Chapter 13 The 1990s

Rebecca Robertson’s ruminations had concrete results. They were intelligent responses to a business recession that started in the late 1980s and persisted into the early 1990s, with a real estate decline that was particularly noticeable in 1991. They were also intelligent responses to the overall condition of Forty-second Street, especially the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The Carter Hotel, bane of the hospitality industry, saw a woman thrown to her death from a window in 1987 and a clerk murder a colleague in 1999. These events framed the period in which improvement occurred.

In interviews, Ms. Robertson said that the stock market decline in 1987 gave everyone the chance to revise the original plan to remodel West Forty-second Street. Had prosperity persisted, the development pressures would have been less central to the area’s restoration, since in addition to office buildings north of Forty-second Street, residential development had already begun at the far west end of the street with Riverbank West and the Strand apartment houses. Towers proposed for the intersection at the Times building would probably have been built, although rentals in the block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues might have languished for some time. But there was indeed a recession and that changed the plans.

A judicial decision in April 1990 finally allowed the City to take title to about eight acres of land. The State’s Urban Development Corporation (later renamed Empire State Development Corporation) was the entity that had obtained the court decision that allowed condemnation of the block through the process of eminent domain. Commercial premises and a few apartments there were to yield to office buildings and the merchandise mart. Theaters were to be repaired, a hotel would rise, and the Times Square subway station would be refurbished with three quarters of its cost borne by the developers. The Johnson-Burgee towers were still scheduled.

Astute Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic at the New York Times, called the arrangement a “discredited bulldozer urban renewal” which was, moreover, flawed by having no major tenant for any of the proposed skyscrapers. As no Federal urban renewal money was available, the City would rely on the developers to pay for the Times Square site and repay through rent credits and future tax abatements. None of this worked as planned.

(Wikipedia s.v. Hotel Carter accessed 6.2.2020; for Rebecca Robertson, see https://edc.nyc/article/transforming-42nd-creating-new-plan-rebecca-robertson By NYCEDC 12 14 2018. For Robertson and other major participants in the restoration of 42nd Street, see https://edc.nyc/project/42nd-street-development-project accessed 7 1 2021, and “Reviving Times Square, Interview with Rebecca Robertson,” Crain’s New York Business, 3 25 2005; NYT 7 22 1990, p. B3; 12 4 2010, pp.A1, A18; 8 10 1992, p. B3. Huxtable quote: “Afterword” in Taylor, ed., Inventing Times Square. A chronology of the project is on page B2 of the New York Times 8 3 1992; the article starts on p. Al: Stern, in City Journal Autumn, 1999, pp. 42-53, For the full account of the entire process see Sagalyn, Times Square Roulette.)

At the start of the decade, no one was building anything new on the four sites controlled by George Klein and the Prudential Insurance company, although buildings including the Hermitage Hotel were demolished in anticipation of the proposed four towers. With independent entrepreneurs building elsewhere in the rezoned west midtown, and with some of them going bankrupt during the stock market depression of 1987 and the subsequent business recession, there was no clear future for the Broadway-Seventh Avenue intersection. Prices dropped for building sites in the Times Square area, prompting a re-thinking of the four-tower skyscraper project. Klein had lost a major financial partner in 1986, the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company, and a major tenant, the Chemical Bank, in 1989. By this time, the City no longer required the initially planned $127-million subway upgrade. (Charles V. Bagli and Nick Paumgarten, “Durst, Klein Embrace on 42nd Street,” New York Observer Oct. 7, 1996, pp. l, 26). New ideas and the associated financial arrangements led to the construction of individual skyscrapers by the end of the decade, by architects other than Johnson and Burgee and for developers other than George Klein. The Disney corporation, now prominent on the “Deuce” block between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, was not initially part of this package, but it became essential to its realization.

The solution initiated in 1992-93 was to enliven Forty-second Street in order to convey optimism and to remind people of its past delights. This would be done by creating a place-holding image of the once and future rialto. Vincent Tese, the state’s Commissioner of Economic Development and Rebecca Robertson proposed to emphasize the area’s former connection to respectable entertainment. To combine other old and new ideas, Frederic Papert of the 42^nd Street Development Corporation collaborated with the City’s Department of Transportation to prepare an environmental impact statement evaluating what proved to be futile prospects for a light rail line across the length of Forty-second Street. Other ideas were available, though, in particular an alliance of designers with the Project for Public Spaces, an organization then headed by Amanda Burden.

(42nd Street Light rail Transit Line. Draft Environmental Impact Statement CEQR No. 92 DoT 008M, 1993; see also 42nd Street Development Project, New York, New York: final environmental impact statement. New York, New York State Urban Development Corporation, 1984; “Streetscapes Remuddling”, NYT 3 24 1991, p. LIR8. NYH Corso Hotel Collection for the Hermitage. See also NYT 4 5 1998, pp. 1, 38)

Any productive measures would require money, of course, but also visual excitement. The people who provided the sparkle were graphic designer Tibor Kalman and the architects Robert A.M. Stern and Paul L. Whalen. The Stern firm, known as RAMSA, had been designing jolly postmodern buildings for the Disney corporation and the architects now turned to making Forty-second Street jolly, too.

The results of their intense and rapid exertions in 1993 and 1994 were known as “42^nd Street Now!” Their block-filling images were lively and purposely jumbled so as to keep people’s eyes moving and their senses engaged. The designs were colorful, brightly lit, and embellished with bold graphics. The effect was to resurrect the visually exciting, ever-moving imagery of the block during its presumed heyday before action films and pornography prevailed. Architectural historians Nicholas Adams and Joan Ockman wrote about the designers’ achievement of “contradictions and surprise.” Kalman concealed some of the demolition and decrepitude behind an enormous graphic sign that said “Everybody.” In case viewers weren’t sure whether they were included, he posted huge photographs by Neil Selkirk showing people of varied ages, genders, and races along a wall painted yellow and striped in green. Amid gradual improvement in the entire Times Square area, architect Charles Linn in mid-1997 hailed the lively signs and brightly painted plywood that concealed empty buildings and the remains of pornographic premises. Rebecca Robertson had artists create installations in some of the empty buildings; the Project for Public Art had approved the idea of improving storefronts.

(Charles Linn, “Signs of the Times,” Architectural Record 149 #6, June 1997, pp. 85-91. Nicholas Adams and Joan Ockman, “The Redevelopment of Times Square,” Casabella # 673/674, December, 1999, pp. 1-26; NYT 8 l 1993, II p. H34; See also Charles V. Bagli, “Disney, Marriott, AMC Get in Line for Sweetheart Deals on 42nd St.,” New York Observer May 1, 1995, p.1. For Stern’s and Kalman’s work, https://www.ramsa.com/projects/project/42nd-street-now accessed 5 12 2024)

The history of Lot 137 on Block 1013, the south side of Forty-second Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues, gives a quick summary of change, decline, and reform. The property changed hands several times in the 1920s before being obtained in 1925 by the Bokhara Realty Corporation. The ground floor, twenty feet wide, then housed Crawford Clothes, a shop for men but not an elite brand. In the 1950s, it became Pizza Palace owned by “The King of Pizza”. From an assessment in 1926 at $200,000, the property value declined until the mid-1980s, and then, thanks to the street’s rehabilitation, rose rapidly to over $400,000 by the early 1990s. (66 John St.) Farther west on Block 1013, the building at 234 had held part of the St. Louis Academy boys’ school, the Percival bachelor apartments, Murray’s Roman Gardens and in its .later years, the Marine Bar that catered to sailors and housed the male brothel above Hubert’s “dime museum” featuring his flea circus (nysonglines.com/42st.htm accessed 10 11 2019). The final tenant was a video peep show. The building was demolished to become later the New York branch of Madame Tussaud’s waxworks, part of a multifaceted entertainment business shepherded by AMC theaters, Disney interests, and carefully analyzed by historian Lynne Sagalyn. (Times Square Roulette, pp. 352, 364-368). Author James Traub wondered if there was “emblematic significance in the fact that Hubert’s was the theater of the weird while Madame Tussaud’s is dedicated to…the replica that seems more real than the original.”

(James Traub, “Common of Earthly Delights” excerpt adapted from The Devil's Playground: A Century of Pleasure and Profit in Times Square, New York, The New York Times Company, 2004, NYT 3 14 2004, p.51 https://www.proquest.com/hnpnewyorktimes/docview/92835599/40254831EA594B1CPQ/15?accountid=12768. See also NYT 7 21 1995, p. A1).

In 1999, the Times Square Hotel, later the Times Square Hilton, by Frederick Bland of Beyer Blinder Belle with Gould Evans Associates was connected to and rose above the waxworks.

(Fig. 1 Hilton Times Square, Beyer Blinder Belle, 2000. Photo: Author, August 2025.)

Its lower parts are hard to see above the busy signs, but cheerful red metal window frames signal that the hotel supports the mood below. The four hundred fifty-six rooms were arranged between Mme Tussaud’s and the AMC theaters designed by Benjamin Thompson & Associates. Because it was important to have retail tenants including an HMV music store on the lowest three floors, an elevator from street level brought hotel guests to an upstairs lobby. The successful integration of structure, heating, ventilating, air-conditioning and elevators with the commercial facilities was challenging. At various times, conveniences for tourists included a food court, a foreign money exchange and a gift shop at street level, along with an Applebee’s family-friendly chain restaurant. These and other more recent offerings suited visitors with children, a target audience for Disney.

Children and adults must have been delighted by sculptor Tom Otterness’ small bronze figures that flopped and clambered around the building’s two clocks, one at the Forty-first Street entrance and one on Forty-second. They danced on a clock face, squeezed or pranced on bags of money, and did other amusing things that were perhaps lost on those who focused on the street’s gaudy lights and signs. The theme on Forty-second Street was “Time and Money,” but there were also images of male and female tourists on the rear side of the hotel. (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/481322278922676788)/

(Fig 2. Tom Otterness, “Time and Money”: 2000 Photo: Courtesy Milgo/Bufkin)

When the Sunstone Hotel investors bought the hotel, the new owners called attention to the entrance by framing it in bright lights but put the lovable little figures and clocks into storage. The management expressed hopes that a public institution would take, restore, and re-mount them, or that someone would buy them. Robert Braun, the architect for Sunstone, expressed regret about this loss to the public, but the client’s wishes prevailed. Small details matter, though, and so does expert craftsmanship. The Milgo/Bufkin firm that fabricated the little critters has been doing metal fabrication since 1916, making sculptures, storefronts, and skyscrapers in the United States and other countries. At least photographs survive of their work at this site.

(Other large hotels opened nearby; see NYT 6 20 1997, pp. B1, B4. https://www.beyerblinderbelle.com/projects NYT 6 20 2012, p.. A25; 5 8 1998, pp. E1, E8)

Art affected plans proposed in the fall of 1990 for improving the Times Square subway station. They included a new entrance on the south side of Forty-second Street, and the addition of works of art by Roy Lichtenstein, Jacob Lawrence, and Jack Beal; other artists were called upon later. Under a new plan initiated in the late 1990s, their works were installed between 2001 and 2007.

