An Architect Breaks Down the Design of New York City Subway Stations, from the Oldest to Newest

in Architecture, Art, Design, History, Travel | March 13th, 2023

With 26 lines and 472 sta­tions, the New York City sub­way sys­tem is prac­ti­cal­ly a liv­ing organ­ism, and way too big a top­ic to tack­le in a short video.

Archi­tect Michael Wyet­zn­er may not have time to touch on rats, crime track fires, flood­ing, night and week­end ser­vice dis­rup­tions, or the adults-in-a-Peanuts-spe­cial sound qual­i­ty of the announce­ments in the above episode of Archi­tec­tur­al Digest’s Blue­prints web series, but he gives an excel­lent overview of its evolv­ing design, from the sta­tions them­selves to side­walk entrances to the plat­form sig­nage.

First stop, the old City Hall sta­tion, whose chan­de­liers, sky­lights, and Guas­tavi­no tile arch­ing in an alter­nat­ing col­ors her­ring­bone pat­tern made it the star attrac­tion of the just-opened sys­tem in 1904.

(It’s been closed since 1945, but savvy tran­sit buffs know that they can catch a glimpse by ignor­ing the conductor’s announce­ment to exit the down­town 6 train at its last stop, then look­ing out the win­dow as it makes a U‑turn, pass­ing through the aban­doned sta­tion to begin its trip back uptown. The New York Tran­sit Muse­um also hosts pop­u­lar thrice year­ly tours.)

Express tracks have been a fea­ture of New York’s sub­way sys­tem since the begin­ning, when Inter­bor­ough Rapid Tran­sit Com­pa­ny enhanced its exist­ing ele­vat­ed line with an under­ground route capa­ble of car­ry­ing pas­sen­gers from City Hall to Harlem for a nick­el fare.

Wyet­zn­er effi­cient­ly sketch­es the open exca­va­tion design of the ear­ly IRT sta­tions — “cut and cov­er” trench­es less than 20’ deep, with room for four tracks, plat­forms, and no frills sup­port columns that are near­ly as ubiq­ui­tous white sub­way tiles.

For the most part, New York­ers take the sub­way for grant­ed, and are always pre­pared to beef about the fare to ser­vice ration, but this was not the case on New Year’s Day, 2017, when rid­ers went out of their way to take the Q train.

Fol­low­ing years of delays, aggra­vat­ing con­struc­tion noise and traf­fic con­ges­tion, every­one want­ed to be among the first to inspect Phase 1 of the Sec­ond Avenue Sub­way project, which extend­ed the line by three impres­sive­ly mod­ern, airy col­umn-free sta­tions.

(The mas­sive drills used to cre­ate tun­nels and sta­tions at a far greater depth than the IRT line, were left where they wound up, in prepa­ra­tion for Phase 2, which is slat­ed to push the line up to 125th St by 2029. (Don’t hold your breath…)

The design­ers of the sub­way placed a pre­mi­um on aes­thet­ics, as evi­denced by the domed Art Nou­veau IRT entrance kiosks and beau­ti­ful per­ma­nent plat­form signs.

From the orig­i­nal mosaics to Beaux Arts bas relief plaques like the ones pay­ing trib­ute to the for­tune John Jacob Astor amassed in the fur trade, there’s lots of his­to­ry hid­ing in plain sight.

The mid-80s ini­tia­tive to bring pub­lic art under­ground has filled sta­tions and pas­sage­ways with work by some mar­quee names, like Vik Muniz, Chuck Close, William Weg­man, Nick Cave, Tom Otter­ness, Roy Licht­en­stein and Yoko Ono.

Wyet­zn­er also name checks graph­ic design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li who was brought aboard in 1966 to stan­dard­ize the infor­ma­tion­al sig­nage.

The white-on-black sans serif font direct­ing us to our desired con­nec­tions and exits now seems like part of the subway’s DNA.

Per­haps 21st-cen­tu­ry inno­va­tions like count­down clocks and dig­i­tal screens list­ing real-time ser­vice changes and alter­na­tive routes will too, one of these days.

If Wyet­zn­er is open to film­ing the fol­low-up view­ers are clam­or­ing for in the com­ments, per­haps he’ll weigh in on the new A‑train cars that debuted last week, which boast secu­ri­ty cam­eras, flip-up seat­ing to accom­mo­date rid­ers with dis­abil­i­ties, and wider door open­ings to pro­mote quick­er board­ing.

