Chapter 12 The 1980s
The new decade opened on a note of optimism, at least in some quarters. Perhaps the change to 1980 from the date of 1979 with its legacy of the fiscal crisis made some people think that the worst was in the past. It probably was, despite the long-term consequences of the city’s monetary problems. In the former armory building at 529-5423 West, philanthropists established the All Stars program in 1981 to interest teenagers from modest backgrounds in theatrical careers. This program suggested hope for the area as well as for the young beneficiaries. Farther east, Donald Trump crowed that when he opened the doors of the Grand Hyatt Hotel in September 1980, he could charge $115 for a single room but by July 1987 the price had risen to $175 with even more guests. (Art of the Deal p. 72) This meant prosperity not just for him and his business partners; it also indicated that increasing numbers of guests could pay these high prices, that more of them wanted to visit Forty-second Street, that public perception of New York City had changed, that the City’s business heart had not been permanently attacked, and that the heart might become larger and healthier. Perhaps the movie musical “42nd Street,” --turned into a successful Broadway musical that ran from 1980 to 1989-- helped to make the street seem more accessible to respectable folk. The new Harley Hotel benefited from increased tourism in midtown and the new Philip Morris Building added novelty, offices, and museum displays when both buildings were completed in 1981. (NYT 7 26 1981, III pp. 1, 17).
The Harley, named for its owner, Harry Helmsley and his wife Leona, led observers to notice Mr. Helmsley’s plans for Tudor City. He did not easily give up his ambition to build on the enclave’s open spaces, an idea that had partly motivated his purchase of the property at the start of the 1970s. The parklike open spaces had been zoned separately and were therefore not legally intrinsic to the project’s overall plan. He even began to excavate in the north park. (Daniel W. Lehman, ‘Stein Stops Helmsleazy,” Community Herald March 6, 1981, pp. 9-10) Only after several years could the tenants, the local Community Board, and various other opponents thwart his proposals.
His most outrageous idea was to leave the spaces open in exchange for the larger city-owned playground site across First Avenue. On the East River, the site offered excellent views of the then low-rise shoreline opposite, and the United Nations complex to the north, although a Consolidated Edison power plant occupied land to the south and the bulky polygonal ventilation tunnel terminal adjoined the playground at the east. The FDR Drive carried a great deal of traffic that emitted pollution. But a huge apartment house there might draw tenants who could pay well for the desirable views. The building itself, though, threatened to block existing views enjoyed by tenants at the south end of Tudor City. The idea of the City donating a large public playground to a private developer in exchange for preserving smaller half-hidden parks struck many people as outrageous. At last enlisting Mayor Koch, Parks Commissioner Gordon Davis, who had steadfastly resisted a private takeover of City property, joined City Council members, civic organizations, and the tenants in opposing the landlord’s plans. They created so many planning delays--including lawsuits finally decided in October 1984--that the Helmsley interests sold the property in 1985 to Philips International and Time Equities, whose principals expected to turn the complex into cooperative rather than rental apartments, and did so.
(Samuel Tudor City, pp. 132-141; see also NYT 6 6 1980, p. A27, For Donald Trump’s marginal engagement with negotiations, see Lehman, op. cit. p. 10. For further background, idem, “Will City Trade Pucks for Parks?” Community Herald April 27, 1979, p. 2. Articles in the New York Times followed the situation for years. The local chapter of the American Institute of Architects approved moving the playground and building a lower structure on the entire playground site to preserve the view of the United Nations Secretariat,” Eric Gushow,” Questionable Futures,” Oculus 42 #5, Feb. 1981, p.7 with the text of the AIA’s presentation.)
The tenants and their allies sought further protection from drastic change by successfully petitioning for Tudor City and some adjacent properties, including the Church of the Covenant, to become a Historic District under the auspices of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. This made possible the transfer of stewardship over the open spaces to the Trust for Public Land. As part of the negotiation, the new owners obtained a tax break by donating the open spaces to the non-profit Trust, and from 1987 onward, to Tudor City Greens, a non-profit group formed by tenants. When the real estate market and overall economy slowed in 1989 until 1994, some co-op prices fell and Time Equities had to accept much lower prices for some of its units to meet its own obligations for mortgage payments, taxes, utility bills, and staff salaries.
(Samuel ibid pp. 141-144 with further citations; NYT 5 8 1988, pp. B1, B4. Tudor City Historic District Designation Report, May 17, 1988, Designation List 203 LP-1579. See also Andrew Dolkart’s illustrated summary of the history, “Tudor City,” Metropolis 7 #2, Oct. 1987, pp. 98-101)
To the west, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, several changes occurred, some more visible than others. The Silverstein real estate organization, recent purchasers of 11 West as we have seen, worked with Tishman Speyer to install the first co-generation system in a Manhattan skyscraper. Steam left over from generating electricity could also heat the building, to avoid wasting warming power. Co-generation later became more common. The new owner rebuilt the interior. Cleaning the exterior made evident that something had happened to the skyscraper.
(Interview with Larry Silverstein by Michael Stoler, www.YouTube.com/watch?v=24acUJGJgUI accessed 6 27 2020)
Just west of the sloping Grace Building, at the corner of Sixth Avenue, the Nickerson Organization, developers and site owners since the mid-nineteenth century, re-clad the low building built originally in 1906 and raised by eight floors in 1932. It was valuably bulky, having initially antedated the 1916 zoning rules, although the interiors had only eight-foot ceilings, not the taller ones common after business buildings were erected to include air-conditioning ducts and other modern fixtures. By 1978, when investigation of its condition began, inspectors discovered damage especially to the roof, but since the building was sound enough to be reused, it could be repaired and made to look up to date. A two-story mechanical bulkhead placed on the roof, and interior repairs by Hoffmann Architects took care of physical problems, while by 1984 Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects re-clad the structure and filled in the light courts that had been required before the advent of air-conditioning.