The work in its various stages was overseen by the Times Square Subway Improvement Corporation, a city-state entity under the umbrella of the 42^nd Street Development Corporation, financed by developers who received tax reductions and zoning variances. The station in 1990 was correctly called a “dingy labyrinth” but the project architect, Howard Cohen, hoped to install new floors, lights, elevators for the disabled, public toilets, less cumbersome exits, and other amenities, only some of which were realized under this or any later plan. Citizen groups that monitored the Metropolitan Transit Authority weren’t optimistic and they preferred efficiency to aesthetics. At least the station benefited after January 1991, from the efficient work of its managers, including Kevin Berry whose tenure there was short, and David Bobe. But while subway crime went down, fares went up, and then there were problems caused by the canceled plans for developing the office towers around the subway station. Park Tower Realty and Prudential Realty Group had been relieved of their obligation to rebuild the station in the spring of 1993, evidently as a concession because of delays with their proposal and because of the area’s gradual growth in investment beyond the four towers. That was growth that the City and the real estate industry wanted to encourage.

(NYT 9 2 1990, p. 37; 10 10 1991, p. 50; 8 23 1992, p. 40; 6 27 1993, p.X1 ff. For subway art, see Tracy Fitzpatrick, Art and the Subway, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2009; Sandra Bloodworth, New York’s Underground Art Museum, New York, Monacelli, 2014.)

The station’s condition was still appalling in the summer of 1998, although the lobby at street level had been altered in a lively way in 1996-97 by the architectural firms of William Nicholas Boudova and Kohn Pedersen Fox, with an entrance by Fox & Fowle. The entrance design was so attractive and conspicuous that it was copied across the street.

(Fig. 3 Subway entrance. Fox & Fowle, 1996. Photo: Courtesy Gregory Melle, 1998)

The plans proposed for the subway station before the later years of the decade included a potentially expensive rotunda that would have been primarily an imposing entrance to the office buildings rather than something to benefit the broader public. More significant and actually achieved were improved walkways to make the shuttle train more easily accessible, elevators to make at least this station accessible to people with mobility problems, a remodeled mezzanine between the two subway lines, and a large escalator. These were essential or widely welcomed, but instead of all the other promised amenities--frequently-open clean toilets chief among them-- the public had to settle for the works of art. There were also a few inexpensive alterations such as putting plastic stickers over decorative panels that some people thought were references to the Confederate Army flag.

(NYT 4 28 1996, p. CY9; 7 16 1998, p. A1; early rendering of Fox & Fowle’s design:: 6 29 1997, p. IX6.)

Above the station on the Heidelberg Building site at Forty-second Street and Broadway, a two-story restaurant called Hansen’s Times Square Brewery held the new subway entrance and also featured a tourist attraction on its roof from 1996 to 2001. Hovering above the glass-walled box was a half-scale model of a Concorde supersonic aircraft.

(Fig. 4. Concorde on the Times Square Brewery. Photo: Courtesy Gregory Melle, 1998. nyc98ktimes06 Times Square Concorde Jet, NYX 1998 Flick – Photo Sharing! Flickr.com 640 x 480.)

Fabricated in Great Britain and shipped to New York, it lasted only until the restaurant was demolished for the construction of 7 Times Square. The plane went into storage at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, Long Island.

(NYT 4 26 1988, p. XI7; https://www.heritageconcorde.com/model-times-square; see also Karrie Jacobs, https://www.architectmagazine.com/design/times-square-finally-grows-up retrieved 7 5 2021)

Architect Robert A. M. Stern was instrumental in the overall reform process, apart from his work on 42^nd Street Now! As he knew and had worked with Michael Eisner, head of the Disney corporation, Stern persuaded his client to inspect the decrepit New Amsterdam theater at 214 West, which had potential as a location for live performances that would be based on Disney’s own animated films. Cora Cahan joined them. A former dancer, she had been instrumental in converting the former Elgin Theater in the Chelsea neighborhood into the Joyce, a center for dance, and now she was President of The New 42^nd Street project, the independent nonprofit established in 1989 which was to renovate and operate historic theaters. As Executive Director of the Eliot Feld dance organization at the Joyce, she had worked with architect Hugh Hardy. When the New 42^nd Street’s directors needed to put someone in charge of rehabilitating other theaters, they selected Ms. Cahan who justified their confidence and remained with the project for twenty-eight years. And when Mr. Eisner asked which architect should be in charge of the rehabilitation, she named Hardy, who with his colleagues had more to do with the rehabilitation of theaters than any other architectural firm.

Of course, there had to be inducements to the New Amsterdam’s new owner. There were, for instance, low-interest loans from New York State, and from the City, and the power of condemnation of nearby buildings. But few people regretted these measures except those who were displaced.

(For the process of remodeling the neighborhood, see Sagalyn, Times Square Roulette, esp. pp. 346-354; Mike E Miles, Gaye Berens, Marc A Weiss, Real Estate Development. Principles and Process, 3rd ed., NY, Urban Land Institute, 4th ed., 2007, chapter 14: Meshing Public and Private Roles in the Development Process, pp. 269-292, esp. p. 278. For theater building and the precipitous drop in productions between 1980 and 1985, see Gerald Schoenfeld et al., The Broadway Theatre circa 1993, pamphlet, NY, League of American Theatres and Producers, Inc., 1983, esp. p. 13.)

It was the Disney corporation that spearheaded the revival of a significant part of West Forty-second Street and made it appealing for families and indirectly, also for office tenants. As we have seen (Chap. 12) in 1982, the Nederlander Organization had arranged with the New York City Industrial Development Agency to pay off the state-issued bonds in lieu of property taxes. After all this was worked out, the Nederlanders determined that the building’s condition was beyond their ability to redeem, and not only because of a hole in the auditorium’s dome. There was also no possibility of restoring the former roof garden and theater. The Nederlanders sold the New Amsterdam to New York State in 1992 for a quarter million dollars. The building required about $34 million to rehabilitate over the course of several years. Disney’s chief, Michael Eisner, obtained financial assistance from the City and State--low-interest loans, granted because the purifying presence of Disney would help to sanitize the rest of the block--and the right of first refusal for tenants of nearby properties. Disney and the City and State signed a Memorandum of Understanding in 1992, despite protests from less-favored theater owners.

The first architectural task was emergency structural stabilization, giving architects Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer time to prepare plans for rehabilitation. They collaborated with EverGreene, restoration crafts specialists. The building was already an official New York City Landmark, having been designated on October 22, 1979. Normally, the building would have had to be restored exactly as it was originally, but the architects and executants did not perform an exact restoration, except in specified places such as the corridor that leads from Forty-second Street to the auditorium on Forty-first. A marquee of 1937, modified ten years later, remained in place as part of the building’s history. The architects were allowed to make subtle judgments, balancing fidelity with interpretation; they did this also at Rockefeller Center to wide acclaim. In 1903, when direct current electricity was used, it provided low illumination, so colors had to be bright to compensate for the light deficiency; by the 1990s, with alternate current electricity, colors could be mellowed to achieve a comparable effect. Fabrics were interpreted in a spirit sympathetic to the irretrievable originals. Painted and carved surfaces in major rooms were restored if possible, so that visitors could see once more the divinities in the vaults of the lounge below the theater, or the flower-framed allegorical woman denoting Progress below the art nouveau glass skylight on the main level. Perhaps the most remarkable recreations were the boxes in the auditorium. They had been removed to accommodate a Cinerama screen in 1953, but old postcard images and photographs allowed the architects and artisans to reinstate their original forms and lavish decorations.

(Mary C Henderson The New Amsterdam: The biography of a Broadway theatre, New York, Hyperion, 1997; John Margolies, “A Spectacular Broadway Revival,” Architectural Record 149 #6, June 1997, pp. 112-119; Reichl pp. 104-106; Daily News 5 19 1997 for the figure of $34 million; NYT 9 10 1992, p. C17; some elements were in better condition than anticipated: 3 26 1995, p IX1)

When the New Amsterdam reopened in 1997, the large mushrooms that had grown all over the building were gone. So was asbestos. The restored ceiling would no longer admit the rain and snow that had left two feet of standing water in the basement. The plaster no longer peeled and dropped from the walls. Everything was restored and repaired: the roof and ceiling, the plasterwork, the rebuilt boxes beside the proscenium, murals, reliefs, floors and whatever was needed to create the illusion that this was the glamorous building that it had been.

(New Amsterdam Theatre after restoration by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer and EverGreene Studios. Fig. 5: Theater. Fig. 6: former men’s smoking room. Photos: Courtesy EverGreene Studios.).

The painstaking restoration was an acclaimed success. The New Amsterdam reopened in May of 1996 with the premiere of an oratorio, King David by Alan Menken and Tim Rice. The far greater success was Rice’s and Elton John’s The Lion King that began performances in October. Later, “Mary Poppins,” and “Aladdin” brought in revenue for Forty-second Street, and for the city’s economy. In the same year, Disney opened a ‘superstore’ on the same block to sell souvenirs and merchandise related to its entertainment products. The AMC theater there, then being developed by the Forest City Ratner firm from the Liberty, Empire, and Harris theaters, also shows Disney movies. Did the incentives to Disney entail a loss of tax payments? Did the experienced Disney negotiators often have the upper hand? Yes, but over the years, the agreement with Disney gave impetus to other restorations. Might some restoration have been done without Disney? Hindsight was not available then, and the voices of naysayers were less persuasive than those of people who wanted nearly guaranteed success.

(https://edc.nyc/project/42nd-street-development-project, a film in which major figures of the rehabilitation speak, including Mr. Stern, Ms. Cahan, Carl Weisbrod, Douglas Durst, Lynne Sagalyn, Judith Saltzman, and others. See also:NYT 2 3 1994, pp. B1, B3; 8 8 1994 p. B3; 5 11 1997, pp 1, 29 Charles V. Bagli published articles on the financial arrangements in July and August, 1994 in The New York Observer. Tishman Construction was the general contractor. The Wikipedia article on the theater is an excellent resource.).

Architecture critic Herbert Muschamp noted that the rehabilitation of the New Amsterdam building and others later was related to the ideas of the architect Robert Venturi who proclaimed that “Main Street is almost all right” as a guide to urban renewal. In the case of Forty-second Street, there were elements that could be refreshed, as this theater was, and others that could be made to recall the heyday of the street in the past. (NYT 9 19 1993, p. 90)

Next door, the Candler Building was lost at foreclosure in 1993 to the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, which put orange netting around the remaining terra cotta ornament to protect it and also to protect pedestrians below. (Chap. 6, Fig. 14) Mass Mutual sold it to a group including Michael J. Lazar who had been the City’s transportation administrator and Walter & Samuels, a management and investment company. The terra cotta surfaces were cracking and starting to leak, so Swanke Hayden Connell architects were called in to analyze and stabilize them. The building was then empty. But as the buildings nearby improved, so did the condition and the value of the Candler Building. The RCA Corporation rented space for training its personnel, and other companies followed. Perhaps the popular McDonald’s on the street level paid a rent commensurate with the business it did.