(Yes, they’re still the quick­est way to get to Harlem…)

Relat­ed Con­tent 

A Sub­way Ride Through New York City: Watch Vin­tage Footage from 1905

How the Icon­ic Col­ors of the New York City Sub­way Sys­tem Were Invent­ed: See the 1930 Col­or Chart Cre­at­ed by Archi­tect Squire J. Vick­ers

Design­er Mas­si­mo Vignel­li Revis­its and Defends His Icon­ic 1972 New York City Sub­way Map

The Sound of Sub­ways Around the World: A Glob­al Col­lec­tion of Sub­way Door Clos­ing Announce­ments, Beeps & Chimes

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A 3D Computer Animation of the Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham’s 18th Century Design for an All-Controlling Prison

in Architecture, Philosophy | February 16th, 2023

Near­ly two cen­turies after his death, the eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry util­i­tar­i­an philoso­pher and social reformer Jere­my Ben­tham — or most of him, any­way — still sits in state in the main build­ing of Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. For a time in the mid-twen­ty-tens, he was equipped with the Panop­ti­Cam, “an online cam­era that streams what Ben­tham sees while sit­ting in his cab­i­net at UCL.” That most every­one gets the joke behind its name speaks to the endur­ing rel­e­vance of one of Ben­tham’s ideas in par­tic­u­lar: the Panop­ti­con, “a prison designed so that a prison guard could look into all cells at any time, and ensure that pris­on­ers mod­i­fied their behav­ior for the bet­ter.”

In Ben­tham’s Panop­ti­con, many pris­on­ers could be mon­i­tored effec­tive­ly by just a few unseen guards. This accords, as Michel Fou­cault writes in 1975’s Dis­ci­pline and Pun­ish, with the prin­ci­ple that “pow­er should be vis­i­ble and unver­i­fi­able. Vis­i­ble: the inmate will con­stant­ly have before his eyes the tall out­line of the cen­tral tow­er from which he is spied upon. Unver­i­fi­able: the inmate must nev­er know whether he is being looked at any one moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so.” Fou­cault drew con­nec­tions between the Panop­ti­con and the com­plex, large-scale soci­eties that had devel­oped since Ben­tham’s day. Imag­ine if he’d lived to see the rise of social media.

In a series of posts by Phi­los­o­phy for Change, Tim Rayn­er takes up just such an exer­cise. “By mak­ing our actions and shares vis­i­ble to a crowd, social media expos­es us to a kind of vir­tu­al Panop­ti­con,” he writes. “This is not just because our activ­i­ties are mon­i­tored and record­ed by the social media ser­vice for the pur­pos­es of pro­duc­ing mar­ket analy­sis or gen­er­at­ing tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing.” But “the sur­veil­lance that direct­ly affects us and impacts on our behav­ior comes from the peo­ple with whom we share.” In the online Panop­ti­con, “we are both guards and pris­on­ers, watch­ing and implic­it­ly judg­ing one anoth­er as we share con­tent.” Rayn­er wrote these words more than a decade ago, but any­one who has expe­ri­enced life on social media then can hard­ly deny the par­al­lels with Ben­tham’s vision.

Far from improv­ing our behav­ior, how­ev­er, this con­stant online sur­veil­lance has in a fair few cas­es made it con­sid­er­ably less appeal­ing. What­ev­er the nature of its actu­al effects on those who inhab­it it, the Panop­ti­con is an unde­ni­ably pow­er­ful struc­ture, at least metaphor­i­cal­ly speak­ing. But we should remem­ber that Ben­tham intend­ed it to be a real, phys­i­cal struc­ture, one that could con­tain not just pris­ons but oth­er types of insti­tu­tions as well. Whether a Panop­ti­con has ever been whol­ly built to his spec­i­fi­ca­tions seems to be a mat­ter of debate, but we can see what one would look like in the 3D ren­der­ing by Myles Zhang at the top of the post: an appro­pri­ate medi­um, after all, in which to per­ceive an idea most ful­ly real­ized in the dig­i­tal realm.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Jere­my Bentham’s Mum­mi­fied Body Is Still on Dis­play – Much Like Oth­er Aging British Rock Stars

What Would Michel Fou­cault Think of Social Media, Fake News & Our Post Truth World?

Michel Fou­cault: Free Lec­tures on Truth, Dis­course & The Self (UC Berke­ley, 1980–1983)

On the Pow­er of Teach­ing Phi­los­o­phy in Pris­ons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Futurist Architectural Designs Created by Étienne-Louis Boullée in the 18th Century

in Architecture, Art, History | February 15th, 2023

If a painter is ahead of his time, his work won’t sell par­tic­u­lar­ly well while he’s alive. If an archi­tect is ahead of his time, his work prob­a­bly won’t exist at all — not in built form, at least. Such was the case with Éti­enne-Louis Boul­lée, who con­struct­ed few projects in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry in which he lived, almost none of which remain stand­ing today. The best Boul­lée devo­tees can do for a site of pil­grim­age is the Hôtel Alexan­dre in Paris’ eighth arrondisse­ment, which, though hand­some enough, does­n’t quite offer a sense of why he would have devo­tees in the first place. To under­stand that, one must look to Boul­lée’s unbuilt works, the most notable of which are intro­duced in the video from Kings and Things above.