(Fig. 1. Bryant Park Building, 1100 Sixth Avenue. Kohn Pedersen Fox. 1984. Photo: Author 2016)
The architects designed small panes of green glass set in aluminum frames above the street level where shopfronts were framed in granite. The glass, colored and reflective, mitigated heat absorption and the consequent environmental load. At the center of each bay of the office floors, the shop window, a horizontal rectangle, had identifying signs above it, against a black base shaped like an inverted T. These solid forms clashed with the visually lightweight walls above them, but that was hard to notice as one browsed in the shop windows. Because of the greater revenue to be expected from shops on Forty-second Street, the building entrance opens on Sixth Avenue. After these changes were made, few people would recognize the origin of the building.
(http://www.hoffarch.com/projects/home-box-office/ accessed 8 8 2021; https://newyorkyimby.com/2019/10/new-rendering-revealed-for-1100-avenue-of-the-americas-curtain-wall-in-midtown.html accessed 8 8 2021; http://wikimapia.org/22175578/Bank-of-America-Tower-Annex accessed 8 8 2021; NYT 5 4 1980, pp. 1, 4. https://nypost.com/2018/03/19/the-most-ingenious-real-estate-deals-in-new-york-city/ accessed 12 12 2024.)
It was more important for the future of the street to make improvements west of Sixth Avenue. The Bush tower gained a new lease on life thanks to Lavoisier Properties Corporation based in the Netherlands Antilles that bought it in 1981. After 1983, it was managed by the Dalloul family, originally Lebanese. The latter formed a company called American Properties that remodeled much of the interior and cleaned the exterior, commissioning architectural work by the Gruzen Partnership. In October 1988, the Bush tower and the Knickerbocker building became New York City landmarks, By this time, they were seen as desirable relics.
At Broadway, Harry Helmsley and other investors including David Baldwin were converting the Knickerbocker’s office into apartments, as the offices were suffering from reduced demand. Architect Frank Farinella designed the new interiors. The building gained prestige from its placement on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, and later, from its Landmark designation. During this decade, as the market for offices recovered, the apartments were rented as showrooms and studios that were convenient for the garment companies on blocks to the south.
Nearly futile attempts were made to improve what could be improved on the troubled 200 West block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, where the Kaufman Management Company bought the Candler Building from the Empire Savings Bank in 1980. The new owners had architects draw plans to clean and restore the exterior and renovate the service systems inside. In the previous year, the bank had sold the Candler’s east wing to Leonard Clark, who remodeled its façade; the west wing had been sold earlier to the owner of the Harris Theater. The Candler Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, an optimistic gesture.
(Obituary for Felix Rohatyn NYT 12 15 2019, p. A29; Corso Hotel Collection, NYHS, s.v. Knickerbocker. NYT 2 10 1980, p. R2. By 1984, the Candler Building was the property of Michael Lazar, a former city official. His connections paid off, as described by Robert Neuwirth, “UDC & the New Pornography: Megaprofits in Times Square,” Talking Turkey #4, Oct. 18-31, 1984, pp. 1, 3-4; the same article has much additional information about planning in the area in the mid-1980s, personalities, dubious transactions, etc.)
Another ray of light shone briefly on the next block, where at Eighth Avenue, the Rialto Theater stopped showing adult films in February 1980 and became home to five musicals between l980 and 1982. It also added some new studios to its television broadcasting facilities on the floors above.
(wrauffer on Feb. 25, 2004 at 5:16 pm comment to Christopher Gray, “Streetscapes: The Rialto Theater”, NYT 7 19 1987, accessed 2 1 2020)
Across the street and to the west, the Port Authority’s architects and contractors were finishing work on the terminal building’s extension to Forty-second Street. Group Health Insurance sold the McGraw-Hill Building in 1980 to a joint venture between a real estate firm, Newmark & Company, and the Kaufman Management Company. The new owners hired the architectural firm of Warner Burns Toan & Lunde to develop plans in association with Valerian Rybar, an industrial designer and his partner Jean-François Daigre. The owners installed automatic elevators to replace attended ones, and the designers redid the lobby ceiling in polished enameled steel while using the original principal colors of green and black.
(Fig. 2. McGraw-Hill Building lobby as revised by Valerian Rybar and Jean-Francois Daigre c 1981 Photo: artdeco.org)
After the installation of air-conditioning, they replaced unobtrusive ceiling lamps with new larger ones in a neo-Art Deco style, and invented geometric designs for the ceiling, but left alone some enameled steel surfaces of the lobby, under reflective panels. Group Health planned to stay in the building for fifteen years, expecting brownstone renovations nearby, landscaping on the block, and greater attention to policing in the area. All that would require patience.
Some tenement remodeling took place, as at 578 Ninth Avenue in l988, with rent-stabilized units and restaurant space on the ground floor. In another remodeling at 432-436 West, at the Douglas Fairbanks Theater, Hardy, Holzman, Pfeiffer with Mayers & Schiff finished a second phase of work in 1982. Stephen Antonakos, an artist who used neon light as his medium, installed “Neon for 42nd Street” at 440 West. Five stories of red arcs with blue behind them formed fragments of a spiral that drew attention away from the condition of the building behind it. Although the building was later demolished, the work of art was placed into safe storage and awaits reinstallation on a suitable site.
(Fig. 3. Stephen Antonakos, “Neon for 42nd Street” 440 West 42nd Street, 1981. Photo: Copyright Stephen Antonakos Studio LLC. Photograph by Greg Heins, Boston. Courtesy Naomi Antonakos.)
The chief remodeling project occurred after 1979, when the Federal Government sold the Armory at 529-543 West. The buyer quickly sold the building--or rather, the two contiguous buildings that formed the whole--to Lewis Futterman. principal of the Next City Corporation. Not long before, he had left a successful rock-and-roll record production company to enter the real estate field and was both unconventional enough and imaginative enough to see the potential of this building. In 1981, a Zoning Resolution revision allowed commercial buildings to be converted to residential use without regard to normal bulk regulations if certain criteria were met, and although this building had most recently been a government facility, its original owner in 1912 was commercial. A large sign still identifying it as a Lane Bryant warehouse had remained until the Second World War.