(C. Gray “Streetscapes,” NYT 3 31 1996, p. RCW7; 6 30 1981, p. A33; Ken Bloom, Broadway: Its History, People, and Places: An Encyclopedia, London and New York, Routledge, 1994 accessed on the internet s.v. Willauer, Shape, & Brady.)

Across the street, a theater appealing to children probably inspired the plans for the New Amsterdam. The children’s theater, at 209 West, had been the Republic Theater, then the Belasco, then the Victory. It was restored under Cora Cahan’s leadership to an improved version of its original self, and that was part of the successful program to rehabilitate several theaters on the notorious block. The plan was arguably more important to the overall public perception of the area’s improvement than the proposed or later-realized Times Square skyscrapers were. The skyscrapers, all covered with required brightly lit signs, tend to blend together in the public imagination---though surely not in the office rental imagination--- but the theaters are places for individual experience and memory.

The reformers called the building the New Victory and architects led by Hugh Hardy got to work. Judith Saltzman of Li/Saltzman Architects was the owner’s representative, in charge of monitoring the work and insuring that it followed the historic preservation guidelines that New York State and City had established. The façade was cleaned, repaired, and brought back close to its original appearance but without the rooftop parapet.

(Fig. 7. New Victory Theater, formerly the Republic, as remodeled by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer. Photo: courtesy https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/new-victory-theater-originally-theatre-republic/ with thanks to Andrew Dolkart.)

Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer restored the auditorium and created designs for new lobbies and public areas. A few panels of glass mosaic that had survived from Murray’s Roman Gardens were mounted in the lobby of the New Victory, along with explanatory placards. Graphic designers Chermayeff & Geismar collaborated with the architects. To improve the acoustics, the firm of Jaffe Holden Scarborough used acoustically sensitive fabric on the back wall, and fiberglass behind it. Walls were built to absorb low-frequency sound; speakers focus the sound.

The city had never had a theater for children before this, but it became an artistic success upon its opening in 1993. It surely gave confidence to Michael Eisner of the Disney corporation, and to tourist-friendly businesses including souvenir shops, family restaurants and pizzerias. The theater’s activities continued into the next century when H3, a successor to Hardy’s original firm, working with Paula Scher and her colleagues at Pentagram designers and Yorke Construction company offered fresh graphic designs for the lobbies in 2017 and better accommodation for the disabled.

(NYT 12 11 1995, pp. C17, C18. Information about acoustics comes from a symposium in May 1996, presented by the AIA New York City Chapter and the Cooper-Hewitt Museum).

The children’s theater was to form part of The New 42^nd Street non-profit organization. The State of New York, which had taken possession of six theaters, appointed that organization to supervise restoration and maintenance. The New 42^nd Street signed a 99-year lease in 1992 with the city and state; The non-profit’s board of directors decided to renovate the Victory theater first, and deal later with the Apollo, Empire, Liberty, Lyric, Selwyn, and Times Square theaters. Within the next two years, the Urban Development Corporation condemned thirty-four buildings and evicted 240 commercial tenants, some of whom were engaged in respectable businesses, but little was actually built until the end of the decade. Leonard Clark, President of the Cine 42^nd Street Theatre Corporation, protested to the New York Times that his cinema did not show offensive films. He thought that the government was eager to turn over the entire area to “favored private interests,” by creating “deterioration in order to justify its taking” of currently owned property. (Letter of April 26 1998 published in NYT 5 11 1998, p. A26; Reichl, p. 143). He was essentially correct, but he and his fellow business owners were powerless to stop the new actions. Fred Hakim, a public-school teacher who owned a luncheonette at 229-231 West was evicted in 1997 but was lucky, too, because six weeks later, demolition next door and a strong wind caused his former building to collapse. (Fred Hakim obituary NYT 5 1 2012, p. A17) There were lawsuits, of course, and opposition by community groups, either fearful that crime would just move to adjacent residential streets, or that land values and thus rents would rise. The plans prevailed.

Government condemnation did not cause all the pornographers to disappear immediately; the remaining ones left gradually because businesses thrive near similar ones and most of the similar ones were closing or had been closed. An entrepreneur named Richard Basciano, commemorated in an obituary article as the “Times Square Sultan of Smut” retained eight thousand square feet for his operations, even after being paid $14 million as compensation for having other properties condemned. It may have been Mr. Basciano whom the authorities chose to remain at 303 West, so as to display the City’s respect for permissible speech.

The block became cleaner, crime diminished, and the notorious block nicknamed “The Deuce” was ready for the new spirit of “42^nd Street Now!”. Commentators observed that the whole street and parts of the adjacent areas were proving to be so appealing to developers that the UDC-Klein-Prudential skyscraper plan was expendable.

(For one of many similar observations, NYT 6 2 1996, p. NJR11; 42nd Street Development Project: Study for Non-profit Use of Victory and Liberty Theaters: adjacent space requirements: Final Report, NY, 42nd Street Development Project, 1988; see also articles by Peter Slatin, Oculus 56, Nov., 1993, pp. 10-12)

Renovation of other theaters followed throughout the decade. Theatergoers saw that by 1996 there were no more salacious businesses at street level on Forty-second Street. The adjacent Lyric and Apollo theaters were combined in 1996 under the management of the Livent company. The changes provided almost 1900 seats and enhanced circulation capacity. New features included an enlarged proscenium suitable for musicals, measures for the disabled that were--at last--mandated for all new and remodeled buildings open to the public, adequate restrooms, and back-of-the-house improvements. Renovation was done by architects Beyer Blinder Belle with the Roger Morgan Studio as interior designers and Structure Tone as construction managers. Judith Saltzman, the architect who was the site monitor, marveled at the disassembly and reconstruction of a dome and the widening of the proscenium arch. In 1997, the two theaters reopened, fundamentally rebuilt as one building called the Ford Center for the Performing Arts and since 2014, the Lyric. The architects restored the Forty-third Street entrance to the Lyric as the main entrance to the complex, but the auditorium space is on Forty-second behind a small arched entrance. A subsequent remodeling in 2017-18 reduced the number of seats by about 250. The theater mounted successful shows based on the Spiderman character and the Harry Potter book series but closed intermittently because of the Covid-19 pandemic--a situation common to all places of entertainment.

(An interim name in 2004 for the Ford Center was the Hilton Theatre, then in 2009, the Foxwoods, then the Lyric again after 2013. NYT 1 17 1996, pp. C11 C12.; 12 14 1997, p. 62. The Canadian entrepreneur, Garth Drabinsky, was head of Livent, which declared bankruptcy in 1999)

The Apollo’s original entrance on Forty-second Street is part of the Times Square Theater’s façade. The latter theater was included in the renewal plan, but none of the proposed operators succeeded in installing a profitable enterprise. In the 1990s, it was empty. For a while after 2000, it was a clothing store. In 2016 rumor had it that a Singaporean company wanted to use it as an event space. Nothing came of that plan.

In early 1998, the Empire---at various times called the Eltinge and the Laffmovie--- moved, or rather its front end was moved to 234 West to become the lobby of a multiplex cinema designed by Beyer Blinder Belle. It had been deemed the “least commercially viable” theater for renovation, and AMC insisted on displacing it, as did the developer Bruce Ratner. Many observers needlessly worried that it would not survive the westward journey of 168 feet. The Hilman Rollers company proudly described the procedure:

“The contractor for the move set eight identical I-beams equally spaced beneath the structure and extended them 170 feet to the structure’s new foundation. The I-beams served as tracks for the…thirty-two, 200-ton capacity Hilman Rollers with Accu-Roll Guidance [that] were set onto the I-beam tracks beneath the structure in a pattern of four per track. The structure was lowered onto the rollers and eight hydraulic push rams, one per track, provided the motive force for moving the structure.”

(https://www.hilmanrollers.com/project/empire-theatre-move accessed 7 23 2021 This source includes a drawing of the apparatus. For photographs of the move, see https://cryptome.org/jya/empire.htm. The New York Times gave it repeated coverage from November 1997 to June 1998. The site also includes drawings by Eliot Locitzer, and gives credit to Lehrer McGovern Bovis as construction manager, Ysrael A Seinuk P.C. as structural engineer, and Urban Foundation Company as the building mover. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, Ten Theaters, p. 50)

The new site became the AMC Empire movie theaters, part of a Forest City Enterprises entertainment complex. As patrons approach, they see a new marquee and above it, a mural restored by Harriet Irgang, a professional conservator. The building contains twenty-five cinemas, reserved seating, technological conveniences to compensate for various human disabilities, and offers the potential for private rental of a theater. It maintains the usual restrictions against bringing one’s own snacks and beverages. Elevators rise through the proscenium arch space to the various screening rooms; the stage and fly loft, by then useless, were eliminated. If patrons ascend several flights of escalators to reach the desired theaters, they have the option of seeing a broad view of Times Square from the uppermost level. Since it opened in April 2000, the theater has advertised itself as family friendly, and has shown studio, independent, Disney, and IMAX films, including some classics. At first, patrons could have refreshments in a café set up on the balcony, but that facility closed. Everything there and elsewhere in the area closed during the pandemic.

(Henderson & Greene, The Story of 42nd Street., pp. 147-148; NYT 2 28 1998, pp. B1, B4 ; for the place of AMC in the redevelopment, see Sagalyn, Times Square Roulette, pp. 358, 364)

Next door, at 236 West, the New 42^nd Street project took over the Liberty Theatre and kept it at least until 1996 as an auditorium despite a serious fire in 1990, but it became a barbecue restaurant in 2011-2013 and then a rental event space at night, with a capacity of 1500 people and food catered by the barbecue chefs. What was left of the restaurant became a diner during the day. The façade was incorporated into Ripley’s Odditorium, a business more famous as Ripley’s Believe It or Not assembly of sometimes surprising information. The theater’s auditorium on Forty-second Street opened in July 2007 as the largest of the many Ripley museums. Architecture/MG designed the Ripley and Tussaud establishments, the latter on the site of the former Harris theater. The Covid pandemic of 2020-2021 forced tenants to leave the event space, as did the long-established Modell’s Sporting Goods, and Applebee’s restaurant---casualties of the acute reduction in tourism in 2020-2021.

