House). And one might be inclined to suggest it would be appropriate here to conceal the mullions, to create further contrast with the masonry. One might even use rusticated stone instead of brick to take this to the next level, but that was Richard Neutra's business, here I think they were going for something a little different.

The mullions accomplish the same thing here that they do at Greene Hall, but in a more polar way. On one axis, the building is wide open, from the other, it reads as a solid block. Also similar here is how the prominent mullions emphasize the verticality of a building only two stories high, quite short.

They also employed the same strategy that Eero Saarinen would with the CBS Headquarters, "Black Rock." Instead of lowering Alumni Hall down below grade like Saarinen, H&A built up the surrounding ground a few steps. The effect is the same, though, that the base of the building is concealed from view. You don't notice where it starts, just where it goes, that is, up. I'll have to admit I think the lion statues are completely bizarre. They seem utterly out of place and I really can't imagine H&A specifying them, especially considering how much great works of Modern Art they used in other projects.

So let's go back to that window on the north wall. First of all, why is there a window there at all? It seems like it's deadening the impact of solid versus transparent that they appear to be exploiting in the building overall.

But there's something purposeful about it. It's not just a bare opening of glass in an otherwise solid brick wall. Its frame is fairly thin, but the fact remains that it does have a frame. Although very minimal, the window frame is a conspicuous bit of ornamentation on an otherwise modern building. Clearly, this window was intended to accomplish something specific. It was given weight.

The other thing about it is where it's located. The location of this window on that wall is almost...strange. One might easily guess that it opens onto the second floor, but even that isn't exactly clear, especially considering that the lobby space around to the right is full-height. Beyond that, it seems to defy its nature as a window, because it doesn't give any indication of having a relationship to the interior of the building, what windows are generally supposed to do. In other words, it's not really large enough or in the right proportions to allow you to see much of the interior. It's not one of a regular pattern of bays next to it. It isn't paired with an identical window on the first floor directly below it. It feels very alone somehow, but at the same time, it's just large enough to be sufficient by itself on that wall. In fact, one might argue that this wall didn't want any more windows.

By having some weight but not accomplishing the things that windows normally do on the exterior of a building, this window becomes a purely compositional element on the façade. It becomes a purely architectural gesture in the design of the building. I see some parallels with the prominent balconies of Greene Hall, and if I wanted to extrapolate, I might suggest that the entire arched portico of the Metropolitan Opera is an evolution of this same idea, coerced into shape by the exigencies of the Lincoln Center campus.

The interiors of Alumni Hall I found really quite lovely in a pared-down 1950s sort of way. The floating staircases mirroring each other at either end and the overhanging balcony are elegant in their simplicity. The formality of their arrangement is pleasing in response to their diminutive size.

The palette of materials is also vibrant yet restrained, and has a luxurious feeling without being overly formal. The wood paneling framed in aluminum looks strikingly contemporary to me. I also think mosaic was a fantastic choice that gives the wall surface a tactile, hand-crafted sort of texture, offsetting perhaps the other cold, hard surfaces.

 






And there you have my visit to Alumni Hall. Another H&A project down, many more to go.

All images ©2010 and text ©2011, Ryan Witte.

Man on Campus--Part 3

My second trip to the Library for the Performing Arts was almost as comical as the first, but for different reasons. At least this time I knew exactly where to go, so I headed straight for the Dance & Drama desk. Unfortunately, the very nice woman handling the desk this time had no idea what I was talking about or how to provide me with a Metrocard. I probably stood there for a good fifteen minutes while she searched through the computer database, having no luck, becoming increasingly flustered and annoyed at me for distracting her by attempting to provide her with additional information that might speed things along. Finally she called for back-up. This required her to dial three or four different extension numbers before she could actually reach someone who was available.

Before she could return to her database search, a 127-year-old gentleman approached the desk. I said she may as well go ahead and help him, assuming he'd be faster, and he was sort of making me uncomfortable hovering around like that. He was looking for the photograph of some actor or something. She told him she was sort of busy with my issues, and that the card catalog just to our left would be the best place for him to start. Well, it turns out this guy can't see well enough to read the cards in the card catalog. One might be inclined to wonder what good a photograph is going to do someone with eyesight that bad. One might also be inclined to wonder what someone who can't see well enough to read would hope to accomplish at a library. I mean, plenty of people carry little pocket magnifying glasses around with them, don't they?