In 1981 and 1982, architects Rothzeid Kaiserman & Thomson built three floors on top of the original six and divided the resulting eight upper floors into cooperative lofts, open-plan units, studios, and one- and two-bedroom apartments. Enticements included units with wood-burning fireplaces, large windows, solid oak kitchens and terra cotta floors, large closets and bathrooms, a roof garden, and permission to use the sports center at Manhattan Plaza. (Display ad, NYT 6 16 1983, p. R4.) According to Lisa W. Foderaro in the New York Times, the owner at first sold the apartments for about $125 a square foot, but as the building filled, the price went up to about $200 and by 1987, to the $300 range.
Several other investors proved willing to buy and remodel existing buildings in the Hell’s Kitchen area, which developers preferred to call Clinton in order to attract young professional tenants. They created what Dee Wedemeyer of the New York Times characterized as “hybrids of the apartment with lots of services and conventional space and the loft with unusual space and few services. One builder calls it the ‘luxury-loft market.’”
(NYT 8 4 1981, p. B4; 5 2 1982, pp. R1, R 14. Midtown Proposal, ULURP No. 170186 ZRM Manhattan, Municipal Art Society Comments Regarding the Greater East New York, written February 1, 2017, 4:38 pm accessed on Municipal Art Society site Feb. 24, 2017; NYT 9 13 1987, pp. R9, R 22. Mr. Futterman had expressed interest in redeeming the Flagg tenements from unscrupulous landlords but delays in expelling them prevented his intervention; see Baldwin, in City Limits, op. cit.; For renaming Hell’s Kitchen, see NYT 4 21 2002, XIV p. 4.
On the far west side, the pioneers in development included the Macklowe Organization which hired architect Hugh Hardy, a principal at Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, to design the exterior of Riverbank West Apartments between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues. Its address is given as 550-560 West Forty-third Street because its entrance is there at the rear of a courtyard with a driveway and trees, but the building stretches east and south, from the corner of Eleventh Avenue to 551-569 West Forty-second Street. The 42nd Street Redevelopment Corporation sold old seventy-five percent of the site to Macklowe, retaining the rest.
(Fig. 4. Riverbank West. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, SLCE. 1987. Forty-second Street front. Photo: Author 2023)
(Fig. 5. Riverbank West, view from west. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, y SLCE, 1987. Photo: Author 2018),
By the mid-1980s, when this building was initiated, the zoning at that site allowed buildings with a 10 FAR (floors-to-area ratio) which means total square feet equal to ten times the size of the lot. The site had previously been used for parking. The rental apartments fill a forty-five-story building. Riverbank West rests its reinforced concrete structure on a foundation of piles because soil and water conditions near the river did not allow the usual excavation. At this time, chemical additives called superplasticizers or high range water reducers, and more advanced pumps made high-strength concrete possible for tall structures. The building’s symmetrical design culminates in recessed forms, first in three stories of balconied apartments and then high up to an art moderne-inspired water-and-mechanicals element. The latter continues the horizontal lines of the balconies and provides a more satisfying top than other, simpler designs of buildings in its class, evoking the streamlining and geometry of the 1930s. Recessed horizontal bands are anchored in place by verticals on the short sides, perhaps alluding to the top of the McGraw-Hill building; Hardy was known for including wittily varied historical elements elsewhere. The architects enlivened the facades with red and beige brick between the windows. Some lower surfaces received stripes and protruding elements to create patterns and interest at street level Part of the Forty-second Street side was later remodeled into a theater, and other parts included shops.
Schuman, Lichtenstein, Claman and Efron architects-- SLCE as they have been known since the late 1990s-- specialize in efficient space planning; they designed the interiors. Near the still unfashionable west end of Forty-second Street, Riverbank West had to offer inducements such as pantries in many of the kitchens, balconies or terraces in most apartments, a garage, a laundry, and a valet. The building was apparently the first in the area to include a swimming pool, a fitness center and a garage, as well as a concierge and doorman--staff members who became ubiquitous in expensive apartment houses nearby, providing both security and service. Three more apartment houses were under construction near the west end of Forty-second Street by the end of the decade. As early as September of 1987, the New York Times reported that a “Residential ‘Wall’ Rises Along West 42nd” Street.
(NYT 9 13 1987, pp. R9, R22. For images and plans, see Riverbank West for real estate websites by building name and/or address. See also https://w42st.com/post/riverbank-the-high-rise-that-transformed-the-far-west-side-sells-for-243-5m/ accessed 7 31 2025) https://www.cityrealty.com/nyc/midtown-wst/the-strand-500-west-43rd-street/review/8091 accessed 12 20 2021.)
The site adjacent to the east side of the Armory was proposed for development at this time, although the work did not go forward for nearly a decade; the modest low-rise at 523-527 West was finished in 1996. But the Strand at 500 West Forty-third Street went up quickly in 1988 on a site extending to Forty-second Street. Costas Kondylis, then one of the Philip Birnbaum Associates, designed a building with just over five hundred condominium units. Working with the developer Arun Bhatia, the architect designed a forty-one-story building set at an angle to Forty-second and Forty-third Streets and to Tenth Avenue. The idea, said the architect, was to avoid the ’canyon effect’ of a solid building wall. The orientation and design provide many corner windows that please tenants. Foliage around the three-colored bricks on the building’s face is no doubt appealing to residents who use the balconies that enliven the exterior. The original swimming pool has grown into a health and fitness club. Expected amenities are provided such as a lounge and party room, storage areas and laundries, a garage and a rooftop deck. The building might not have been isolated if the developer Larry Silverstein who bought the block to the west for $20 million had achieved his goals, but in fact it took well over a decade for him to do so.
(Fig. 6. The Strand. Costas Kondylis, 1988. Photo: Author, August 2025)
Beyond Riverbank West, at the riverbank itself, the New York Waterway company began to operate ferries to Weehawken, leasing its terminal from New Jersey Transit. The entrepreneur, Arthur Edward Imperatore, Sr., owner of a trucking company, provided free buses from his ferry dock near Thirty-ninth Street to take passengers across Forty-second Street to their offices farther east. Another positive element related to transportation was the demolition of the West Side Highway up to Forty-second Street between November 1981 and the following summer, thereby allowing more light and less visual blight on the west side.