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripley%27s_Believe_It_or_Not!#Museums; http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/2661 excerpted from Nicholas Van Hoogstraten, Lost Broadway Theatres, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1997. https://www.nyc-arts.org/organizations/0/liberty-theater; https://therealdeal.com/2021/03/17/believe-it-or-not-ripleys-modells-liberty-theater-abandon-42nd-street-home/ all accessed 7 23 2021, Henderson & Greene, The Story of 42nd Street, pp. 121. Adams and Ockman, Casabella 1999-2000, p. 26 for the architect’s name. For a critical view stressing the disadvantages to artists in lofts, and small businesses that closed, see Paul Lukas, “Forty-Two Pickup,” The Baffler # 7, 1995, pp. 9-12 and Reichl, passim.)

The Selwyn, at 227 West, renamed the American Airlines Theatre accommodated the Roundabout Theatre Company. It opened in July of 2000 after the original Selwyn façade collapsed in 1997. The architects Robert Ascione and Frank Eilam restored much of the original interior. For fifty-eight years, a storefront on the site had housed the Grand Luncheonette, one of the respectable businesses displaced by the new order.

Early in the 1990s, too, the former Selwyn office building site and a one-story building beside it became the home of the New 42^nd Street organization.

(Fig. 8. New 42^nd Street building and Duke Theater, PBDW Architects,) Charles Platt and Ray Dovell, with Anne Militello lighting designer) 2000. Photo: Elliott Kaufmann. Courtesy Mr. Kaufmann and PBDW Architects.)

The new headquarters is a rectangular prism that fronts on Forty-second Street just west of the Times Square Theatre and the original entrance to the Apollo. It is the tallest of the new theater-related buildings at eleven stories, and in addition to the New 42^nd Street offices, it houses dressing rooms and studios intended for new production development and rehearsals. It also contains a black box theater, named to honor tobacco heiress Doris Duke, a major donor.

The theater and the enclosing building were designed by Platt Byard Dovell, now Platt Byard Dovell White alias PBDW, well known for their respect for history as well as for innovations sensitive to context. In this case, an original proposal incorporated the six-story façade of an office building for the Selwyn theater, but that idea was abandoned for an entirely new and taller design with glass curtain walls framed in aluminum. The building looked appropriately up to date to show the progress being made in rehabilitating the street, and it had to be efficient for the various tenants. Unlike the complexities required for converting the decrepit theaters, this new office-and-rehearsal building posed fewer problems for the architects or the structural engineers, Anastos Engineering Associates. It has a brick-clad service core housing elevators, stairs, plumbing, heating, and ventilation. What passers-by see may be dancers, actors, and directors, framed by the large plate glass windows for which James Carpenter Design Associates served as consultants. Guidelines for the whole street specified exterior lighting.

Anne Militello designed the lighting, having worked on Broadway and for Disney theme parks. Here, she collaborated early with the architects and James Carpenter to coordinate the armature on the top seven floors that shields the dichroic glass curtain wall with its perforated stainless-steel fins. The lighting is best seen at night when translucent shades on the studio windows form a backdrop for varied designs. The façade’s construction includes catwalks three feet deep that accommodate maintenance services, but also light fixtures invisible to passers-by. Some of the light is reflected from the fins. Each of the six bays of the façade contains three colors of light. In addition, stanchions above the marquee contain luminaires that light the fins and the building box behind them. The colors can be manipulated to change and blend, creating over five hundred individual lighting configurations. At the western border of the light display, an illuminated pole unites the floors by rising to the tallest part of the building. Mutable and colorful lighting obviated the need for the required signs that identify theaters; in any case, most of this building’s tenants changed often, so it is the building itself and its nocturnal illumination that has captured attention ever since its opening festivities in June 1999.

The interiors show the importance of a client’s close collaboration with the architect. Cora Cahan wanted spacious rooms with mirrors, barres, operable windows, good sound systems, flexible dance floors, reliable heating and air-conditioning, and no fluorescent lighting, among other things. Not all architects might intuit the importance of each element to successful rehearsal spaces for dancers and actors, but the former dancer could offer professional advice.

(NYT 11 19 1997, pp. E1, E6. William Weathersby, Jr., “Choreographed illumination of a rehearsal center’s façade creates its own street theater on Broadway,” Architectural Record 158, #11, November 2000, p. 194; https://www.pbdw.com/the-new-42nd-street-studios accessed 9 17 2021. New New York: Architecture of a City, ed. Ian Luna, introduction by Joseph. Giovannini, New York, Rizzoli, 2003, pp. 170-175)

Filling, or rather, stuffing the northeast corner of the Eighth Avenue intersection is the E-Walk complex of 1999, by the combined firms of Arquitectonica, D’Agostino, Izzo, Quirk, and Gensler Associates. It offers restaurants and a cinema in a lively composition.

(Fig 9 E walk, detail. Arquitectonica, D’Agostino Izzo, Quirk, and Gensler Associates, 2000. Photo: Author 2023)

In 1996, when the New Amsterdam opened, both Forest City Ratner and Tishman began work on their AMC and E-walk projects that face each other across Forty-second Street. Negotiations for E-walk dated to 1993, when Tishman Realty and Construction Company planned to build and run a hotel. The discussions about what became the Westin Hotel site were related to Disney’s ambition to control much of the west end of the block on both the north and south sides. After considerable negotiation, Disney agreed to invest in time share suites in the hotel rather than take a larger part in the project, but the entertainment company retained control over much of the south side of the block. At the time, the development was considered optimistic, because hotel workers had been fired in the early part of the 1990s for lack of customers. 1991 was the worst year for the industry, which had overbuilt in the 1980s when capital was widely available, but the Disney entertainment sites forecast more tourists and more opportunities for hotel-building in the near future.’ (NYT 10 20 1996, p. R9; Charles V. Bagli, “Tishman Wins SONY, Moguls Divvying Up Scraps on 42nd St.,” New York Observer 9 23 1996, pp. 1, 26. )

This hotel would have a ten-story retail and entertainment area at its base on the Forty-second Street side That’s the E-walk with facilities geared to tourists from both nearby and distant locations. Carlos M. Dobryn was the structural engineer for the E-walk section. Among more customary tasks, he had to cantilever its corner over a subway station and use uncommonly massive H-shaped beams and plates, forming boxes. to stabilize the building below the twelve-million pound hotel) (NYT 10 25 1998, p. RE7). The Westin hotel, designed by Arquitectonica with HKS as architect of record, opened in 2002.

(Fig. 10. Westin Hotel and entertainment complex. 8^th Avenue side. Arquitectonica and HKS, 2002. Photo: Author August 2025.)

It was the winning design in a competition held in 1994-95 in which Zaha Hadid and Michael Graves also took part. (NYT 2 17 1995, pp. B1, B3). The structural engineers WSP Cantor Seinuk, and façade consultants Permasteeelisa Group faced challenges caused by the unusual design that is 532 feet high with forty-five stories. Concrete-framed, it rises over a busy group of mostly chain restaurants in E-walk with bright signs, an enormous illuminated billboard, and the marquee of the arch-fronted Regal cinema on Forty-second Street. The Westin has its entrance on Forty-third, where the architecture and the ambient sound are quieter. But from Forty-second, one sees above the busy signs a collage of forms and colors---a jumble for the commercial base, then hotel rooms on a ten-story block, then the tower. Since various parts of the ensemble had differing structural grids--the entertainment section reused some older structure-- the architects and engineers provided seismic insulation that kept the two components safely separated.

The ten-story block with autumnal colors on the metal surface and identical double-hung hotel-room windows provides a transition to the glass-faced towers although one design is entirely unrelated to the other. The lower surface evokes an irregular patchwork quilt. The tower portion, however, is sleek and covered with glass, designed to emphasize vertical ascent in one part, horizontal floors in the other, with the two areas separated by a curving white blade-like plane that the architects called a meteor. It ends--safely--in the lobby. Or rather, it did before a later remodeling. Both parts have sloping roofs. Here and there were more opaque strips of complementary color, vertical on the west side where tones of blue prevail, horizontal on the east where pink and orange might refer to sunrise, although the sponsors’ poetic statements refer to heaven and earth. Visible at one of the lower levels of the hotel on Eighth Avenue, protruding long windows evoke the lost rounded ones of the former Rialto theater. Under the bright commercial signs, one can see horizontal black-and-white stripes---small details that are part of the eclectic whole. Prominent critics offered different opinions about the design. Paul Goldberger, writing in The New Yorker, seemed to loathe everything about the exterior but Herbert Muschamp in the New York Times found it engaging.

(For Goldberger: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/10/07/miami-vice; For Muschamp, NYT 10 20, 2002: https://www.nyc-architecture.com/MID/MID125B.htm with several accounts of the hotel by other authors, including John Holusha who described the glass installation. Reichl, p. 159; https://www.dblewisarchitect.com/westin-hotel-ny-x-arquitectonica accessed 8 15 2021; Craig Kellogg, “Interior Eye: Outside in Westin New York Hotel,” Architectural Design 73 #1, 2003, pp. 102-105).

Arquitectonica also designed the seven-story atrium lobby of the hotel, including a dramatic construction in a dark area that seemed to start the blade of light. Some exterior colors were repeated indoors. Various parts of the second-floor lobby included quiet areas, dynamic escalators, bold graphics, bright colors, and angular moldings in the ceiling. The guest rooms had softer and less energetic colors-- more customary for the clientele of an expensive hotel. The Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum devoted an exhibition to Arquitectonica’s building in the spring of 1998, as the curators considered the entire hotel and entertainment complex of interest to the public. Arquitectonica’s work disappeared in a lamentable remodeling by the Marriott Corporation which acquired Westin properties in 2012.

Along Forty-second Street, the tall arch of the Regal Cinema’s façade terminates the busy base of the complex at the east. Originally a Loew’s Cineplex, it competed with AMC theaters across the street. The companies merged in 2005, but they had to sell this building of 1995 to avoid creating a monopoly in the area. It is not an old-fashioned picture show house. It has interactive seats that move when there are on-screen effects such as wind and jets of water. The rest of the block still contains many small, older buildings that have new signs and facades.

(https://www.yelp.com/search?find_desc=Cinemas+At+Times+Square&find_loc=New+York%2C+NY; http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/10461)

The Times Square Alliance was the new name for the local Business Improvement District. It started work in 1992 with a view toward improving the cleanliness and safety of the entire area. It sponsored performances and displays of contemporary art and promoted local businesses. It presented a vision of fun, provided in large part by the neon and LED signs that multiplied in number and grew in size, as mandated by the zoning rules and an initiative of Governor Mario Cuomo in 1993.

(NYT 1 8 2015 p. A 21. For Peter Malkin and the Business Improvement District, see” NYT 8 20 93 City, p.6. Biederman also co-founded the Grand Central Partnership for which see James Traub, “Street Fight,” The New Yorker, Sept. 4, 1995, pp. 36-40; see also Hinge and Winston op. cit., in High Performing Buildings, v.1, Winter, 2008, pp.30-32, 34 -36

Restaurants that catered to tourists and families, and shops with bright---even gaudy---facade displays self-consciously evoked visions of the lively but more spontaneous past. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani increased the presence of police and the success of that move became a hallmark of his mayoralty although crime had been dropping since the previous mayoralty of David Dinkins.

