Vanished New York
New York Times - Goodbye to All That
“[I]n a city all but synonymous with change and growth, there will always be, rightly or wrongly, some loss of cherished buildings. In some cases, these structures possess the ability to transport us to a different, earlier incarnation of New York and, inevitably, a different version of ourselves.
Here are a baker’s dozen of such places - all in Manhattan, which has suffered the greatest loss of architectural treasures - that are forever etched in the city’s collective memory. All have disappeared since the demise of Penn Station, and most were subjects of controversy at the time of their destruction. They are just a sample of what has vanished.
Taken together, these lost buildings and rooms form a kind of ghost city, an island of memory that hovers above the real, evolving Manhattan. It is a shadow New York that once was and might have continued to be, had the economic and political forces that shape the city been different. It is also the only New York that is a perfect New York, for as Marcel Proust wrote in “Remembrance of Things Past,” “the true paradises are the paradises we have lost…”
That’s the gorgeous Orangerie at the Hotel Astor above, and be sure to watch the slide show to see what was destroyed to make way for a GAP storage room. Sigh.
via archinect