(https://www.archpaper.com/2021/03/the-demolition-of-the-lobby-at-manhattans-mcgraw-hill-building-is-nearly-complete/ 3 11 2021 accessed 3 12 2021. For 578 Ninth Avenue, see Street Easy accessed 7 13 2021, map.displacementalert.org/#close 10 11 20 2019; for the theater: Gerard Wolfe, New York: A Guide to the Metropolis, New York, McGraw-Hill, 2nd ed., 1994. For the Armory, see https://streeteasy.com/building/the-armory accessed 8 24, 2019; http://www.nysonglines.com/42st.htm accessed 1 21 2019; for the ferry service, Wikipedia s.v. Weehawken Ferry, accessed 8 19 2016. For Riverbank West and nearby apartment houses, see also Stern et al., New York 2000 pp. 726-730)
Not all the news was good news. Aspects of public well-being suffered. While the City balanced its budget in 1980, it did so at a cost to employees, transit users, and public university students, among others affected by financial stringency. The AIDS calamity led the clergy at Holy Cross to initiate a monthly healing mass for people who were seriously ill and for their caregivers. When no one was looking, thieves stole objects from the church, homeless people used the interior as a toilet for lack of alternatives, and vandals desecrated the Host. The church then had to lock its doors. In other bad news, Michael Kwartler and Associates prepared a map showing that the blocks between Fifth and Lexington Avenues enjoyed 70% or less daylight.
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated parts of Grand Central’s interior in 1980. (Grand Central Terminal Interior Designation Report (LP-1099) prepared by Nancy Goeschel, NY, NYC LPC 1980) but the east side of the concourse remained defaced by commercial kiosks and by the world’s largest photograph. Officials closed the Forty-third Street exit because of water leaks and falling plaster, and they closed the waiting and locker rooms to prevent homeless people from using them. (Roberts, Grand Central, p 194)
Better news in 1983 had to do with the creation of Metro North by the states of New York and New Jersey, which paid Metro North to operate commuter trains. At this time, New York State began to give money for capital improvements to rail facilities. Carried out from 1983 to 1985, the efforts included repairs to the Terminal’s copper roof, achieved by architect Lee Harris Pomeroy working with Simpson, Gumpertz & Heger, and restoration of the incoming waiting room by Giorgio Cavaglieri. (NYT 4 21 1985, I p.37). The waiting room had been roofless for two years, a consequence of work being done at the adjacent Biltmore Hotel to turn it into an office building. Engineers including Stevenson, Value & Knecht took part in work in the Terminal from 1988 to 1992. Repairmen rehabilitated the porous deck over Park Avenue. A first attempt was made to clean the skylights that had been covered during the Second World War to obscure a potential target of air raids. (Roberts pp. 194-197. The Rambusch Decorating Company performed work in this connection and also improved Vanderbilt Hall). Indoors, La Salle Partners and William Jackson Ewing increased the number and quality of retail establishments and restaurants. Later, art installations including Red Grooms’ “Ruckus Manhattan,” and performances financed by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Arts for Transit program enlivened the interior. There were still problems of maintenance and the use of the waiting room by people who had nowhere else to sleep. Good news came in 1988 when Metro North hired the architectural firm of Beyer Blinder Belle to work on a comprehensive restoration of the Terminal, an achievement of the 1990s. Under the leadership of Peter Stangl, President of the Metro-North Commuter Railroad, the Terminal envisioned new access points from nearby buildings, new retail facilities, and the possibility of replacing mechanical equipment.
(For repairs and those responsible, see Roger Biles, The Fate of Cities: Urban America and the Federal Government, 1945-2000, Lawrence, KS, University Press of Kansas, 2011 pp. 210-214; and sources in Chapter 5)
The Grand Central Partnership business improvement group, organized in 1985, staged outdoor performances across the street in Pershing Square on either side of the spaces under the viaduct. The Partnership engaged architect Arthur Rosenblatt to remove the art deco former visitor center below the viaduct and replace it with a glass-walled café, still popular with tourists and for business people’s breakfasts.
(Fig. 7 a and b. Pershing Square Café under the Grand Central viaduct. Arthur Rosenblatt, ca. 1986. Photo: Author, 8 2025)
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The viaduct itself was designated a city landmark in 1980, spurring thoughts of proper maintenance. Charging ten cents for each square foot used by businesses in the area, the Partnership planned to clean and repair the viaduct and sidewalks, introduce plants, install lamps that had originally risen from the viaduct’s granite piers, and make other cosmetic improvements in coordination with the Terminal building’s restoration.
As we have seen, private enterprise fared somewhat better than the railroad did, but worse than in decades past. The men’s elegant clothier, Rogers Peet, closed at 16 East during this decade, having been there since 1912. More distressing was the sale of the far larger Bowery Savings Bank in 1987. It was a mutual savings institution, technically owned by those who deposited money there. It had been unable to continue paying depositors who had high interest-rate savings accounts because it did not earn enough income from old lower-rate mortgages. A rescue plan devised in 1985 had been insufficient to put the bank back into a secure position, although it benefited from experienced and eminent investors including Richard Ravitch, Lawrence A. Tisch, and Warren Buffett. The investors had supplied $100 million of their own money but received nearly $300 million in aid and guarantees from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The investors restored the bank’s profitability, while its losses became Federal income tax shelters from later gains. One of the bank’s lawyers said in 1987 that this was “apparently the first time that a group of executives gained control of a financial institution with the help of public money, then sold it at a profit.” (NYT 10 6 1987, pp. A1, D6)
Some companies moved away from midtown, being impatient for improvement on the west side despite the activity there. The ongoing travails of people housed at the Carter Hotel were notorious. The TraveLodge at 510 West had closed by 1989, by which time the building had become a shelter for homeless parents and children, and the subject of a suit over the facility’s failure to follow the law.