“Paper archi­tect” iden­ti­fies a mem­ber of the pro­fes­sion who may design struc­tures pro­lif­i­cal­ly but sel­dom, if ever, builds them. It is not a desir­able label, espe­cial­ly in its impli­ca­tion of will­ful imprac­ti­cal­i­ty (even by archi­tec­tur­al stan­dards). But as prac­ticed by Boul­lée, paper archi­tec­ture became an art form unto itself: he left behind not just an exten­sive essay on his art, but volu­mi­nous draw­ings that envi­sion a host of neo­clas­si­cal build­ings as ambi­tious in his time as they were unfash­ion­able — and often, due to their sheer size, unbuild­able.

These includ­ed an updat­ed colos­se­um, a spher­i­cal ceno­taph for Isaac New­ton taller than the Great Pyra­mids of Giza, a basil­i­ca meant to give its behold­ers an impres­sion of the uni­verse itself, a roy­al library of near-Bor­ge­sian pro­por­tions, and even an actu­al Tow­er of Babel.

 

For Boul­lée, big­ger was bet­ter, an idea that would sweep glob­al archi­tec­ture a cen­tu­ry and a half after his death. By the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, the world had also come to accept a Boul­lée-like pref­er­ence for min­i­mal orna­men­ta­tion as well as his con­cep­tion of what his con­tem­po­raries jok­ing­ly termed archi­tec­ture par­lante: that is, build­ings that “speak” about their pur­pose visu­al­ly, and in no uncer­tain terms. (You can hear more about it in the video below, a seg­ment by pro­fes­sor Eri­ka Nagin­s­ki from Har­vard’s online course “The Archi­tec­tu­al Imag­i­na­tion.”) When Boul­lée designed a Palace of Jus­tice, he placed a cour­t­house direct­ly over a jail­house, artic­u­lat­ing “one enor­mous metaphor for crime over­whelmed by the weight of jus­tice.” This may have been a bit much even for the new French Repub­lic, but for those who appre­ci­at­ed Boul­lée’s work, it point­ed the way to the archi­tec­ture of the future — a future we would lat­er call mod­ern.

via Aeon

Relat­ed con­tent:

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

The Unre­al­ized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tions

What Makes Paris Look Like Paris? A Cre­ative Use of Google Street View

The Cre­ation & Restora­tion of Notre-Dame Cathe­dral, Ani­mat­ed

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

How to Draw Like an Archi­tect: An Intro­duc­tion in Six Videos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

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An Introduction to the World-Renowned Architect Zaha Hadid, “the Queen of the Curve”

in Architecture | February 13th, 2023

Zaha Hadid won the Pritzk­er Prize, archi­tec­ture’s most pres­ti­gious award, in 2004. She was then in her ear­ly fifties — prac­ti­cal­ly a school­girl by the stan­dards of her pro­fes­sion — and had only com­plet­ed four build­ings. Yet the Pritzk­er com­mit­tee already sus­pect­ed that she saw pos­si­bil­i­ties in the built envi­ron­ment, and per­haps entire dimen­sions, that oth­ers did not. Indeed, she would spend her remain­ing dozen years prov­ing them right, as evi­denced by the lega­cy of impres­sive struc­tures she left all across the world, from the Con­tem­po­rary Arts Cen­ter in Cincin­nati and the BMW Cen­tral Build­ing in Leipzig to the Lon­don Aquat­ics Cen­ter and the Guangzhou Opera House.

Liv­ing in Seoul, I myself have occa­sion every so often to pass through a Hadid build­ing: the Dong­dae­mun Design Plaza, which opened in 2013. Essen­tial­ly a col­lec­tion of shops and exhi­bi­tion spaces, it has become best known as a qua­si-pub­lic gath­er­ing place full of back­drops suit­able for Insta­gram pho­tog­ra­phy.

In its size, shape, and aes­thet­ic, the DDP stands well apart from its urban con­text, look­ing like a space­ship sent by an advanced alien civ­i­liza­tion to col­o­nize an old down­town gar­ment dis­trict. In that respect it’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Hadid’s work, which real­izes the kind of irreg­u­lar, unre­lent­ing­ly curvi­lin­ear forms prac­ti­cal­ly unknown in archi­tec­ture before her rise to its high­est lev­el of star­dom.