So the woman who was helping me had to take this guy by the hand and lead him personally over to the card catalog and go through the whole thing with him step by step. Who knew how long it would take her back-up to arrive, so I just sat down to wait. I was only on a break from work, so I could hear the clock ticking in my head. By the time the other person arrived who could help me, the first woman was finished with the old guy. As it turned out, nothing needed to be found in the database anyway. I got my Metrocard.

I'd checked the weather ahead of time and was fairly certain I'd have sunny skies a few days later, so I called and made an appointment with Jason at Avery's Drawings & Archives Department.

Getting my access pass the second time around was considerably easier because Madame Unhelpful was not working Butler's front office that day, and Jason had also kindly emailed them up front (which the girl said was not normally necessary) to let them know I was coming.

I had arrived much earlier than my appointment, though, so I could see another one of the buildings. It's the academic building I talked about in my first post, but it was only later I realized that it was the other Harrison & Abramovitz (H&A) project. It's the International Affairs Building (IAB), completed in 1971.

All photos ©2010, Ryan Witte.

It's a great Brutalist building, but there's a lot more to this, also. In one of the drawings of this façade, it reads a bit differently than as executed. It appears more like a sheer mesh screen supported by those two giant piers.

If you concentrate, you can still see it, but it's a bit too meaty, and the top floor of windows in the center section somewhat disrupts the effect.

Directly underneath this is a sunken court in the plaza that connects IAB to Greene Hall. Philip Johnson was doing a lot of this kind of thing, also, but this really reminds me of what H&A did at the President's House at Rockefeller University.

I could be mistaken, but the curving brick benches don't really look like H&A to me. They look more like something that was maybe added later. I can find no way to confirm that. Either way, the glass bubble is extremely cool. I don't care if it's a little goofy, I love it. The way it reflects the image of the IAB above the courtyard is great. A student sitting out there eating her lunch told me it lets light into the Lehman Library underneath.

I also asked her if there were a way to get up to the plaza level (which is actually the sixth floor) without having to go all the way around the outside of the building. She told me to use the elevators. Whoever wrote the Columbia University Wiki page about this building had a very good sense of humor about what s/he refers to as "Those Goddamned Elevators." Evidently Columbia's president at the time, Grayson Kirk, saved a ton of money by getting extremely cheap elevators instead of ones from a trusted manufacturer like Otis. They're considered to be so cramped and irritatingly slow that allegedly students will sometimes opt to climb thirteen flights of stairs rather than be subjected to the elevators.

That's the southern façade. The northern façade displays a bit better how IAB is really a more evolved version of Greene and works quite nicely adjacent to it. It has the same vertical fin window mullions, but a bit more muscular and here only slightly more pronounced than the horizontal lines of the floor slabs.

Below this is a sort of unfortunately unfriendly base that presents a blank concrete wall to the pedestrian. I'm very much liking the thin ribbon of windows at the top, which tells you that the concrete base, despite its apparent structural strength, is not actually supporting anything. Instead it reveals columns at the corners of the interior that hold up the plinth. Apparently, H&A thought this building would be built in a desert, because they clearly made no provisions whatsoever for the flow of rain water off that base. If they do decide to clean it up, they definitely need to rethink drainage.

This is something that more generally needs to be addressed. When the Modernists rejected all the trappings of traditional building methods, they neglected to take into account that a lot of them were there for a very good reason. The pediment over a window or door, for instance, would keep the rain out and direct it away from the window or door frame. There have been some studies done on how rain water flows off buildings, but I think the subject could use a bit more study. Few talented architects ignore the angles and quality of sunlight in relationship to their structures, but in my opinion, new architecture also deserves new solutions to water flow. The design and shape of the roof, most specifically, could be re-examined to capture and direct water in very interesting, useful, even beautiful ways and, in more rural settings, ways that won't disrupt the natural water systems.

Where the building rests on the plinth are some really nice terraces that look as if they're barely ever used (don't look at the graffiti). I really like the use of the glass here, because the concrete structure above it looks so heavy and massive. Then the beams of concrete protruding out at the corners give these two "legs" a nice shot of steroids to make up for the transparency of the glass in between.

The west façade of the IAB is really the building's finest moment. It's where it all starts to make sense.

There's something vaguely 1970s about this that could mislead you into thinking maybe it's ugliness. I don't think so. The smooth, pale concrete was a wise decision here over, say, red brick with concrete accents--as by Davis, Brody & Associates--or the rusticated concrete so loved by Paul Rudolph and deplored by everyone else. Its compositional rigor and formality is stately and impressive, its symmetry unapologetic. While using the same vocabulary, it has a significantly different character from the other façades.