(https://www.google.com/books/edition/New_York_Court_of_Appeals_Record_and_Br/c2B5FVO3qtoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=new+york+court+of+appeals.+records+and+briefs.:74ny2d+933&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover accessed 8 22 2021)
Mobil Oil, among the larger firms to desert the city, left its metal-coated behemoth opposite Grand Central, with the owner, the Goelet family interests, granting a long-term lease to the Hiro Real Estate Company. The loss of the famous tenant, among other problems, prompted property owners east of Fifth Avenue to join a Business Improvement District established in mid-decade. The business leaders chose Daniel Biederman as president, borrowing him from his position at the Bryant Park restoration.
District officials allowed two shoeshine stands to serve customers against the New York Public Library’s parapet, but the police shooed other shoe-shiners away, and artists, too. Ai Weiwei, an artist who achieved prominence in the new millennium, spent ten years in New York in the 1980s and early 1990s, selling quick sketches of tourists. The artists tended to work in the evenings, when the police were less likely to chase them away.
Cleanup progress was being made at the park by then, despite the new problem of crack cocaine. Architects Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates went to work there after 1988, having prepared plans since 1983 for restaurants on a terrace immediately behind the Library on the institution’s property. Although that idea aroused disdain from people who opposed the idea of privatizing open space, others found it preferable to having homeless men relieve themselves against the Library’s back wall. Many civic amenity groups and the Library officials endorsed the proposals. (NYT 12 1 1983, pp.1, 17).
Among the most fortunate events during the 1980s was the installation of Dr. Vartan Gregorian as President of the New York Public Library from 1981 to 1989. Formerly President of the University of Pennsylvania, and later President of Brown University and then of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, this energetic historian revitalized the institution and the building. He found the Library in dire financial straits, unable to repair its great research building at Forty-second Street or care properly for its branches in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island. He mobilized generous donors, including Brooke Astor, Andrew Heiskell head of Time, Inc. (the incoming Library chairman) and Richard Salomon, a cosmetics executive (the outgoing chairman) as well as board members. He encouraged the public to contribute, too. The City Journal reported that the donor base rose from three thousand supporters in the early 1970s to over forty thousand ten years later. He engaged good architects-- Davis, Brody & Associates, and Giorgio Cavaglieri-- to create a master plan for the building’s restoration. By raising about $327 million from public and private sources during his tenure, he was able to oversee air-conditioning for the 800 linear miles of iron stacks that support the main reading room, open book storage areas under Bryant Park to keep as many books as possible available for on-site retrieval, double the open hours that had been cut drastically, and have the building cleaned.
The book storage area beneath the park, two stories tall and with 129,000 square feet of stacks, required a thirty-foot excavation in the middle of Bryant Park, with construction managed by Tishman Realty & Construction Co., Ltd. Use of the park was curtailed for just over one year, but the stack work was finished and the lawn re-seeded in the anticipated time frame. (For plans and debates in 1983 about remodeling Bryant Park: NYT 11 8 1981 p. 140; 12 1 1983, pp. 1, 17) Books that copied the former catalogue cards replaced dozens of card drawers. Computers appeared on the catalogue room tables. The grand vaulted entrance floor saw the conversion of accountants’ space into Gottesman Exhibition Hall. The main reading room, served by elevators from the book stacks, still awaited restoration when critic Paul Goldberger celebrated the already-achieved changes in May of 1986. In 1987, Davis, Brody finished restoring the glass-vaulted room at street level on the north side and improved it for public presentations, thanks to a gift from three generous sisters, and named for one of them, Celeste Bartos. Changes to the south court had yet to be made. But the work already done well deserved the critic’s celebratory prose.
(Fig.8 Celeste Bartos Forum. Davis Brody & Partners 1986. Photo Davis Brody & Partners)
(Gregorian obituary NYT 4 17 2021, p.A1; https://www.city-journal.org/html/new-york-public-library%E2%80%99s-uncertain-future-13606.html by Stephen Eide, Oct. 2013., Paul Goldberger, in NYT 5 13 1986, p 1. The architectural firm’s name became Davis Brody Bond (DBB) in 1990. Vartan Gregorian, The Road to Home, New York, Simon & Schuster, 2003; Andrew Heiskell, Ralph Graves, Outsider, Insider: An Unlikely Success Story, New York, Marian-Derian Press, 1998)
The Celeste Bartos Forum had been the overcrowded circulating collection before the former Arnold Constable department store diagonally across Fifth Avenue at Fortieth Street was converted to the Mid-Manhattan lending and open-shelf branch in 1981, replacing smaller premises at 8 East 40th Street. The Bartos Forum room had recently been used more for storage of furniture than for lending books. The sisters’ donations allowed its conversion to a spacious site for public lectures and events, and private ones after hours, where those in attendance sit—or dine and dance-- beneath a great elliptical glass vault held on elaborate cast-iron supports. The architects removed a roof that had occluded the light that would otherwise have entered the room. They installed new clear glass to allow natural daylighting but arranged for a shading system to darken the room for screen presentations. The supports were painted and gilded, and marble panels along the walls, formerly hidden, were cleaned and revealed.
Reading matter of a different sort, available especially from Broadway toward the west, experienced a decline, partly because pornographic bookshops were being closed on various pretexts, and partly because there were now video cassette recordings and other technological sources of salacious material available to patrons who valued their privacy and could pay for it. But crime still abounded, and not just in so-called massage parlors, some of which were shut down by Mayor Abraham Beame who used nuisance-abatement laws. The Mayor’s Office of Midtown Enforcement cut the number of sex-related businesses in the area from 121 in 1978 to 65 in 1983. (Reichl, p. 59). There were murders, rapes, and robberies. Sanitation costs were six times the city average on Forty-second Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. Under a theory popular at the time, Deputy Police Inspector Richard Mayronne deployed his staff in the Midtown South precinct to arrest low-level criminals who, if not punished, were thought to increase their criminal activity over time. William Stern, head of the Urban Development Corporation from 1983 to early 1985, attributed a steep drop in crime by the 1990s to this “revolution in crime-fighting.” This occurred despite the arrival of crack cocaine in 1986, when arrests increased in the overall Times Square area through 1989, but the City collaborated with respectable businesses and eager citizens and gradually cleaned things up.