“In her build­ings, walls are nev­er quite ver­ti­cal, floors sel­dom remain flat for long, and the twain meet not in nine­ty-degree angles but, rather, in the kinds of curves one finds in skate­board parks,” writes the New York­er’s John Seabrook, pro­fil­ing Hadid in 2009. “There is no sin­gle Hadid style, although one can detect a water­mark in her build­ings’ futur­is­tic smooth­ness. Cer­tain themes car­ry through her use of mate­ri­als (glass, steel, con­crete), her lines (cor­ri­dors often trace flow­ing arabesque shapes, while roof struts make sharp Z‑shaped angles), her struc­tures (she favors col­umn-free spaces), and her sculp­tur­al inte­ri­ors and asym­met­ric façades.”

Such dis­tinc­tive designs — of build­ings as well as of fur­ni­ture, jew­el­ry, and oth­er con­sumer objects — earned Hadid the infor­mal title of “queen of the curve.” You can learn more about her reign and its last­ing influ­ence in these two video essays, one from Curi­ous Muse and the oth­er from The B1M. Like all the most inno­v­a­tive archi­tects, Hadid had visions real­iz­able only with, and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly influ­enced by, the tech­nol­o­gy of her time. “The idea is not to have any 90-degree angles,” she once said, and the devel­op­ment of advanced com­put­er-aid­ed design tools in the nine­teen-nineties made that idea a real­i­ty. In pur­su­ing that idea to its very lim­its, she took the most con­crete of all art forms and, improb­a­bly, made it abstract.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch 50+ Doc­u­men­taries on Famous Archi­tects & Build­ings: Bauhaus, Le Cor­busier, Hadid & Many More

The ABC of Archi­tects: An Ani­mat­ed Flip­book of Famous Archi­tects and Their Best-Known Build­ings

The World Accord­ing to Le Cor­busier: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Most Mod­ern of All Archi­tects

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Unrealized Projects of Frank Lloyd Wright Get Brought to Life with 3D Digital Reconstructions

in Architecture | February 7th, 2023

All images here by David Romero

From the hum­blest home ren­o­va­tor to the might­i­est auteur of sky­scrap­ers, every archi­tect shares the com­mon expe­ri­ence of not build­ing their projects. This is true even of Frank Lloyd Wright him­self: in his life­time he cre­at­ed 1,171 archi­tec­tur­al works, 660 of which went unre­al­ized. How those nev­er-built Wright designs would have fared in the phys­i­cal realm has been a top­ic of great inter­est for the archi­tec­t’s gen­er­a­tion upon gen­er­a­tion of fans.

But one lover of Wright’s work has gone well beyond spec­u­la­tion, cre­at­ing faith­ful, pho­to­re­al­is­tic 3D ren­der­ings of these nonex­is­tent struc­tures, a few of which you can see at the site of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion.

Notably, the dig­i­tal artist pay­ing such painstak­ing homage to this most Amer­i­can of all archi­tects hails from Spain. David Romero is the cre­ator of the site Hooked on the Past, a show­case of his var­i­ous archi­tec­tur­al ren­der­ings.

“The project start­ed in 2018, when the Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion com­mis­sioned Romero to ren­der some of the architect’s most ambi­tious works for its quar­ter­ly mag­a­zine,” writes Smith­son­ian’s Mol­ly Enk­ing. “Each series of images cor­re­sponds with a dif­fer­ent theme — like designs relat­ed to auto­mo­biles. Most recent­ly, Romero tack­led sev­er­al of Wright’s unre­al­ized sky­scraper projects for the foun­da­tion.”

Romero’s most ambi­tious under­tak­ing thus far has been his ren­der­ing of Broad­acre City, Wright’s design for an entire urban-rur­al utopia pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. “Mod­el­ing Broad­acre took me over eight months,” he tells the FLWF. “The vir­tu­al mod­el con­tains more than one hun­dred build­ings, of which all the exte­ri­or facades have been mod­eled, includ­ing their doors and win­dows. There also are one hun­dred ships, two hun­dred ‘aero­tors,’ 5,800 cars, and more than 250,000 trees in the vir­tu­al mod­el,” each made of “hun­dreds of thou­sands of three-dimen­sion­al poly­gons.”

Even though Wright left behind a fair­ly rich set of mate­ri­als doc­u­ment­ing his plans for Broad­acre City, Romero had to draw from oth­er sources both to fill out the sur­round­ing land­scape (Mid­west­ern, por supuesto) and to cre­ate a prop­er­ly “retro-futur­is­tic” ambi­ence. “A ref­er­ence that seemed espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant to me was the Dymax­ion Car by Buck­min­ster Fuller,” he says, “a design that has points in com­mon with Wright’s ideas.”

