March 9, 2023
Essay about Metropolitan Section, front page article, Sunday March 5, 2023, The New York Times.
(print) A Grand Building Vanishes (digital) Once The World's Largest, a Hotel Goes 'Poof' Before Our Eyes
Plan On Tourism Whose Ideal Is History Disappeared
The Hotel Pennsylvania article confirms it's the most interesting building in my thirty-three years, since May 1985, messengering and couriering, and last seven delivering food in New York City. Juxtaposed with the headlong competition between the world's cities for updated infrastructure, this glaring hole in history is worse than losing Penn Station. The Building. There'll never be doors like those again. Suggesting pretend to at least try. The Guest Room Floors were entirely identical broad square hallways separating outside from inner rooms. Ample elevator service.
Exhilarating to come upon the huge room somewhere, from between the First and Third Floors, overlooking Seventh Avenue. After clearing a partition, there were steps down to a vast space of occupied architects' desks. Unfortunately, so hurried, I never even got to see the elaborate library's remains. Or even where Glen Miller played. Jimmy Stewart's Glenn Miller film, a little bit why I took up the, soon enough laid down, trombone. Can always pick up a trombone again. This dropped load, the Landmarks Commission won't live down losing, too, again.
New York adapts to what's no longer here or there. But adaptation to our holes. For the moment. The previous The New York Times Building still stands for being special. To use that often made fun of term, HELLO! Hopefully the Take Away isn't ignored that Big Real Estate owes everyone, even themselves, for this shot in the foot. Worse result, amputation. Why people walk inside European History shedding tourist dollars. There is a distinct sense we blew it. Tourists can already feel exhilarated midst modern buildings' artistry, everywhere, throughout the world.
So don't expect tourist dollar if Fraunces Tavern is all that's left standing. No, that won't happen? A lot happens we have the potential to never mean to do. Grown fond of celebratory signs announcing what used to be there and no longer here? Those signs have to go to effectively placate public dissatisfaction before it arises. Urban Planning. Groucho Marx could have told that joke better. Nonetheless. The limitless opportunities New York offers might really be limitless. But that's not care and cautious assessment.
Right. Fill the hole with something else nearly overpowering the majesties of the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings. While the, nowhere-near-enough addressed, question exists. However far is cheap labor expected to commute to service wealth's fluidity? When polished to precision, money's fluid throughout. Not skating precisely across. Perhaps the world's great luxury hotels will, in fact, never rival the Hotel Pennsylvania for pure human dignity. Oh well.
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