(https://www.timessquarenyc.org/history-of-times-square accessed 10 15 2017 Margaret Knapp, Introductory Essay for section about Entertainment and Commerce in Inventing Times Square, p. 131 ff. William Stern: “The Unexpected Lessons of Times Square’s Comeback,” City Journal 33 #1, Autumn 1999, pp. 42 ff.)
The sanitizers had to work within constitutionally protected provisions for speech and publication but Mr. Stern used the excuse of economic blight to shut down some sex enterprises. He noted that by the end of the decade, the Corporation, known as the UDC, had taken title to two thirds of the project area on Forty-second Street, enabling the expulsion of many low-life businesses. But at a meeting on November 14, 1984, sponsored by the civic-minded City Club of New York, the Regional Plan Association, and the local chapter of the American Planning Association, people objecting to these plans pointed out that the benefits would go mainly to real estate firms and midtown office managers. They expected the garment industry to suffer from the merchandise mart, feared that high-school graduates or dropouts who were employed at local legitimate businesses would lose jobs, and noted that the plans had been conceived largely without public input, among other criticisms. (Author’s notes taken at that meeting.)
The UDC, a state entity, had entered the scene in 1981. It was meant in part to provide employment in blighted areas, among other purposes that included mitigating poverty, but it could directly promote property development by using eminent domain and tax incentives beyond the scope of local laws. A year earlier, city and state officials had signed a memorandum pertaining to the potential redevelopment of West Forty-second Street, related to the City’s desire to move development westward. The UDC could sign leases. It had some power to condemn buildings for economic blight but did not want to be seen as stifling free speech, even that of pornographers, thereby stimulating lawsuits. In practice, this reticence meant some protection for pornography that hindered respectable development. Normal businesses hesitated to move to the block unless enough sex-and-violence vendors were kept under control. The UDC, by then responsible for the cleanup, requested proposals to deal with the sites west of the Times tower. Sites directly adjacent to the tower were to be treated differently; they were the most conspicuous and were perceived as presenting the best opportunities for publicizing change from the West 30s to the West 50s.
(Reichl p 69-73, Neuwirth, op. cit., pp,.1, 3, 4). Lynne Sagalyn’s works are the preeminent studies of the problems and rehabilitation of the area.)
To make the UDC’s overall plan possible, the City Planning Commission created a Special Midtown Zoning District for that area in 1982, to affect the sites other than those adjacent to the Times tower. Zoning, the regulation of both building types and of amount built, remains the City’s principal planning tool, and can create specific rules for specific sites. The east side had become sufficiently dense, and in places, too dense or so it was considered at the time. Greater size would be allowed in the western district, but remaining theaters would be protected from demolition and observed by a Theatre Advisory Council that included theater owners, the Actors Equity union officials, lawyers, and producers. Under a new provision of 1983, a developer who owned a theater could transfer its air rights to a site nearby but not adjacent, as long as he maintained the theater building.
Protecting theaters had to do with solidifying a distinctive aspect of the area. Kent Barwick, Executive Director and then President of the Municipal Art Society, and later, Landmarks Preservation Commission chairman, recalled that no one valued the theaters sufficiently for their aesthetic worth or as places of entertainment--not always salacious or violent--or as sites of popular culture. Elite Manhattanites might not realize that respectable people came to the cinemas on Forty-second Street because many theaters were closing in the other boroughs owing to competition from television. Some entirely law-abiding young men just enjoyed vicarious thrills from the action films shown in those theaters. Prejudiced critics may have made assumptions about the patrons’ character based on surveys showing that about half the patrons for these films were African-American, and about a quarter each were Latino and White.
(Skyscraper Museum symposium: https://skyscraper.org/programs/sense-of place-reflections-on-preservation-in-times-square/” for video recording and written introduction. Carter Wiseman, “Broadway on the Block,” New York Magazine 6 12 1988, p.R9, see also 6 20 1983, pp. 66, 68-69.. Reichl p.66 for action film viewers.
Beyond protecting theaters, the City could condemn part of the area and replace the offensive elements owned by private businesses by coordinating efforts with the State government’s Urban Development Corporation. Traffic problems could be relieved by designating street lanes and preferential hours for exclusive bus traffic; this was done in 1982, although not all other drivers obeyed the rules. Theaters could be rehabilitated for Broadway productions, on the assumption that people would always want live performances. Condemnation, traffic management, and the unconventional but legal development measures made it possible to assemble building sites by eminent domain and to circumvent some of the City’s restrictive rules.
As these ideas became more widely understood, land prices rose dramatically. Everyone hoped that the city’s tax revenue would rise along with them. Until that happened, the emphasis on private development arranged by a small number of people raised objections from various quarters, not just from the pornographers who were about to be displaced. (Taylor, ed., Inventing Times Square, p. 363 n. 8)
. Developer George Klein of Park Tower Realty, with the Prudential Insurance Company of America which controlled the properties around the Times building, proposed to build office towers on four sites, and farther west, at Eighth Avenue, a merchandise mart for garments (but later for computers), and a hotel. His company was encouraged to do this by Governor Mario Cuomo, and by the promise of a $240 million tax abatement; he was the only developer to make serious proposals.
(https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/19950327/SUB/503270718/reviving-times-square-an-interview-with-rebecca-robertsondisney-saw-42nd-st-s-value-outsiders-do)
The Times Square subway station would be improved, as would some theaters. Already, some work had been done at the Eighth Avenue station. Individual shops had been closed at Times Square so as to expand sight lines, thereby promoting security. (NYT 6 18 1988, pp. 29, 31) Much of the redevelopment could be done under the UDC’s special powers to condemn properties deemed economically blighted, although that led eventually to over forty time-consuming and costly lawsuits by building and business owners who hoped that slowing progress on the project would end it. Rebecca Robertson, deputy director of the Manhattan office of the City Planning Department, dated the turning point for the redevelopment of the troubled block to April 1990, when the Prudential company made money available to condemn two-thirds of the site. The officials were then expected to approve four office buildings. That didn’t happen.