The near-fan­tas­ti­cal Broad­acre City would prob­a­bly have been unbuild­able at any point in his­to­ry, but oth­ers would also face seri­ous chal­lenges today: “For exam­ple, in the Trin­i­ty Chapel Wright designed beau­ti­ful access ramps with a sin­gle con­stant slope through­out its path. This design, per­fect­ly valid in 1958, would not meet today the require­ments of the ADA code and the design would lose the ele­gance of its sim­plic­i­ty.”

Romero has also brought to dig­i­tal life a range of Wright’s oth­er demol­ished or nev­er-built projects includ­ing the Thomas C. Lea House, the Ari­zona Capi­tol Build­ing, the Lake Tahoe Sum­mer Colony (fea­tur­ing cab­ins that appear to float in the water), the mas­sive Nation­al Life Insur­ance Build­ing, and the Uni­ver­sal Port­land Cement Co. Exhi­bi­tion Pavil­ion. Giv­en the work Romero and his col­lab­o­ra­tors (includ­ing no few fel­low enthu­si­asts with keen eyes for inac­cu­rate-look­ing details) have put in, Frank Lloyd Wright would sure­ly rec­og­nize more than a few of his own visions in the results — and in the project itself, some­thing of his own ambi­tion.

via Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine/Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Frank Lloyd Wright Designs an Urban Utopia: See His Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Broad­acre City (1932)

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Lost Japan­ese Mas­ter­piece, the Impe­r­i­al Hotel in Tokyo

Take 360° Vir­tu­al Tours of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Archi­tec­tur­al Mas­ter­pieces, Tal­iesin & Tal­iesin West

What Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unusu­al Win­dows Tell Us About His Archi­tec­tur­al Genius

Build Wood­en Mod­els of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Great Build­ing: The Guggen­heim, Uni­ty Tem­ple, John­son Wax Head­quar­ters & More

When Frank Lloyd Wright Designed a Dog­house, His Small­est Archi­tec­tur­al Cre­ation (1956)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How The Parthenon Marbles Ended Up In The British Museum

in Architecture, Art, History, Museums, Politics, Travel | February 3rd, 2023

Last month, we delved into a pro­pos­al to use dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy to clone the 2,500-year-old Parthenon Mar­bles cur­rent­ly housed in the British Muse­um.

The hope is that such uncan­ny fac­sim­i­les might final­ly con­vince muse­um Trustees and the British gov­ern­ment to return the orig­i­nals to Athens.

Today, we’ll take a clos­er look at just how these trea­sures of antiq­ui­ty, known to many as the Elgin mar­bles, wound up so far afield.

The most obvi­ous cul­prit is Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, who ini­ti­at­ed the takeover while serv­ing as Britain’s ambas­sador to the Ottoman Empire from 1798–1803.

Pri­or to set­ting sail for this post­ing, he hatched a plan to assem­ble a doc­u­men­tary team who would sketch and cre­ate plas­ter molds of the Parthenon mar­bles for the even­tu­al edi­fi­ca­tion of artists and archi­tects back home. Bet­ter yet, he’d get the British gov­ern­ment to pay for it.

The British gov­ern­ment, eying the mas­sive price tag of such a pro­pos­al, passed.

So Elgin used some of his heiress wife’s for­tune to finance the project him­self, hir­ing land­scape painter Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Lusieri — described by Lord Byron as “an Ital­ian painter of the first emi­nence” —  to over­see a team of drafts­men, sculp­tors, and archi­tects.

As The Nerd­writer’s Evan Puschak notes above, polit­i­cal alliances and expan­sion­ist ambi­tion greased Lord Elgin’s wheels, as the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain found com­mon cause in their hatred of Napoleon.

British efforts to expel occu­py­ing French forces from Egypt gen­er­at­ed good will suf­fi­cient to secure the req­ui­site fir­man, a legal doc­u­ment with­out which Lusieri and the team would not have been giv­en access to the Acrop­o­lis.

The orig­i­nal fir­man has nev­er sur­faced, and the accu­ra­cy of what sur­vives — an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of an Ital­ian trans­la­tion — casts Elgin’s acqui­si­tion of the mar­bles in a very dubi­ous light.

Some schol­ars and legal experts have assert­ed that the doc­u­ment in ques­tion is a mere admin­is­tra­tive let­ter, since it appar­ent­ly lacked the sig­na­ture of Sul­tan Selim III, which would have giv­en it the con­trac­tu­al heft of a fir­man.