The agreement with Disney at the New Amsterdam, and the progress predicted for the theaters emboldened Douglas Durst, who had followed his father, Seymour, into commercial real estate. The Prudential company was unsure of its plans for the sites of George Klein’s towers, despite Klein’s delaying agreement with the City in 1994. Although an official of the Walt Disney company acknowledged Klein as “the real pioneer” in redeveloping the area, the Durst firm persuaded Prudential in 1995 to let it buy the rights –and the tax exemptions--to erect an office building of an entirely different design on the northeast corner of Broadway and Forty-second Street. The persuasive argument was, said Douglas Durst, that “the site had no value to Prudential unless a building was built,” and George Klein had lost potential tenants. In the next year, Durst started construction, obtained $10.75 million in tax breaks (Reichl pp. 184-185), and found Condé Nast Publishers as a prime tenant along with a prominent law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

(Fig. 11. 4 Times Square is in the center of the image. Fox & Fowle, 1999. Photo: Fox & Fowle Courtesy Nicholas Adams.).

Officially called 4 Times Square, but also 151 West Forty-second Street, the office tower became familiar as the Condé Nast Building; some people still called it that after the publishing company departed in 2014 for another of Durst’s properties, in the World Trade Center. When construction began on 4 Times Square, Prudential put the other three tower sites on the market over George Klein’s objections; Prudential paid him-- as erstwhile partner-- an undisclosed sum in compensation for the lost development rights to the Durst site and perhaps the others. If the reduced taxes shocked anyone, Vincent Tese at the Urban Development Corporation said that while tax abatements were measured against what a property would have paid in taxes, no tax bill could be calculated on this site since no developers had approached it for over fifty years.

(Sagalyn Times Square Roulette p. 424 n. 31. David Malmuth, former Disney executive, quoted by Mitchell Pacelle, “Developer’s Dreams Crumble As Rivals Build Times Square” Wall Street Journal 10 1 1997, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB875662027496938000 accessed 7 4 2021; Durst quoted in “Transforming 42nd: Building 42nd Street with Douglas Durst” by NYCEDC 12 14 2018: https://edc.nyc/article/transforming-42nd-building-42nd-street-douglas-durst accessed 10 3 2021; see also Devin Leonard, “Durst and Klein risk the wrath of Disney with 42nd Street plot, “New York Observer 12 9 1996 pp. 1, 46., also NYT 4 5 1998, pp. 1, 38). For tax breaks given to this and other towers in the area, see Tim Healy and Paul Moses, “Big Tax Breaks Get Bigger as Mega-Developers Challenge Assessments,” The City-NYC News, April 11, 2025.)

4 Times Square is 809 feet tall. Above the forty-eight office floors, a later broadcasting antenna rises just over two hundred more feet. The building was designed by Fox & Fowle, with structural engineers WSP Cantor Seinuk, mechanical engineers Cosentini Associates, and Tishman Construction as main contractor. The forty-ninth floor contains mechanical equipment that acts as a mass damper to counter strong wind, and three more levels house radio and television transmitters. The building was not subject to the city’s zoning requirements because the proposed Klein towers by Johnson and Burgee and thus their successors on the Klein-Prudential sites were governed by rules of the state’s Empire State Development Corporation. The distinction hardly mattered to the public at large, which would not easily have discerned the difference between zoning rules for one or another enormous skyscraper. Anyone who thought about zoning would have known that the City had upzoned the area and then added some square footage in return for having developers agree to mount huge colorful illuminated signs on the new high-rises.

Robert Fox Jr. and Bruce Fowle who were experienced designers of more than usually attractive office buildings, had become seriously interested in environmentally sustainable skyscrapers. Douglas and Jonathan Durst considered building one to be important, and perhaps a potential selling point. They consulted several companies and institutes concerned with environmentally sound architecture. The result was a building with environmental considerations and--in critic Joseph Giovannini’s words in New York magazine--“the first credible reinterpretation of Times Square.”

(Fig 12. 4 Times Square now called One Five One, Fox & Fowle, 1999/ Environmental Provisions. Image: Fox % Fowle, courtesy Nicholas Adams.)

They achieved this feat by creating portions of the skyscraper to reflect the differences in character of Broadway and of Forty-second Street. Granite walls and a tall, wide opening with plenty of glass on Forty-second marked the entrance to the office building, dignified premises into which one can walk easily. The entrance was altered to its present state a few years later.

i

(Fig, 13. 4 Times Square, entrance on 42^nd Street. Photo: Author, August, 2025)

The entrance lobby ceiling stepped up and down along the elevator banks, in a configuration that looked like illuminated louvers. On Broadway, by contrast, a multitude of bright signs lets people know that they are “not in Kansas anymore.” On that side, no one needs to be guided into an office; the point is to have people stare and be excited.

(Fig. 14. 4 Times Square. Curved side with advertisements. Broadway side facing the viewer. The re-clad New York Times tower is at the left. Photo: Author August 2025.)

Probably the most conspicuous sign advertised the NASDAQ stock market, among other things, above the financial company’s television studio. Projecting elements on that side drew attention to the building and were made possible by Durst’s purchase of a neighboring building so as to avoid building a straight-sided tower. The architects staggered various layers of the building in order to reduce its apparent bulk. The building won a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects in 2001.

The interiors were significant for two reasons. The first and most important was the care taken to create as ‘green’ an office building as was practical. The developers, architects, and engineers went on retreats to evaluate options and coordinate their work. Removing the existing buildings created debris, for which they devised waste management plans. The United States Government’s eere.energy.gov website noted that deliveries were scheduled to avoid unnecessary engine idling. The architects used low-toxic construction materials and techniques. Only trained workers handled hazardous materials, and supervisors explained procedures and reasons for using them---implying that this was not a universal practice. Prefabricated, preassembled, and resource-saving materials were specified, at least when they were available at a satisfactory price. The curtain wall is low-energy, with photovoltaic panels on the spandrels. Some building materials had been recycled. Measures were taken to reduce the use of structural steel. Interior environmental quality received the same attention, with half again the amount of fresh air required by the City’s building code. Although an early proposal for smoking rooms with special ventilation was rejected, fewer people smoked by the time the building opened and the air filtration system was up to date. Interior designers Mancini Duffy used sustainable wood, recycled plastics, and other eco-friendly materials that the developer specified. Shading the exterior double-glazed curtain wall, room occupancy sensors, and proper insulation meant that during much of the year, the building does not need extra heat or cooling. Electricity is generated by fuel cells that convert natural gas into electricity without flame, and by the photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into electricity. Recycling, extra insulation, and other features that the Durst organization was proud to record made this an unusually responsible building, even if critic Suzanne Stephens asserted that the “energy-saving features…more symbolic than actual.” The systems may have been only minimally effective once the building was occupied with computers and electrical uses, and the huge advertising signs on the roof used plenty of energy. But symbols matter, and the energy load would have been far worse without ecological adjustments. The participants learned lessons from this building to use on later ones.

The office tower above the bright neon signs exhibits several façade designs. Neon and LED signs were part of the Empire State Development Corporation’s mandated aesthetic reform of the area but part of the surface is wrapped in pale stone at the base. Window frames protrude from the principal surface on part of the exterior, the rest being a blue-tinted curtain wall with the floors demarcated by metal moldings of various designs. Part of the exterior curves to provide variety and transition. Some of the changing window patterns reflect the presence of solar cells on the south and east sides; there is a more active pattern on the sober Forty-second Street side on the south wall. Pale vertical strips lead to illuminated 70-foot square display boards on the roof, where they are affixed by davits—a type of hook also used to raise boats. The display boards are accompanied by hat trusses that transfer sheer stresses from the building core to the perimeter’s columns, and by a cube that contains antennae and satellite dishes. These metal-clad installations look like bases for the thin cylindrical broadcasting antenna that was added in 2003 to replace antennas formerly atop the destroyed World Trade Center towers. When no outside company rents the display boards, large 4s identify the building from a great distance. The distinctive constructions on the roof make the building identifiable even now, when another of the Durst organization’s skyscrapers, One Bryant Park, partly obscures it.

(Joseph Giovannini “Acing the Deuce” New York Magazine 1 1, 2002 https://nymag.com/nymetro/arts/architecture/reviews/5594/ ; https://www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/4-times-square/907; /www.durst.org/sustainability/151-w-42; https://www.durst.org/pdf/NYSERDA%20Case%20Study.pdf; Adam W. Hinge and Donald J. Winston, “The Proof is Performance,” High Performing Buildings, v.1, Winter, 2008, pp.30-32, 34 -36 supplemented in v. 2, Winter, 2009, pp. 19-22 with lessons learned, https://www.hpbmagazine.org/content/uploads/2020/04/09W-Documenting-Performance.pdf accessed 11 23 2021.; “The New Skyscrapers,” Oculus 62 #10, 2000, p.6; http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/database/process.cfm?ProjectID=32; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254319787_The_Role_of_Systems_Integration_in_the_Design_of_Sustai--nable_Skyscrapers/figures?lo=1 (Mir M. Ali and Paul J. Armstrong, International Journal of Sustainable Building 1 #2. March, 2012, fig. 8; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4_Times_Square; Suzanne Stephens, “Fox & Fowle Creates a Collage in Four Times Square,” Architectural Record 157 #3, March, 2000 pp. 90-97; preceding citations accessed 7 24 2021; www.newyorkarchitecture.info/Building/702/Conde-Nast-Building.php, accessed 8 14, 2016.” NYT 6 30 1996, p. RE9; 5 18 1996, pp. 21, 24).

The second reason for the importance of the building interior had to do with a cafeteria designed by Frank Gehry. It has been replaced by the occupants who succeeded Condé Nast after the publishing company left the building in 2014, but it was spectacular while it lasted.

(Fig 15. Conde Nast cafeteria, Frank O. Gehry, 1999. 15a/Model of the whole cafeteria; 15b Closer view. Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners LLP)

The average corporate cafeteria may be pleasant, but it will not have titanium wall panels and ceilings framed in wood, twelve-foot-high panels of curved laminated glass, or an aesthetic that combined laminated yellow plastic tabletops with the obviously costly walls, partitions, and custom-designed wavy chrome-plated pendant lamps. The usual corporate cafeteria does not need full-sized mockups tested in Italy. This one had an unknown and evidently almost limitless budget, something that its owner, S. I. Newhouse, Jr., could afford. Journalist and author Paul Goldberger wrote that it cost $12 million, partly because each of the more than seventy large pieces of glass bent and curved individually. Other design elements included different seating levels and tables in the open as well as within the blue titanium-sheathed partitions. The unconventional design by a bold and witty architect was intended to support an atmosphere in which employees at almost all levels could interact comfortably. To be sure, there were also private dining areas, with overlapping laminated white glass panels that looked like billowing sails or expressionist walls, and those rooms had free-form tables covered with cloths. But the lively main room was memorable, unlike its replacement.