(Stern et al., New York 2000 and Sagalyn, op cit., have extensive information. Robertson in https://edc.nyc/article/transforming-42nd-creating-new-plan-rebecca-robertson accessed 1 23 2021 also: interview for Crain’s New York Business cited above,. For George Klein and early plans, see Jonathan Greenberg, “How to make it big in New York real estate,” Forbes, Oct. 8, 1984, pp. 43-44, 48-50. For the recommendations of the Regional Plan Association, see The Region’s Agenda XIV #4, Dec. 1984. For the Public Development Corporation, predecessor of today’s Economic Development Corporation, a city agency, see https://edc.nyc./project/42nd-street-development-project accessed 11 23 2022. For problems along the way, see Carter Wiseman, “Clouds Over Times Square,” New York Magazine, Oct. 20, 1986, pp. 101-102. For architects’ and planners’ reactions to the proposals, Oculus 46 #3, Oct.,1984)
George Klein’s family owned Barton’s candy shops, including those on Forty-second Street, so he had known the street long before making his proposal. He was aware of the potential for new construction at the intersection of Forty-second Street, Seventh Avenue, and Broadway which would make his name and company more prominent. Working with architects Philip Johnson as overall designer and Johnson’s partner, John Burgee, as architect, Klein presented building models and plans in 1984 for four towers at the Forty-second Street end of Times Square.
(Fig. 9. Proposed towers around Times building. Philip Johnson and John Burgee, New York magazine, April 2, 1984, Photo: Author’s collection.)
The mart and hotel received far less attention although the increasingly prominent firm of Kohn Pedersen Fox was asked to design the merchandise building. Johnson and Burgee and some of the government’s personnel referred to Rockefeller Center as the sort of place they had in mind. As critic Carter Wiseman put it, they saw the Center as “spotless, privately policed, and completely self-contained.” (Wiseman, “Brave New Times Square,” New York Magazine April 2, 1984, p. 34)
But this was not what people expected in this area. When the New York Times asked a journalist, an amenity-organization leader, a comedian, a pornography shop manager, and others about their vision of reform, they pleaded for something like the colorful, lively, sometimes sleazy Times Square of their memories. (NYT 10 6 1993, p. 23) The Klein group’s proposal aroused disdain from many others, too. Even William Stern later described the proposal as Neronian for its size and ambition. A proposal in 1985 for a Times Square Promenade to benefit anticipated pedestrian traffic also attracted little support.
(“The Unexpected Lessons of Times Square’s Comeback,” City Journal Autumn, 1999 https://www.city-journal.org/html/unexpected-lessons-times-square%E2%80%99s-comeback-12235.html accessed 7 4 2021. For the promenade, see the Regional Plan Association’s The Region’s Agenda XV #7, Oct.,1985, pp 1-2.)
Opprobrium centered on the four towers-- tall boxes of slightly varied height with monotonous windows interrupted by multiple-paned windows at the center or edges of each limestone-covered face. At the base of the buildings, several floors covered in dark reddish-brown granite, and tall entrance arches gave a street-level impression of unity, although the towers above were pale prisms set on the alien bases. There would also be some insignificant metal cresting at the summit. Each bulky tower had a different sloping mansard-like top, adorned with setback designs created by stepped windows, but as a group, the towers were similar. This area had been exciting for variety, not the near uniformity that Johnson and Burgee proposed. At night, the towers’ mansards would be lit, but the parts below would remain dark. The city’s planners had expected much more illumination, in keeping with the character of Times Square. Everyone concerned had anticipated livelier street life and careful design along guidelines prepared by the planning and architecture firm of Cooper, Eckstut Associates. But Johnson, Burgee, and the developers had not followed the recommendations. Theodore Liebman, president of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, said about an even later version of the proposal, “Apples were okayed, but we’re being asked to review oranges.” Herbert Sturz, by then Chairman of the City Planning Commission, countered that the original guidelines had been only advisory.
George Klein said that the changes, not yet confirmed, had been made to attract law, financial, and advertising firms that required large floor plates. He did not mention that a real estate analysis by Landauer Associates had predicted that those firms would soon move to the area anyway because of tax incentives provided in the overall area plan.
(Quote from Liebman:Wiseman, New York, as above, p. 33.; NYT 2 14 1986, p. E6).
The four-tower proposal also called for the demolition of the Times tower, which had not been a profitable investment for a long time. Its exterior had been transformed into a bland box. Nevertheless, it was iconic because it bore lively advertising signs and had a news zipper when publishers leased it, and it filled the angular intersection of Seventh Avenue and Broadway. It was iconic most of all because an illuminated ball drops from it each New Year’s Eve at midnight. To refresh the project, Mr. Klein engaged the innovative architectural firm of Venturi Rauch and Scott Brown. Robert Venturi proposed to replace the tower with a Big red Apple on a base. The humor of this play on the city’s nickname dissipated in a second. Almost everyone wanted the nearly empty Times Tower to stay where it was.
To help make sure that it did, and to force the New York Times to give the planning greater coverage, the Municipal Art Society staged a competition for a new Times tower design. It had no practical outcome, but the Times had to allow its architecture critic, Paul Goldberger, to discuss the competition and thus the various plans for the site and its vicinity. Among the competitors were influential professors of architecture, including George Ranalli at Yale and Raimund Abraham at Cooper Union. Students and young architects entered, too. Eight teams shared the financial prize. The distinguished jurors included academics Vartan Gregorian at the New York Public Library, sociologist Richard Sennett, historian Carl Schorske, and architects Henry N. Cobb, Jonathan Barnett, John Hejduk, Adele Naude Santos, landscape architect Hideo Sasaki, and stage designer Ming Cho Lee. The public tended to pay attention when respected people made news. A generation later, Carol Willis, director of the Skyscraper Museum, and her colleagues displayed at the museum a selection of entries, as well as related documents. By that time, the Tower--or its re-clad skeleton-- had been swathed in huge signs and bright lights. The illuminated news zipper was reactivated after 1986 when Newsday leased it until 1994 from an investment group that then owned the building.