In addi­tion to giv­ing the team entry to Acrop­o­lis grounds to sketch and make plas­ter casts, erect scaf­fold­ing and expose foun­da­tions by dig­ging, the let­ter allowed for the removal of such sculp­tures or inscrip­tions as would not inter­fere with the work or walls of the Acrop­o­lis.

This implies that the team was to lim­it itself to wind­fall apples, the result of the heavy dam­age the Acrop­o­lis sus­tained dur­ing a 1687 mor­tar attack by Venet­ian forces.

Some of the dis­lodged mar­ble had been har­vest­ed for build­ing mate­ri­als or sou­venirs, but plen­ty of good­ies remained on the ground for Elgin and com­pa­ny to cart off.

In an arti­cle for Smith­son­ian Mag­a­zine, Hel­lenist author Bruce Clark details how Elgin’s per­son­al assis­tant, cler­gy­man Philip Hunt, lever­aged Britain’s sup­port of the Ottoman Empire and anti-France posi­tion to blur these bound­aries:

See­ing how high­ly the Ottomans val­ued their alliance with the British, Hunt spot­ted an oppor­tu­ni­ty for a fur­ther, deci­sive exten­sion of the Acrop­o­lis project. With a nod from the sultan’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Athens—who at the time would have been scared to deny a Briton anything—Hunt set about remov­ing the sculp­tures that still adorned the upper reach­es of the Parthenon. This went much fur­ther than any­one had imag­ined pos­si­ble a few weeks ear­li­er. On July 31, the first of the high-stand­ing sculp­tures was hauled down, inau­gu­rat­ing a pro­gram of sys­tem­at­ic strip­ping, with scores of locals work­ing under Lusieri’s enthu­si­as­tic super­vi­sion.

Lusieri, whose admir­er Lord Byron became a furi­ous crit­ic of Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon mar­bles, end­ed his days believ­ing that his com­mit­ment to Lord Elgin ulti­mate­ly cost him an illus­tri­ous career as a water­col­orist.

He also con­ced­ed that the team had been “oblig­ed to be a lit­tle bar­barous”, a gross under­state­ment when one con­sid­ers their van­dal­ism of the Parthenon dur­ing the ten years it took them to make off with half of its sur­viv­ing trea­sures — 21 fig­ures from East and West ped­i­ments, 15 metope pan­els, and 246 feet of what had been a con­tin­u­ous nar­ra­tive frieze.

Clark notes that although Elgin suc­ceed­ed in relo­cat­ing them to British soil, he “derived lit­tle per­son­al hap­pi­ness from his anti­quar­i­an acqui­si­tions.”

After numer­ous logis­ti­cal headaches involved in their trans­port, he found him­self beg­ging the British gov­ern­ment to take them off his hands when an acri­mo­nious divorce land­ed him in finan­cial straits.

This time the British gov­ern­ment agreed, acquir­ing the lot for £35,000 — less than half of what Lord Elgin claimed to have shelled out for the oper­a­tion.

The so-called Elgin Mar­bles became part of the British Museum’s col­lec­tion in 1816, five years before the Greek War of Inde­pen­dence’s start.

They have been on con­tin­u­al dis­play ever since.

The 21st-cen­tu­ry has wit­nessed a num­ber of world class muse­ums rethink­ing the prove­nance of their most sto­ried arti­facts. In many cas­es, they have elect­ed to return them to their land of ori­gin.

Greece has long called for the Parthenon mar­bles in the British Muse­um to be per­ma­nent­ly repa­tri­at­ed to Athens, but thus­far muse­um Trustees have refused.

In their opin­ion, it’s com­pli­cat­ed.

Is it though? Lord Elgin’s ulti­mate moti­va­tions might have been, and Bruce Clark, in a bril­liant nin­ja move, sug­gests that the return could be viewed as a pos­i­tive strip­ping away, atone­ment by way of get­ting back to basics:

Sup­pose that among his mix­ture of motives—personal aggran­dize­ment, rival­ry with the French and so on—the wel­fare of the sculp­tures actu­al­ly had been Elgin’s pri­ma­ry con­cern. How could that pur­pose best be served today? Per­haps by plac­ing the Acrop­o­lis sculp­tures in a place where they would be extreme­ly safe, extreme­ly well con­served and superbly dis­played for the enjoy­ment of all? The Acrop­o­lis Muse­um, which opened in 2009 at the foot of the Parthenon, is an ide­al can­di­date; it was built with the goal of even­tu­al­ly hous­ing all of the sur­viv­ing ele­ments of the Parthenon frieze…. If the earl real­ly cared about the mar­bles, and if he were with us today, he would want to see them in Athens now.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art Restores the Orig­i­nal Col­ors to Ancient Stat­ues

Robots Are Carv­ing Repli­cas of the Parthenon Mar­bles: Could They Help the Real Ancient Sculp­tures Return to Greece?