(Suzanne Stephens, “Frank Gehry conjures up a sinuous titanium and glass interior for the Conde Nast Cafeteria,” Architectural Record 158 #6 June 2000, pp. 116-123. Goldberger, Building Art. The Life and Work of Frank Gehry, New York, Knopf, 2015 p. 340. NYT Magazine 4 23 2000, pp. 84-87)

Four Times Square was significant, too, for marking a change in the use of computers in constructing skyscrapers, whether on Forty-second Street or elsewhere in the city. Joseph Ross, executive vice president at Tishman, cited the use of computers to mark steel beams for specific destinations, to send drawings, post schedules, to record and transfer details from the office to the building site, to set up meetings, and assist with other tasks that soon became standard practice where it had not become normal already. (NYT 7 30 1997, p. B6)

Fox & Fowle continued their ecological concerns and their association with Forty-second Street in connection with 3 Times Square on the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue.

(Fig. 16. 3 Times Square. Fox & Fowle. 2001, appearance post 2021. Photo: Courtesy FX Collaborative.)

George Klein had tried to join with the Durst organization to develop this site, but Prudential sold it to the Rudin family which was working with the Thomson-Reuters media company. The latter occupied much of the building, while other companies rented the remaining floors. By the end of 1997, it was clear that the Forty-second Street end of the Times Square bowtie had become appealing to developers who could devise their own plans, not those of Johnson and Burgee. The City’s Economic Development Corporation continues to own the site, however.

The environmental knowledge that the architects had gained during their work at 4 Times Square was supplemented here. Working with structural engineers Severud Associates, Tishman Construction as the principal contractor, and Rudin Management, Fox & Fowle designed a building in 1997-98 to replace the low-rise Rialto theater and office building of 1935 for which the architects had done some temporary work earlier. The new building’s concrete-faced rounded western corner preserves the form of the Rialto there, as do the fluted half-columns and angled windows above the ground floor shops. The tower is set back to provide a sidewalk that is more spacious than usual.

The new building is 486 feet high to the top of the roof and 555 feet high in total; a spire serves as a communications antenna. The enclosing curtain wall is of stone especially on the south side, but also metal for energy efficiency and glass that provides natural daylight. The building does not require heating. The architects hoped to save thirty percent of the energy consumed by a typical office building.

The elevations vary depending upon the side being observed; the intent was to reduce the apparent size of the skyscraper and to relate the building to its neighbors. Smooth energy-efficient glass forms the face of one tall section, with delicate metalwork below an even smoother attic level into which part of another face clamps. At the west, boxlike elements with windows and spandrels are clearly individualized. At the north, a grid of rectangular windows is set in the stone-faced wall that protrudes slightly from the smooth glass plane. The architects left visible the trusses on the north elevation above the building’s entrance on Seventh Avenue.

Apart from the practical provisions for offices and retail spaces, the building is another billboard for signs, with LED screens and skyline displays. The lighting at present exceeds what was intended by the guidelines and in Bruce Fowle’s words, “tends to swallow up the building.” The seven lower floors are faced with bright lights and video screens. Commercial tenants occupy three levels behind the lights.

There are many up to date technological elements. Rooftop generators are meant to compensate for a power failure if one occurs. The cooling equipment can switch from gas to electricity to take advantage of varying rates for each service during the workday or at night. Those who work inside benefit from fiber optic installation and from the antennae and rooftop satellite dishes. A specific provision to accommodate the main tenant was a sixteen-foot height for its trading floor. The developers were also required to provide lobby and loading dock facilities for the New Victory Theater.

Historian Lynne Sagalyn pointed to the elimination of an initial requirement that the developers provide escalators down to the Times Square subway station, which was then in urgent need of the rehabilitation that occurred later. The developers wanted more space for street-level retail. City officials allowed the developers to give $1.3 million to the Metropolitan Transit Authority instead of building the escalators. No one in the MTA seems to have noticed---until an inspector-general’s much later report--- that $1.3 million would not have paid for the heavy-duty escalators required. The Wikipedia article about the building blandly reports that the entrance was downsized during construction, requiring a ‘Low Headroom” warning there.

(Sagalyn, Times Square Roulette, pp. 393-402 esp. 398-99; see also NYT 9 6 1997, p 26; 9 6 1998, p. RE9. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3_Times_Square accessed 12 12 2024

The rehabilitation of this troubled intersection in the city center was the product of collaboration between governmental and private entities, neither of which could have brought about the results alone. Carl Weisbrod asserted that this project taught the City how to do large-scale projects such as Hudson Yards and other later enormous developments on the west side.

At the south end of Times Square, Warner Brothers film studios leased the Times Tower in 1997, intending to open a shop on the ground floor. To publicize the project, the company engaged Frank Gehry to design something---anything---with no financial constraints, to make the tower exciting and conspicuous. Instead of the lighted billboards that had covered nearby buildings and the tower’s marble surface of the 1960s, we might have had Gehry’s sign-laden tower made of metal mesh walls over the visible steel skeleton.

Fig. 17. Frank O. Gehry, tower of metal mesh walls and signs, proposal for Times Square tower,1997. 17a: Frant view from north. Fig. 17b: side view from east. Courtesy of Frank O. Gehry & Gehry Partners, LLP)

The mesh walls were meant to wave and billow, moved by a visible machine that would sometimes flash pictures of celebrities, or emit clouds of steam to remind older New Yorkers of a famous sign showing a smoker emitting white puffs from Camel cigarettes. Herbert Muschamp, then the architecture critic for the New York Times, evaluated the witty project seriously, while acknowledging that it was unlikely to be built—and never was. (NYT 4 7 1997, pp. C11, C12)

The rehabilitated two-triangle ‘square’ welcomed an estimated two million celebrants on New Year’s Eve, 1999. The ball’s drop had been computerized in 1995 to replace manual labor and to produce the light display. As always, since 1907, the ball descended from the former Times tower, then owned by Sherwood Outdoor and Jamestown One Times Square. These companies bought the building in the late spring of 1997 but knowing that it would require too much alteration for new tenants, they decided to make it a tower just for signs. They eliminated the zipper and covered three sides of the building with signs on a frame that surrounds the building. The north side was reserved for LED signs; others were of neon and vinyl. (http://www.nyc-architecture.com/MID/MID104.htm accessed 2 12 17) In the next decade, however, tenants returned—J.C. Penney, briefly, and then Walgreen’s Drugstore in 2008 with its own sign.

(Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Database, s.v. One Times Square and Allied Chemical Building, accessed 2 14 2021; Joe McKendry, One Times Square: A Century of Change at the Crossroads of the World, Boston, David R. Godine; 2011, pp 10-14. Lehman Brothers had bought the Times Tower in 1995 when it was appraised at $275 million, as a location for billboards. Profits rose 400%. By 2012, it was appraised at $495 million. https://untappedcities.com/2013/11/15/behind-the-scenes-with-times-squares-new-years-eve-ball/ accessed 3 3 2021

The Knickerbocker Hotel at the Broadway corner, altered from offices to high-priced apartments and corporate suites, gained a new entrance designed by Rose & Whitehouse. At Sixth Avenue, the telephone company was allowed to install gates around its public plaza to keep out people late at night, as there had been some unwelcome intrusion of low-life individuals from farther west. (1095 Sixth https://apops.mas.org/pops/m050060/ accessed 2 14 2018). Other projects of the 1990s on Forty-second Street attracted less attention because the rehabilitation of the theater blocks was as rapid as projects can be in the city and was welcomed by most people because it was colorful and exciting. Some critics lamented the Disneyfication of the area---a new word related to gentrification and its social consequences, and to a level of popular superficiality, but the crowds in Times Square showed that the broad public welcomed the cleanup. White collar businesses could imagine relocating there.

Nearby, Holy Cross church undertook renovation and redecoration in 1996. In January 1997, a fire destroyed the choir gallery, some statues, and stained-glass windows, but the damage was repaired. The church now has an electric organ. (http://www.christinthecity.nyc/history accessed 7 28 2019) In the same year, after the City inexplicably declined to buy the parking lot on Eighth Avenue earlier destined for the merchandise mart, the Milstein family of developers bought the site. They proposed a thirty-five-story budget hotel but erected an office building a few years later. (NYT 1 12 1996, pp. B1, B3) In 1997-99, the Port Authority studied the idea of erecting a first idea for 7 Times Square on top of its terminal’s north wing and a golf driving range over the south wing but suspended both projects because the economy declined. (Wikipedia s.v. Port Authority Bus Terminal accessed 7 16 2020). In 1996, it also signed a contract with TDI, an advertising firm, to adorn the terminal’s east side with gigantic advertising signs comparable to those on nearby skyscrapers, anticipating annual revenue of up to two million dollars. The same company had produced the signs on the E-walk complex, using the talents of Kupiec Koutsomitis Architects, who also designed the Disney store signs. (NYT 6 29 1997, pp. IX1, 6).

One improvement toward the west came about because of social concern, not a desire for commercial success. In November of 1993, Edward Geffner, executive director of a not-for-profit entity called Project Renewal, proposed that his organization redevelop Hotel Holland into a single-room-occupancy hotel for homeless people. (Chap.7, Fig. 35) He assembled subsidy programs, bought the building from the City in February 1995, and prepared to provide social services for the residents. In refurbished form, it provided supportive housing to adults with mental illness, substance use problems, or HIV/AIDS, and to people with low incomes. The maximum rent charged is based on the Area Median Income, but that rose with gentrification during the next decade, causing problems that required solutions which apparently were found. In 2018, the building was renovated and renamed in Mr. Geffner’s honor. The organization continued to provide outreach, health care, and services related to housing and employment. During the renovation, drug dealers lurked under the scaffolds but they are no longer evident.

(William J. Poorvu and Michael A. Everett-Lane, "The Holland House," Harvard Business School Case 800-362, April 2000. (Revised August 2002); https://nypost.com/2011/12/04/gloom-service-thugs-bring-fear-back-to-42nd-st/ ; https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/historic-midtown-supportive-housing-gets-15-million-renovation, this and previous citation accessed 7 18 2021)

The far west end of Forty-second Street did not receive the attention that Theatre Row and the block to the east did---or rather, not right away. After all, the area had been industrial for many decades, and near an elevated highway. When a brownfield site at Eleventh Avenue was being cleared sometime before 2010, excavators found nineteenth-century tunnels used to drive cows to slaughterhouses. Mobil Oil’s tanks at Eleventh Avenue presented potential hazards, with contents having spilled or failed tests between 1988 and 1991. (Draft Environmental Impact Statement, CEQR no.92 DOT 008M p. XI-4.) Developers, though, eyed parking sites including one for the telephone company at 615 West, where three 550-gallon tanks were registered. The Federal Express (“FedEx”) building might also be available. Developers took over almost every industrial site in the next two decades. There might be more apartment houses there someday, not just the Strand and Riverbank West.

