ATDTDA (5.1) - The Etienne-Louis Malus

[Monte Davis]

Laura:
> In the midst of this, "they" plunked two giant metal filing 
> cabinets.  A move away  from art towards vulgar 
> commerce (specifically the takeover of the city by 
> the rapacious real estate industry).

John:
> It has somehow become impossible to criticise those towers 
> themselves, because of what happened to the people in them...

I didn't feel any reluctance to criticize the towers aesthetically as a NYC
resident from 1960 to 1991, nor do I now -- but let's not drape too much
nostalgia over pre-WTC Manhattan, either. Sky-scraping scale had been the
mode for more than 75 years when those towers went up, and filing-cabinet
high-modern boxiness since Lever House.        

By my reckoning, the city was "taken over by the rapacious real estate
industry" by the mid-19th century at the latest (cf the rise of the Astor
and Vanderbilt fortunes). There were plenty of robber baronets and vulgar
Trumpets behind the Woolworth building, Empire State, Chrysler, Carnegie (!)
Hall, the Dakota, and most of the city's other iconic buildings. 

Because "olde" is, of course, a moving target. Back when Rev. Beecher roamed
Brooklyn, people lamented how one fine old tree-shaded manse after another
was falling to rows of cookie-cutter buildings in that cheap "brownstone"
barged down from Connecticut by the megaton. Now, of course, brownstone
neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights are traditional, atmospheric, the very
soul of New York as it always was...

-Monte <time to re-read "The Night the Old Nostalgia Burned Down">