John Oliver’s Show on World-Class Art Muse­ums & Their Loot­ed Art: Watch It Free Online

Take a Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Tour of the World’s Stolen Art

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Immersive, Architectural Tour of New York City’s Iconic Grand Central Terminal

in Architecture, History, Travel | January 27th, 2023

New York­ers can be a mad­den­ing­ly closed-mouth bunch, self­ish­ly guard­ing our secret haunts lest they be over­run with new­com­ers and tourists…

But there’s not much we can do to deflect inter­est from Grand Cen­tral Teminal’s whis­per­ing gallery, a wild­ly pop­u­lar acoustic anom­aly in the tiled pas­sage­way just out­side its famous Oys­ter Bar.

So we invite you to bring a friend, posi­tion your­selves in oppo­site cor­ners, fac­ing away from each oth­er, and mur­mur your secrets to the wall.

Your friend will hear you as clear­ly as if you’d been whis­per­ing direct­ly into their ear…and 9 times out of 10, a curi­ous onlook­er will approach to ask what exact­ly is going on.

Ini­ti­ate them!

Shar­ing secrets of this order cul­ti­vates civic pride, a pow­er­ful force that Jacque­line Kennedy Onas­sis har­nessed when devel­op­ers threat­ened to obscure Grand Central’s beau­ty with a tow­er­ing addi­tion designed by Mod­ernist archi­tect Mar­cel Breuer.

Onas­sis wrote to May­or Abra­ham Beame in 1975, hop­ing to enlist him in the fight to spare mid­town Manhattan’s jew­el from an affront that the Land­marks Preser­va­tion Com­mis­sion called an “aes­thet­ic joke:”

Is it not cru­el to let our city die by degrees, stripped of all her proud moments, until there is noth­ing left of all her his­to­ry and beau­ty to inspire our chil­dren? If they are not inspired by the past of our city, where will they find the strength to fight for her future?

The Supreme Court sealed the deal in Grand Cen­tral’s favor in Penn Cen­tral Trans­porta­tion Co. vs. New York City, a (par­don the pun) land­mark deci­sion that ensured future gen­er­a­tions could dis­cov­er  the Beaux-Arts treats his­to­ri­an Antho­ny Robins, author of Grand Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal: 100 Years of a New York Land­mark, divulges above.

Hope­ful­ly, you’ll be inspired to bud­get a few extra min­utes to hunt for Cadu­cei and Van­der­bilt fam­i­ly acorns next time you’re grab­bing a Metro-North com­muter train.

(Amtrak’s long dis­tance lines oper­ate out of Penn Sta­tion…)

Spend some time in Grand Cen­tral’s icon­ic Main Con­course.

Gaze up toward the great arched win­dows to see if you can catch a tiny human fig­ure behind the glass bricks, pass­ing along one of the high up hid­den cat­walks con­nect­ing office build­ings anchor­ing Grand Cen­tral’s cor­ners.

Per­haps you’ll be privy to some intrigue near the famous four-sided clock, a time-hon­ored ren­dez-vous spot that’s appeared in numer­ous films, includ­ing The God­fa­ther, Men in Black, and North by North­west.

Admire the upside down and back­wards con­stel­la­tions adorn­ing the vault­ed ceil­ing, mar­veling that it not only took five men — archi­tect Whit­ney War­ren, artist Paul Helleu, mural­ist J. Mon­roe Hewlett, painter Charles Bas­ing, and astronomer Harold Jaco­by — to get it wrong, their celes­tial boo-boo has been embraced dur­ing sub­se­quent ren­o­va­tions.

If your wal­let’s as fat as a Park Avenue swell’s, head to the Camp­bell Apart­ment atop the West Stair­case. For­mer­ly the pri­vate office of Jazz Age financier, John W. Camp­bell, it’s now a glam­orous venue for blow­ing $20 on a mar­ti­ni.

(Hot tip — that same $20 can fetch you six­teen Long Island Blue Points dur­ing Hap­py Hour at the Oys­ter Bar.)

As for the East Stair­case, near­ly 100 years younger than its seem­ing fra­ter­nal twin across the Concourse’s mar­ble expanse, that one leads to an Apple Store.