(NYT 4 26 2000, pp. B1, B4, see 42nd Street Light Rail Draft Environmental Impact Statement CEQR no. 92 DOT 008M, p.X-12; http://www.ediblegeography.com/cow-tunnels/ retrieved 9 10 2017; West 42nd Street Manufactured Gas Plant Site. Historic Report prepared for Consolidated Edison Co., Liverpool, NY, Parsons, 2002; also 605/615 West 42nd Street site New York, NY. Remedial Action Plan. For the same site: Investigation Work Plan, BCP #c231051)

At the midpoint of the street, the developer Frederick P. Rose and his wife, Sandra Priest Rose, showed their good civic values by funding the rehabilitation of the main reading room of the New York Public Library, having supported renovation of at least one branch library in the previous decade. (Chap. 5 Fig. 15) At last, the public could appreciate one of the city’s great interior spaces. By November 1998, readers who had used the faded but still splendid reading room enjoyed more light thanks to cleaned windows. That helped viewers to admire the gilded plaster rosettes on the ceiling and see the ornamental woodwork free from grime. They could now use their own portable computers because the library tables had been fitted with electrical outlets. The architects in charge of the rehabilitation were Davis Brody Bond. They worked on various aspects of the library’s main building for about twenty years, here and elsewhere aided by specialist craftsmen from the EverGreene Architectural Arts who had also assisted theater rehabilitations. The Rose family dedicated the room in honor of their children and countless other people’s children have been the direct beneficiaries of the gift. It is no wonder that the restoration received an award from the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Bryant Park itself reopened in 1992, thanks to funding provided in the 1980s to set up the non-profit Bryant Park Restoration Corporation and thanks to four years of work. That private management company signed an agreement with the City, allowing the Corporation to manage and improve the park and receive all the revenue from concessions and events. The Corporation had been founded in 1980 with support from the Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund, and its director, Daniel Biederman, had already been improving the park and thus the value of the surrounding real estate. The Corporation’s interest was financial, to safeguard the worth of the members’ property. Few if any neighborhoods without valuable real estate benefit from private contributions or parks conservancies; this is even true of “Friends” organizations composed largely of volunteers who support park maintenance. But on Forty-second Street, developers, landlords, retailers, and office renters, office workers, tourists, and ordinary citizens had an economic or emotional stake in Bryant Park’s revival and proper maintenance. Even those opposed to private entities running public spaces and using non-union labor observed a drastic reduction in crime, vagrancy, drug-taking, and other activities that had kept the broader public fearfully shunning the park.

(For the larger picture of private intervention in public life, see Benjamin Holtzman, The Long Crisis: New York City and the Path to Neoliberalism, New York, Oxford University Press, 2021, esp. chapter 3, 5, and 6.)

When landscape architects Hanna/Olin finished a new design for the park, the public reacted with enthusiasm. Part of the new design had opened to the public in 1990, having been financed by foundations, banks, real estate companies with properties on the park, and others with specific interest in the area’s well-being. Terrain that had been elevated above street level and girded with stone under Robert Moses could not be lowered for various reasons, so the designers arranged to have more and wider openings in the granite perimeter wall. Lynden B. Miller, designer of public gardens, directed the laying-out of flower beds and the planting of yew trees. The new planning included three wheelchair ramps. Kiosks designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer supplied food and beverages at Sixth Avenue, charging prices neither cheap nor absurdly expensive.

(Fig. 18. Kiosk, Bryant Park. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer. c. 1992. Photo: Author, 8 2025)

The outdoor café attached to an indoor restaurant, designed by the same architects, opened in 1991 beside the library’s wall and endured until 2025 when the proprietor was faced with eviction in favor of a probably more expensive management.

(Fig. 19. Bryant Park café at left, restaurant center distance. Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer, c. 1992. Photo: Author, 2025)

The public feared higher-priced food and the firing of long-time restaurant personnel. At the north end of the café, the handsome granite Beaux-Arts public toilet at the southeast corner of Bryant Park was rehabilitated by Kupiec & Koutsomitis with hands-free fixtures; well-trained attendants staff this exceptional facility.

(Fig. 20. Beaux-Arts public toilet. Carrere & Hastings, c. 1911. Photo: Author, 2023)

Large plants and trees are tempting items, so to ward off theft, those elements had to be wired so that an alarm would sound if anyone tried to remove them. To the delight of everyone, and the surprise of many, the chairs in the park, although easy to move, were not stolen. The chairs proved to be so popular that other cities adopted them and the French manufacturers set up a factory in Atlanta to increase the supply.

(C. Ray Smith, editor of Oculus, devoted much of volume 50 # 6 in February 1988 to the matter of altering the park with restaurants, then a matter of debate. Mitchell Owens, “Urban Arcadia,” New York Times Magazine Oct. 15, 1995, pp. 22, 24, 42. For Bryant Park’s arrangement with the city, see John Krinsky and Maud Simonet, Who Cleans the Park? Public Work and Urban Governance in NewYork City, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2017, pp. 140-142, 152, 163. For an excellent summary of the park’s design history, see Daniel Jost’s essay in https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/NY-01-061-8068. See also:https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/how-bryant-parks-iconic-chairs-revolutionized-public-spaces?utm_source=Newsletter%3A+WNYC+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=dd14b151b9-Daily_Brief_July_4_20141_26_2014_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_edd6b58c0d-dd14b151b9-70998853&mc_cid=dd14b151b9&mc_eid=911ca5c248 accessed 4 18 2021; Roberts, Grand Central, p. 145. Carter Wiseman, “Brave New Times Square,” New York Magazine, April 2, 1984, p. 35; NYT 12 1 1983, p. 17; notes from lecture on 42nd Street by David McGregor of the Cooper-Eckstut firm, at a date not recorded, ca. 1997. Eleanor Dwight, “Bryant Park Comes Back,” New York Magazine, April 20, 1992, pp. 45-46 with details of the planting program. See also NYT 5 25 2025, p.RE6.

The restored park immediately attracted office staff, visitors to the city, and admirers of horticulture. The park officials sponsored movie nights in warm seasons. Fashion shows took place there for a while despite public protest over the privatization of public space. A “winter village” sponsored by Bank of America gives small merchants space in which to thrive around the Christmas holidays. A few shoeshine men still ply their trade nearby against the library’s parapet.

Activity east of Fifth Avenue was less intense overall. Almost anything would have seemed less intense than the rehabilitation of the theater area, but the new work included the restoration of Grand Central Terminal, the profitable sale by Donald Trump of his interest in the Grand Hyatt (NYT 10 8 1996, p. D4) and the designation of Tudor City’s parks as city landmarks, offering them protection from development. While about a fifth of the office space was available in 1996, and while the Chrysler Building was about a quarter vacant, recovery proceeded despite the older floor plans and facilities of the buildings east of Grand Central. (NYT 6 2 1996, p. RE11)

The tobacconist Nat Sherman moved to the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue, within sight of the Heckscher Building at 50 East. The latter’s lobby was remodeled by the Abramson Brothers real estate investment firm which had owned the building since the 1960s. Investors including Peter Malkin restored the original ceiling at the Lincoln Building, but added new windows, a conference center, restrooms, a concierge’s desk and other alterations. 200 East Forty-second Street was completely renovated inside in 1995 after having stood for thirty-eight years. The Pfizer Building was refurbished, and the corporation said that it hoped to make its working environment inspiring, even transformative, through works of art. Accordingly, it commissioned the British artist Brian Clarke in 1995 to create works of mouth-blown stained glass and Venetian mosaic, installed through the depth of the block.

Fig. 21. Brian Clarke, glass installation, Pfizer Building. 1996-97. Photo: https://brianclarke.co.uk/art/architectural-projects/pfizer-pharmaceuticals-headquarters/design-for-pfizer-pharmaceuticals-1)

Some of the work referred to HIV infection and terminal cancer; in 1997, combination therapy for AIDS began to be generally administered. (http://www.brianclarke.co.uk/work/works/item/284/5 accessed 8 29 2020) Then in 2000, Pfizer commissioned blue glass panels with abstract designs for the ground floor, enclosing the exterior.

On the next block, the Ford Foundation building’s exterior, atrium, and garden were designated as official city landmarks. Hotel Tudor, updated, received a grandiose new name: the Crowne Plaza at the United Nations.

There was also some bad news---the sale of the Daily News building as the publication offices moved to another site, the closing of the last automat when the building at the southeast corner of Second Avenue was constructed, and the end of eastern seaboard long-distance Amtrak railroad service to Grand Central.Although in mid-1996 about a fifth of office space had no occupants (NYT 6 2 1996, p., NJR11) that situation soon changed. By this time, large corporations needed more space for tasks that were formerly handled in the small office suites typical of buildings erected in the 1910s and 1920s. The renovation of Grand Central enticed more renters and improved the atmosphere of the whole east side of Forty-second Street.

The great railroad terminal received the expert attention of architects Beyer Blinder Belle and many specialists in restoration and replication, named in the book about the Terminal by John Belle and Maxinne Leighton. An earlier volume, Grand Central Terminal, edited by Deborah Nevins had laid out some of the problems inherent in restoring the complex for new uses. The result, after six years of intense effort, became once again easy to use, handsome, and supplied with useful facilities. The stockbroker, newsstand, Kodak sign, and other distractions disappeared from the main concourse and original waiting room so that the great spaces and the clarity of their organization could be understood and admired and used efficiently.

The architects had spent the years between 1988 and 1992 carefully surveying the condition of Grand Central, deciding what to keep, what to alter, and how to work within the constraints of funding, authenticity, and public interest. Among their colleagues were STV engineering and architects Harry Weese & Associates. La Salle Partners and Williams Jackson Ewing were development consultants, having filled Union Station in Washington D.C. with appealing shops and eateries by 1988.

The lower level, newly reachable by escalators, was no longer used exclusively for commuters rushing to trains or for baggage handling but became a fast-food hall and lounge. near the rehabilitated Oyster Bar.