Rather than for geometric acrobatics or to put on a mask of unsubstantiated formal grandeur, here the Brutalism is used most honestly to express the structure of the building. It's as if you could take a bunch of concrete slabs and posts and stack them up to create this like a game of Jenga. It's all right there in front of your face. In addition to this, and very likely because of it, it speaks of raw, uncompromising strength.

Truly my favorite thing about it, though, is what you see when you get directly underneath it.

Unlike with Greene, which changes its structural character only from one side or another, here it's from every angle. The windows disappear entirely leaving you with nothing at all except pure architectural form. And in its robust structural simplicity, it looks absolutely ancient. From some angles it looks like something you could easily find in North Africa or the Middle East. From others it looks radically modern.

The other factor is that the United States is a young country. So any ancient quality this building might be said to have will automatically need to be foreign, and therefore international: the International Affairs Building. Even the plaza entrance strikes me as something akin to a Mayan temple.

Just for kicks, since the sun was a bit different, I got another shot of the Henry Moore piece for you from a different vantage.

I asked the women standing behind it if they'd ever seen it being turned. They said yes. I said I tried pushing it but obviously I'm not strong enough. They thought that was funny. They said usually it takes a group of people all shoving at once to get it to move.


Next up: The New York State Theater.

©2010, Ryan Witte

Man on Campus--Part 1

This series will definitely be more of a story than I might normally tell. But I just had to discuss the infuriating comedy of errors that has been seeing Philip Johnson's construction drawings for the New York State Theater. [As more and more horrifying press surfaces about David Koch, we're becoming less enthusiastic about honoring him as namesake of the theater he helped renovate. If you're reading this, Mr. Koch, you're always welcome to improve my opinion with a couple-million-dollar donation to Architextures.]

I knew that Columbia's Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library had a good amount of materials on the subject, and would be a great place to start. I read through the provisions on their website about gaining access, and also called around for a bit of clarification, to make sure I arrived with all the necessary credentials.

My first stop was the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. Since I work there, it seemed the easiest choice, and I could just wait until a day when I was there and had a free half hour. Not so easy, after all.

I stopped at the information desk. For the first of many, many times, I recited my explanation of what I wanted to do: "I'm doing research on the Lincoln Center campus. I thought the Avery Library at Columbia might have construction drawings and so on of the Koch Theater. So I need a slip or something to get access." I eventually found out it's called a Metrocard, which is a bit confusing since it has nothing to do with the subway. The woman at the information desk didn't know and sent me to the check out counter.

I explained again. The woman at the check out counter didn't know and said I should ask her supervisor. I told my story to the supervisor. The supervisor wasn't sure but suggested I try the information desk on the third floor. To get into the reading room on the third floor, where I would only need to be for about thirty seconds, you have to check your bag. So I checked my bag. There were three people at the information desk up there. It was almost like I had a cowbell around my neck: the three of them just stared and watched me walk all the way across the room and around to the front of their desk. So weird. I explained again.

The guy there knew exactly what I was talking about but told me I had to go down to the Dance & Drama desk on the second floor. I got my bag back from coat check and headed downstairs. I explained my situation yet again there. The guy at Dance & Drama was very nice and helpful and gave me the yellow Metrocard thing that I would need to get into Avery. I asked him if there were a time limit on it, and he said not really, but that I wouldn't want to wait too long to use it.

A week or two later, I had a free afternoon and the weather was gorgeous, so I decided to make my way up to Columbia. Even when I lived in Manhattan, the Columbia neighborhood seemed like a different planet. From Queens, it's really quite a trek. It probably took me about an hour door-to-door.

My first stop, while the sun was still at a nice angle, was Harrison & Abramovitz' (H&A) Law School Building, now called Jerome L. Greene Hall, built in 1961. Greene was a lawyer who gave Columbia's law school $40 million over the years and gave the university a single gift of $200 million, the largest they've ever received.

I'd like to see as many of the New York area buildings by Lincoln Center's architects as I can in person, to just intuitively understand their work better. But in addition to that, Greene Hall is strikingly similar in style to the Metropolitan Opera House. Even if you didn't know it was by the same architect(s), you could probably tell just by looking at the two buildings.

This building has a reputation for being ugly. The fondness some students grow to have for it has been referred to as "architectural Stockholm syndrome." I think that's somewhat unfair. I don't know what it's like to use the building as a student or faculty member, but architecturally speaking I think it's quite beautiful.

For one thing, I think the main volume has exquisite proportions. Its proportions somehow manage to make this look monumental despite the fact that it's not a particularly large building.