(Barwick interview with Preservation Archive Project, cited in chapter 11; NYT 9 17 1984, p.B1. https://old.skyscraper.org/EXHIBITIONS/TIMES_SQUARE/mas.php); nyc-architecture.com accessed 2 1 2021 for the zipper: Lawrence I. Linksman was head of the investment group: https://untappedcities.com/2014/09/08/nyc-that-never-was-alternate-plans-for-times-square-1984-mas-competition/
Fortunately for the later history of Forty-second Street, but unfortunately for George Klein and his colleagues, potential sponsors for the hotel and mart disappeared with a downturn in the economy and stock market. There were also rivalries between City and State entities. (NYT 3 8 1984, p.16). As early as 1986, a large law firm decided not to rent offices there. A large bank bowed out in 1989. The financial recession in 1987 placed improvement of the street in limbo for a time but the Special Zoning District, meant to stimulate construction and rehabilitation on the west side, had already produced competitive buildings, as expected. Some theaters had been cleaned up by their owners. Without the City’s initiative, some of that action would not have occurred, but by then, the Johnson-Burgee towers were no longer essential to the reclamation of the district. These architects presented a redesign in 1989, with slimmer and somewhat livelier towers, but without the desired lights and visual connection to the historic character of the area. Moreover, during a recession, prospective tenants were scarce. The entire proposal died quietly.
(Rick Hampson, “Lights Dim for New York City’s West 42nd Street Redevelopment Project,” Los Angeles Times Sept. 2, 1992. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-09-20-mn-1874-story.html; Carter Wiseman, “Clouds Over Times Square,” New York Magazine, October 20, 1986, pp. 101-102.)
By 1985, the area to the west, with its small theaters had been sufficiently cleaned up to entice Jean-Claude Baker, one of performer Josephine Baker’s twelve adopted children, to open a restaurant in 1983, named for his mother.
(Fig. 10. Chez Josephine, between Theatre Row at left and Playwrights’ Horizon at right. Photo: Author, August 2025)
Chez Josephine evoked a traditional French bistro with a red, white, and blue awning and wicker-backed chairs outside, long stretches of tablecloths inside, and French posters and paintings on the brick walls. As the Daily News put it, Mr. Baker “caressed his guests’ cheeks and fed diners’ souls with tales of the old neighborhood and late nights from Paris to West Berlin.” Neither as dark nor as louche as the journalist suggested, it attracted a wide range of diners from the eccentric to the refined elderly who relished youthful memories of earlier French restaurants in the West 40s. But it was not east of Eighth Avenue, the area that preoccupied the city planners.
(Jason Sheftell New York Daily News Oct 4 2012 https://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/chez-josephine-offers-taste-authentic-new-york-article-1.1175278 accessed 7 5 2021;obituary of Jean-Claude Baker NYT 1 15 2015, p.B15. In 1998-2000 Mireille Miller painted lively figurative murals inside, apparently of French individuals and Mr. Baker’s friends)
There, progress toward rehabilitation proceeded slowly during the 1980s. Hugh Hardy and his colleagues in the architectural firm of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer studied the condition of the theaters and produced a detailed report in 1980 about the condition of each. Historian Mary C. Henderson had published her book, The City and the Theatre in 1973, which revealed the lamentable state of the buildings in contrast to the theaters’ earlier condition. Small theaters to the west had been initiated already, so there might be a chance to rehabilitate the rest, now that pornography and crime were gradually becoming less evident.
(The City and the Theatre; Clifton NJ, T. White, 1973; see also Henderson and Alexis Greene, The story of 42nd Street: the theaters, shows, characters, and scandals of the world's most notorious street, New York, Back Stage Books, 2008. For Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer’s report, see Chap.11, p. 15, note)
In 1982, the New York City Industrial Development agency issued bonds valued at $4 million in order to acquire the New Amsterdam Theater. (Chap..5 Figs. 26, 27) The intention was to support the theater redevelopment project under way on the block to the west and encourage its spread. The Nederlander family, prominent in the theater district, paid off the bonds after ten years and intended to repair the building, which proved impossible at the time. The family transferred the title to the State’s Urban Development Corporation. While the building awaited a savior, it continued to decay.
As if there weren’t enough problems to solve, Seymour Durst, patriarch of a real estate-owning family, erected a sign on his property in 1989 noting the United States’ national debt and each family’s share of it. This sign later found a home in One Bryant Park, a building on Durst-owned land. Until that building went up, the public was faced with rapidly changing numbers that suggested future calamity, albeit one that did not occur.
During the lull in business activity on Forty-second Street itself, new ideas germinated in Rebecca Robertson’s mind. She had been a senior planner for the rezoning of the Upper West Side during the mid-1980s and was now studying the potential reuse of the theaters. Later, she with the indispensable Cora Cahan and Gretchen Dykstra were the leaders of what became the renewed Forty-second Street, collaborating with Robert A. M. Stern architects and others to rehabilitate the decayed area.
By the end of the decade, new measurement methods had been created by the Fisher Marantz company to assess the luminosity of signs. Ms. Robertson understood that something brighter than Park Tower Realty’s barely-lit four towers was essential to reviving the allure of the area. She also noticed that the Gap clothing store near Broadway and a nearby McDonald’s in the sleazy zone had earned more income than any of their other branches. This implied potential, because people willing to spend money were doing just that in the area. These observations led in the 1990s to new ideas for the south end of Times Square. When the economy recovered sufficiently in the following decade, Ms. Robertson, Ms. Cahan, Ms. Dykstra, other individuals, and the Urban Development Corporation embraced some new ways to preserve--or at least evoke--the lively neon-lit Times Square of people’s memories.