Browse var­i­ous options for Grand Cen­tral Ter­mi­nal guid­ed and self-guid­ed tours here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Archi­tect Breaks Down Five of the Most Icon­ic New York City Apart­ments

A Whirl­wind Archi­tec­tur­al Tour of the New York Pub­lic Library–“Hidden Details” and All

An Archi­tect Demys­ti­fies the Art Deco Design of the Icon­ic Chrysler Build­ing (1930)

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Mystery Finally Solved: Why Has Roman Concrete Been So Durable?

in Architecture, History | January 20th, 2023

Image by Ben­jaminec, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Rome may not have been built in a day, but it was built to last — or at least its con­crete was, giv­en that the pieces of the Roman Empire that have stood to our time, in one form or anoth­er, tend to have been built with it. That mate­r­i­al has proven not just durable but endur­ing­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, hold­ing a great deal of not just his­tor­i­cal inter­est but tech­ni­cal inter­est as well. For ancient Roman con­crete appears to out­last its much more tech­ni­cal­ly advanced mod­ern descen­dants, and the com­plex ques­tion of why is one we’ve fea­tured more than once here on Open Cul­ture. Just this year, researchers at MIT, Har­vard, and lab­o­ra­to­ries in Italy and Switzer­land have found what seems to be the final piece of the puz­zle.

“For many years, researchers have assumed that the key to the ancient concrete’s dura­bil­i­ty was based on one ingre­di­ent: poz­zolan­ic mate­r­i­al such as vol­canic ash from the area of Poz­zuoli, on the Bay of Naples,” writes MIT News’ David L. Chan­dler. “Under clos­er exam­i­na­tion, these ancient sam­ples also con­tain small, dis­tinc­tive, mil­lime­ter-scale bright white min­er­al fea­tures.”

Pre­vi­ous­ly assumed to be noth­ing but imper­fec­tions in the process or the mate­ri­als, these “lime clasts,” in light of this most recent research, con­sti­tute evi­dence of “hot mix­ing,” which involves heat­ing to a high tem­per­a­ture ingre­di­ents includ­ing quick­lime (or cal­ci­um oxide), a pur­er and more reac­tive form of lime.

Under­go­ing hot mix­ing, “the lime clasts devel­op a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly brit­tle nanopar­tic­u­late archi­tec­ture, cre­at­ing an eas­i­ly frac­tured and reac­tive cal­ci­um source” that “could pro­vide a crit­i­cal self-heal­ing func­tion­al­i­ty.” In prac­tice, this means that “as soon as tiny cracks start to form with­in the con­crete, they can pref­er­en­tial­ly trav­el through the high-sur­face-area lime clasts. This mate­r­i­al can then react with water, cre­at­ing a cal­ci­um-sat­u­rat­ed solu­tion, which can recrys­tal­lize as cal­ci­um car­bon­ate and quick­ly fill the crack, or react with poz­zolan­ic mate­ri­als to fur­ther strength­en the com­pos­ite mate­r­i­al.” Here we have a con­vinc­ing expla­na­tion of the reac­tions that, in ancient Roman con­crete, “auto­mat­i­cal­ly heal the cracks before they spread.”

No such self-heal­ing hap­pens in mod­ern con­crete, the pro­duc­tion of which has not involved quick­lime for a very long time indeed — but per­haps it could once more. Dur­ing their research process, writes Dezeen’s Rima Sabi­na Aouf, the team “pro­duced sam­ples of hot-mixed con­crete using both ancient and mod­ern for­mu­la­tions, cracked them, and ran water through the cracks. With­in two weeks, the cracks had healed and water could no longer flow through, while iden­ti­cal con­crete blocks made with­out quick­lime nev­er healed.” Such find­ings “could help increase the lifes­pan of mod­ern con­crete and there­fore mit­i­gate the noto­ri­ous envi­ron­men­tal impact of the mate­r­i­al,” and the researchers “are now work­ing to com­mer­cial­ize their more durable con­crete for­mu­la.” Even in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, the build­ing indus­try could well ben­e­fit by doing as the Romans did.

via MIT News

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did the Romans Make Con­crete That Lasts Longer Than Mod­ern Con­crete? The Mys­tery Final­ly Solved

How to Make Roman Con­crete, One of Human Civilization’s Longest-Last­ing Build­ing Mate­ri­als

How Did Roman Aque­ducts Work?: The Most Impres­sive Achieve­ment of Ancient Rome’s Infra­struc­ture, Explained

How the Ancient Romans Built Their Roads, the Life­lines of Their Vast Empire

The Beau­ty & Inge­nu­ity of the Pan­theon, Ancient Rome’s Best-Pre­served Mon­u­ment: An Intro­duc­tion

Roman Archi­tec­ture: A Free Course from Yale

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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