102. New York Telephone Company Building
A.K.A.: Barclay-Vesey Building
Location: 140 West Street
Built: 1923–1927
Architect: Ralph Walker
National Register Number: 09000257
Listed: April 30, 2009
Official Documentation: NYCLPC Report
I worked at the World Trade Center for eight years yet have no memory of ever noticing it. Like a stroke victim who's lost part of his visual field, it's as if I couldn't even see this building. Given the size of the towers—the ones that sliced a few edges off the Barclay-Vesey as they crumbled—it's not surprisingly this brown dwarf got lost. Given the size of its current and future neighbors, it looks like it'll continue to be lost.
Ralph Walker, the architect: "It was Emerson, I think, who told us to stop building the sepulchers of our fathers and build our own house. The Barclay-Vesey Building is an attempt to build a house of today." Could this ever have really been a house of today? It requires an imaginative leap. Googie architecture is still "futuristic"—even if quaintly so—because we never actually arrived at the moonbase/jetpack world it promised. There is, perhaps, a similar displacement at work with Streamline Moderne, as it still seems more like the stuff of Hollywood movies than real life, no matter how much the style worked its way into real life. This one seems less distinctive, stumpy masses in khaki. It was the first Art Deco skyscraper, but perhaps the Chrysler Building spoils me into thinking such a thing requires a more flamboyant gesture than this. Thanks to the security concerns which make me hesitant to get me very close (forget about lobbies, reputed to be fabulous), I have to squint hard to see the Barclay-Vesey's dream-life, but it's there in the far-off tops of its piers and corners: stone flora and fauna living in an equatorial paradise.
Location: 140 West Street
Built: 1923–1927
Architect: Ralph Walker
National Register Number: 09000257
Listed: April 30, 2009
Official Documentation: NYCLPC Report
I worked at the World Trade Center for eight years yet have no memory of ever noticing it. Like a stroke victim who's lost part of his visual field, it's as if I couldn't even see this building. Given the size of the towers—the ones that sliced a few edges off the Barclay-Vesey as they crumbled—it's not surprisingly this brown dwarf got lost. Given the size of its current and future neighbors, it looks like it'll continue to be lost.
Ralph Walker, the architect: "It was Emerson, I think, who told us to stop building the sepulchers of our fathers and build our own house. The Barclay-Vesey Building is an attempt to build a house of today." Could this ever have really been a house of today? It requires an imaginative leap. Googie architecture is still "futuristic"—even if quaintly so—because we never actually arrived at the moonbase/jetpack world it promised. There is, perhaps, a similar displacement at work with Streamline Moderne, as it still seems more like the stuff of Hollywood movies than real life, no matter how much the style worked its way into real life. This one seems less distinctive, stumpy masses in khaki. It was the first Art Deco skyscraper, but perhaps the Chrysler Building spoils me into thinking such a thing requires a more flamboyant gesture than this. Thanks to the security concerns which make me hesitant to get me very close (forget about lobbies, reputed to be fabulous), I have to squint hard to see the Barclay-Vesey's dream-life, but it's there in the far-off tops of its piers and corners: stone flora and fauna living in an equatorial paradise.
posted by Michael at
1:23 AM
1 Comments:
A building like that needs dramatic lighting alla Ferriss. I suppose the neighbors wouldn't stand for it, but it's got such a movie background structure to it. A little too iconic, but not so iconic to be recognizable. Like a stand-in for a "Art Deco Building in Gotham" and so needs movie lighting.
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