The renovation at the southern end is clearly newer. It was added in 1996 by Polshek Partnership, who have just recently changed their name to Ennead Architects.

I never got to know what this looked like before that addition. Of course I'd been up to the campus many times over the years, but I'm not convinced that I was ever this far east, and if I was, I never had reason to really study this building in depth.

In any case, although it's a shame whenever an older building needs to be altered from its original architect's vision, I think Polshek did a marvelous job of complementing the original structure.

That balcony that sticks out the front has earned the building the nickname "The Toaster." There are certainly worse things you could call a building. I think those boxes are amazing, and I'll explain why below.

Greene has a raised plaza that crosses over Amsterdam Avenue. These plaza bridges I guess seemed like a good idea, in theory, in the 1960s. H&A were the ones to originally design the Milstein Plaza which did the same thing at Lincoln Center, and it's now been torn out, thankfully. Abramovitz also did something similar over the FDR Drive for Rockefeller University. It's one of the things Le Corbusier prescribed: vehicular traffic on ground level, pedestrian traffic raised above it on a separate level.

It's a bit strange that the concept doesn't work. I think the main problem is that, especially in a city like New York, too many people will invariably use the vehicular level, anyway. So in addition to the ever-present noise, smell, exhaust, and danger of interacting with moving vehicles, you've also removed all the sunlight and half of the pedestrians. The sunlight is one of the few remaining things that make strolling along New York's sidewalks pleasurable, and backward as it may sound, the more pedestrians there are, the safer it is. Similarly, on the plaza above, half the pedestrians will remain on ground level and never even see it, removing exactly the thing that can make such a plaza an interesting, vibrant place to be: people.

It was named the Charles H. Revson Plaza and installed in 1964. It is quite nicely landscaped, so it's an added shame that more of the general public will never bother to go up there.

I know all about Revson because he paid for Lincoln Center's fountain which is named for him, also. He founded Revlon Cosmetics in 1932. The "S" in the name was changed to an "L" for his partner and chemist, Charles Lachman. They offered far more colors of nail polish than any other manufacturer at the time, and later they added matching lipsticks.

Luckily, Columbia itself is extremely populous, it serves nearly 30,000 people altogether, students and faculty. So the plaza to the north of Greene, also bordered by a residence hall and I think another academic building, was being used more extensively, perhaps because it was in the shade.

That sort of old-timey lamppost needs to go. It's doing nothing at all for this building.

In this photo and the previous one, you can see one of the things I love about this building. It's the same for the Metropolitan Opera: the deep fin window mullions. The Met's are travertine, to match the rest of the buildings there. Here they're limestone, which matches the much older building that can be seen reflected in the windows.

First of all, the fins give the building a strong sense of verticality in contrast to its relatively squat proportions. Second is the way it plays with the quality of light hitting it and your vantage on the building. From one direction, it reads as a wide open glass structure, transparent and/or reflective. From others, it forms a solid textured block of stone. Even the balcony on this side, being closer to ground (eye) level, while still very much a distinct protuberance, seems to dematerialize somewhat.

I asked one of the students about them, and he said they're cafes and student lounges. It would appear you can't really go out onto the balconies, which I think is very unfortunate. Almost as appealing would be a row of sliding glass doors, but it's still a great touch that there are plantings. I think they're a wonderfully subtle, angular Brutalist detail on an otherwise strictly upright, regular structure. I love how the bottom couple inches of the mullions are allowed to show underneath it, despite the fact that they're obviously cut through on the interior.

I also really liked this detail on the side of it. A recessed glass panel separates the balcony from the main volume. This might have been more successful I think if the glass had been more silvery, more reflective. But I also think if the glass were perfectly clean, and seen in sharp sunlight or lit from the inside at night, it would be more effective. In any case, H&A make the point very clearly that this projecting box is to be read as an individual entity, divorced from the main structure.

This could have been executed in so many different ways. It could have been merely an open balcony with a practically invisible balustrade. The balusters could have been prominent and linear like the bars of a jail cell (thematically appropriate, sure, but a bit like wagging one's finger in your face, and "incarcerating" whom? The students?). It could have been a clear glass box punching through the facade opening up the interior to the outside. Instead, H&A enclose their projections in solid limestone--the same material that gives the overall structure its apparent strength--and adorn them with a strip of soft, friendly greenery. It's almost as if the building is saying to the passerby, "what goes on inside this building is being offered to you, the general public, for your protection by the law. Please avail yourselves of it."