(Fig. 22. Escalators down to food court. Market hall in center,ahead. Photo: author, Sept. 1, 2025)

David Rockwell designed the food court. Perimeter stations offer dishes of various cultures, prepared in the original suburban ticket window locations. The central areas have additional food counters, and at first had large easy chairs made of Corian that evoked old-fashioned Pullman car seats. There were benches, and a vaulted area for dining at small tables. Over time, the entire area has been increasingly devoted to profit-making rather than public comfort. The easy chairs were moved in 2011 to employee lounge areas so that more customers could be served at lunchtime on seats controlled by the restaurants….and perhaps not by homeless people in search of rest in a safe place. (https://www.sterlingsurfaces.com/blog-posts/2015/3/19/what-happened-to-the-corian-chairs-at-grand-central-terminal)

From 1992 to 1998, Grand Central was air-conditioned. Experts in various crafts freshened everything from the replica ceiling of 1940 in the main concourse to small spaces. They removed the suspended shops beside the Vanderbilt Avenue ramp. At an edge of the main room, they installed a wine vendor where a cinema had been, uncovering part of Tony Sarg’s earlier paintings in the process. They simplified some circulation patterns and created an arcade of glass-walled boutiques leading to the Lexington Avenue exit; in a surviving painted groin vault, there are faint remains of a painted vault by Edward Trumbull who was more famous as the muralist of the Chrysler Building lobby. The architects filled an adjacent space with an attractive upscale food market.

(Fig 23. Beyer Blinder Belle, Grand Central Market c. 1998. Photo: Author, 2023)

They demolished a balcony with ticket windows that current rail usage made superfluous and thereby opened the ninety-foot-high ramp to public admiration. Of course, experts repaired mechanical and electrical installations. The people in charge emptied the benches from Vanderbilt Hall, the original waiting room, precluding its use as a dormitory for the homeless. Although the space was re-imagined for temporary commercial exhibitions and food presentations, the owners’ earlier plan to cram the room and other areas with retail installations was not put into effect but the space is rented to various entities. In the summer of 2025, the hall was host to pickleball on one side and an attractive restaurant on the other.

(NYT 7 4 1993, p. R1 An instructive cross section of the proposals, by Architectural Delineator Porto Folio Inc. was published in the NYT 1 29 1995, p. IX1. For work at the north end, see NYT 2 25 1998, pp. B1, B6. The Long Island Railroad now meets Grand Central at the latter’s north end.)

(Fig. 24. Vanderbilt Hall now empty (former waiting room) with pickleball players. Photo: Author, 8 9 2025)

A branch of the New York City Transit Museum opened west of the main concourse. A restaurant occupies the western balcony and the newly-built matching eastern balcony accommodated another restaurant initially but later, an Apple store and service center.

The Campbell Apartment (Chap. 7 Fig.3), too, was refurbished and opened in 1999 with a new street-level area; the entrepreneurs were the Gerber Group which maintained the air of formality, and Mark Grossich who loosened the dress code.

(New Yorker June 19, 2017, p. 17 for the Campbell apartment. For the problems envisioned in relation to the sale of the Terminal’s air rights, see Carter Wiseman, “All Aboard for Grand Central,” New York, July 16, 1990, pp. 52-53. “John Belle Featured at MHSA Annual Meeting,” Metropolitan Historic Structures Association Newsletter 18, #2, Summer, 1997; Belle and Leighton, passim. See also Monica Rivituso, “Grand Old Station,” Our Town, June 3, 1998, pp 10-11. Collaborators on the restoration include Seelye Stevenson Value & Kneckt for engineering, with consultant engineers M/P/E, and Structure Engineer Yisrael A. Seinuk. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority engaged La Salle Partners Chicago, and Williams Jackson Ewing, NYT 3 27 1994, p.RE1. as part of the “Grand Central Renovation Team.”)

Other artworks were newly commissioned, such as a mosaic of glass and bronze by Ellen Driscoll in passageways at the north end of the terminal, and Roberto Juarez’s murals called “A Field of Wild Flowers” in the Station Master’s office.

(Fig.25. Roberto Juarez, “A Field of Wild Flowers,” 1997 Grand Central Terminal, station master’s office waiting area. Photo: Rob Wilson https://www.mta.info/agency/arts-design/collection/field-of-wild-flowers accessed 7 26 2025.)

Part of Red Grooms’ “Ruckus Manhattan” was on display in 1993, and numerous other exhibitions have been presented in the terminal, from fashion shows to artistically painted automobiles. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Grand_Central_Terminal_art accessed 1 23 2020.

In 1995, the French artist Christian Boltanski arranged an exhibit through the Public Art Fund, a work called “LOST: New York Projects”. This was part of the artist’s larger work at three locations, having to do with the limits of memory, or community and continuity. Using lost or discarded objects, as he often did, he exhibited items from the terminal’s Lost-and-Found office. The office itself had become computerized so that more things could be restored to their owners efficiently but there was still plenty of material to display,. At Grand Central, the Incoming Train Room presented over five thousand items lost by travelers, chosen at random and displayed on metal shelves. The Public Art Fund regarded the work as lending an “elliptical but authentic sense of a city and its anonymous workaday life.” (Holland Cotter, review “Lost, Found, and Somewhere in Between,” NYT 5 26 1995, p. C26.)

(Fig. 26. Christian Boltanski, Lost and Found, exhibit at Grand Central Terminal 1995, Photo: New York Historical, Sarah Bird and Dorothy Zeidman https://www.publicartfund.org/exhibitions/view/lost-new-york-projects/#section_2&gid=1&pid=7 accessed 7 26 2025/)

Across the street, the Bowery Savings Bank building became the property of Home Savings of America in 1991. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a city landmark (Landmarks Preservation Commission September 17, 1996; Designation List 274 LP-1912). The Green Point Bank took over the spaces in 1995, but the banking business yielded to Cipriani, a caterer based originally in Venice. Arrigo Cipriani was proprietor of two restaurants in Grand Central at the time and later, a dessert bar there. In 1998, his company bought the banking room as a condominium unit in association with the SL Green Realty Corporation. The investors hired architect Anthony J. Moralishvili to redesign the interior as a space for corporate gatherings, weddings, and other large-scale events. As the interior had been designated as an officially inviolate landmark, the architect had to deal with the marble and bronze tellers’ cage in the center of the room. Guests notice it, but then move on to admire the lofty space, the decoration of the walls and ceiling, and the inlaid marble floor that Mr. Cipriani likened to that of Venice’s San Marco. After the District Attorney allowed him to plead guilty to felonious tax evasion in 2007, which required mandatory deportation, the restaurateur had more chances to check out the supposed similarity in Italy.

(http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/29/nyregion/catering-hall-planned-in-landmark-midtown-bank.html accessed 9 2 17. LP Sept. 17, 1996, Designation list 274 LP-1912 110-120 East, 1921-3, 1931-3 York & Sawyer/ W. Louis Ayres design partner. Designated 1993; NYT 10 29 1998 p. B4. https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/topic/62708/ accessed 8 6 2021. Geoffrey Gray, “Bellini Troubles,” New York Magazine 12 11 2009, https://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/topic/62708/; NYT 8 1 2007, pp. B1, B5. The architectural firm of Cetra/Ruddy performed work on the exterior doors, windows, and ornaments; photographs by the ESTO firm show what was done.

The Chrysler Building had been partly restored and then foreclosed by the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. The restoration work was performed by Hoffmann Associates, Architects, and LZA Technology, benefiting from a preservation tax credit. Near the end of the decade, the property—needing improvement inside although improved outside---had its leasehold transferred to Jack Kent Cooke, an investor, and then Tishman Speyer and the Travelers Group. The Abu Dhabi investment Council took over ninety percent of it in 2008.

(NYT 11 25 1997, pp. B1, B6 also for the history of ownership; further reports in late summer, 1999. For the restoration, see lecture at the Skyscraper Museum on March 24, 1999, and Historic Preservation 32, 1996, p. 28. See also S. Cuozzo, https://nypost.com/2019/03/07/inside-the-chrysler-buildings-storied-past-and-uncertain-future accessed 8 6 2021)

The building industry at this time increasingly employed the design-build method of contracting for architectural and building services. This procedure became common after the millennium but was noticeable already in the 1990s. Design and construction are covered by a single contract, rather than having separate contracts with the architects and the builders. It was not as often used on Forty-second Street, however, where the prestige or the specific skill of an architect was valued for new buildings and might well take precedence over efficiencies to be gained from a single-contract method of designing and constructing.

Related to the new office towers and hotels was the invention of LEED in 1998 by the United States Green Building Council. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design is a rating system for assessing the environmental effects and virtues of buildings, especially new ones but also interior remodeling and other aspects of structures. There are various types of assessments---for new construction, for major renovations, for specific building types such as health care or schools, for commercial interiors without new surroundings, for warehouses, retail, and data centers. Skyscrapers erected after the institution of LEED standards were proud to display their ‘green’ credentials in mid-Manhattan. But LEED certifies buildings before they are occupied, and if tenants install technology or furnishings that vitiate the virtues of the construction, LEED’s values are compromised. Moreover, a building can accumulate points for “posting educational displays throughout a building, and installing bicycle racks, building near public transit, and protecting or restoring habitat in Bryant Park.” (Sam Roudman, “Bank of America’s Toxic Tower,: New Republic, July 28, 2013 http://www.newrepublic.com/node/113942/print.accessed 3 25 2020) In midtown Manhattan, it is hard to build far from public transit, so those are easy points to collect. Keeping Bryant Park in good condition is helpful in attracting valued employees who imagine spending lunchtime there, so that provision is in part another gift to builders. But even if the publicity given to LEED ratings can be misleading, it is preferable to have at least the construction be as responsible as possible, as it was in One Bryant Park, which opened in the next decade. The LEED program has surely encouraged more thoughtful building, and high ratings may attract prospective tenants because high LEED scores suggest that the owner has good civic values and has been willing to spend money to realize them.

Another change in the 1990s had to do with the ways of engaging in the real estate business. Firms established in the early twentieth century learned from the financial problems of the 1970s to build few buildings at once---and even to build just one at a time. They used their own funds because they wanted to earn money from investing it well. But in the 1990s, newer entrepreneurs adopted what Charles V. Bagli of the New York Times called “a corporate model of working with both investors and partners to spread…risk.” The newer investors did not as often use their own money; they used funds from pension funds, insurance companies, banks, and investors from abroad. Interest rates were low enough to make this work for the investors. Lenders kept their distance from the buildings, requiring little equity. The investors reaped their reward from development and management fees, assuming that prices would rise and produce profits. Mr. Bagli pointed to the Related Companies that worked with both investors and partners to spread the risk, and he noted the rise of public companies---SL Green, Vornado, and Brookfield---as the three most eminent landlords. All of them had investments on Forty-second Street sooner or later, as did older firms such as those of the Dursts, Tishmans, and Roses. (NYT 2 9 2010, pp. A1, esp.A23) .

The decade, then, was one that emphasized rehabilitation rather than new construction. The work done in the theater district and at Grand Central transformed Forty-second Street from a partly dingy and partly dangerous place into a tourist-friendly street. Since tourism is vital to the City’s economy, the results won wide acclaim. That the west side blocks no longer cater to movie-goers looking for inexpensive tickets is a consequence of gentrification, but people interested in the city’s revenue and in bourgeois pleasures more readily focus on the removal of grime at the Terminal and crime farther west. The rehabilitation of the west side was not yet complete, however, and it continued in the following decades.