I also really loved the wonderfully late-'50s entryway with its cascading stairs. The three people sitting with their backs to the camera were the law students I asked a few questions. This entrance is not a primary one and is locked (I think students can open it with a key). I actually find it much cooler than the main entrance in the 1996 addition. That sad, empty plastic flower pot and the trash cans should not have been put there. It still has a great style to it, though.






Next up: the artworks.

All text and images ©2010, Ryan Witte

We Will Rock U--Part Four

To get to the southern end of the campus, you walk through this somewhat narrow corridor:

Click for larger.

--All photos ©2009, Ryan Witte.

From left to right that's the Hospital extension, Gasser Hall, the Rockefeller Research Building (which I'll get to below), the Faculty House (Horace Ginsburg & Associates, 1974), and the Bronk Lab building. Turning right around that corner is another wonderful moment of discovery. First of all there's this amazing terrace outside the Rockefeller Research Building:

It has the most amazing view of the Queensboro Bridge, too, by the way:

Even better, below this is the Peggy Rockefeller Plaza, designed by Thomas Balsley Associates and completed in 2000:

The fountain and grove of trees is a lovely feature, although it seems to be inviting you inside it and not allowing you at the same time.

They added a ton of greenery to what had previously been a mostly barren patch of concrete. Balsley, incidentally, also designed Balsley Park (formerly known as Sheffield Park), which I've passed by probably 5000 times. I believe it's at the corner of 57th Street and Ninth Avenue? Somewhere around there. They did Chelsea Waterside Park, Gantry Plaza State Park (where my profile picture was taken, and where I was to shoot the passing of the Lieb House), Riverside Park South, the East River Esplanade Park, and countless plazas all over the city. They also designed plans for Laguardia Airport, originally by Harrison & Abramovitz, and for St. Louis Gateway Park, the landscaping of which was originally by Dan Kiley.

In the background there you can see the next building that went up, in 1971, the Benjamin & Irma G. Weiss Research Building by Nelson W. Aldrich from the firm of Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty. Aldrich was a cousin of the Rockefellers, which is no doubt how he got the job. It's been called a sort of bad copy of Philip Johnson's Henry L. Moses Research Institute Building (1965) in the Bronx, but I think it's a fantastically dramatic work of Brutalism in its own right:

Incidentally, Campbell, Aldrich & Nulty were consultants to Kallman, McKinnell & Knowles on one of the most controversial structures in the entire United States, bitterly despised by ninety-nine percent of its neighbors, and an absolutely magnificent work of Brutalism, on par with anything Paul Rudolph did. Ada Louise Huxtable agrees with me, by the way. I'm referring, of course, to Boston City Hall (1969):

--Photo courtesy PreservationNation.

This is the one on all of the "ugliest buildings in the world" lists. I think it's a veritable jewel.

The main lobby of Weiss is fairly cool, too. The cafeteria creates these layers of tinted glass from interior to exterior and back again:

The view of the south side of the Bronk Lab building across the plaza is breathtaking:

And there's even a Frank Stella piece called The Tail (1988), from a series of pieces all named for chapters in Herman Melville's Moby Dick:

Another Brutalist building by Raymond F. Stainback, the Comparative Bioscience Center, was built in 1975 and works beautifully with Weiss:

I suppose it doesn't appear that it would be too friendly a place to work on the interior, although for sure you'd be free of any distractions, but I do love the detail of the window ribbons turning vertical at the end piers:

It was actually New York Hospital--Cornell Medical Center that in 1971 worked with the city to purchase air rights over the FDR Drive so they could expand to the east. This made possible Abramovitz, Kingsland & Schiff's (AK&S) John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and David Rockefeller Research Building, designed in 1984 and completed in 1992 (Harrison passed away in 1981).

I spoke briefly with Jerry Schiff, who worked on this one, a very nice gentleman. He said this building has an entire saga behind it, which is why it took so long to complete it. They did multiple studies to determine the best site for the building (they determined this was it). The scientists were in the midst of their work in Gasser Hall, which was a bit larger before AK&S demolished part of it, so temporary lab space had to be created. He said it was like a domino effect trying to get this built and keep the scientists in business throughout the process. Each of the scientists was interviewed and no doubt each had his or her own individual requirements for the interior work spaces. They had to pull a barge up to the shore to get some of the materials up and to use as a working platform. They could only close down FDR Drive from about 1 to 4AM and not for very many nights. Essentially the piers and the sort of plinth at the bottom were built in a single night, which then gave them a base on which to build the rest of the building.

Stay tuned for the grand finale.

©2009, Ryan Witte