Why New York's Skyscrapers Keep Changing Shape

it's said that you can tell a lot about a city by its tallness structure in New York that was once the Chrysler Building capitalism colliding with art and hubris to reign supreme over the skyline the city's tallest building has of course changed hands many times since but the Chrysler's become a landmark in the one place above all others that's now synonymous with the skyscraper now it's set to be covered up by a new generation of glass cupboard office Towers all right Manhattan simply wouldn't be the place it is today without the skyscraper when it was first formed millions of years ago its Geographic size wasn't that notable and if it stayed a small low-rise island it probably wouldn't have amounted to much but these remarkable structures rising from the Island's solid Bedrock have let it continuously increase its area to welcome the millions of people and businesses who all want a slice of the action it's skyscrapers that made New York these awe-inspiring buildings have risen through every chapter of this City's Story Each a product of the context and forces at play at the time and each going on to shape the era that followed we saw it in the extravagance of the 1920s and then the slicked back modernism of the 60s skyscrapers personified the excess of the 80s and then found themselves with an existential crisis in the wake of 9 11 as everyone tried to work out what the future of the skyscraper would be and now we're seeing it again in the 2020s as they come to reflect some of this City's biggest challenges what happens in New York is reflected in its skyscrapers they stand both as monuments to its past and Silent influences of its future this city is so much more than just the home of the skyscraper it was made by them greatness of New York is perhaps most spectacularly seen in its buildings for here on the island of Manhattan is the most impressive concentration of stone and steel masonry the world has ever known New York is synonymous with skyscrapers as what everybody around the world thinks of first when you when you say the word New York the Chrysler Building is just the grandest of them all one of those buildings that you can't imagine New York City without [Music] it was Joseph Campbell who famously said that you can tell a lot about a city and what drives it by its tallest buildings in medieval times it was often the Spire of a cathedral in 18th century towns it was the political Palace and in 1920s New York it was the office building foreign the American dream embodied by Steel and sheer grit the skyscraper was capitalism incarnate The Roaring Twenties was a decade defined by excess and wealth one which marked the transition of power from London to New York as the world's Metropolis it all gave rise to the Chrysler Building a shining Beacon that announced the city's arrival and America's wild success what's more characteristic of the American dream than unabated competition I am Midwestern by by birth but I always knew I was really from New York Carol Willis is an architectural historian and the founder of New York's Skyscraper Museum well skyscrapers in New York and everywhere are really commercial architecture they are buildings which are constructed to make money the Chrysler building's existence was fueled by the fierce rivalry of two four business partners Architects Craig Severance and William Van Allen Severance was hired to design the manhattanco building now known as 40 Wall Streets while Van Allen was asked to design the Chrysler Building both were vying to construct the world's tallest skyscraper and both would do pretty much anything to make that happen [Music] as the planning and construction of each skyscraper took place the designers from either side would steal or leak plans of the buildings the manhattanco building began adding more and more floors pushing the limits of what its foundations could handle in a desperate attempt to best Chrysler and it seemed to work the Building completed in 1930 and was the tallest in the world for about a month Van Allen had ingeniously constructed a secret Spire inside the crown of the Chrysler Building once the manhattanco building was finished the Spire was pushed up through the roof into place dramatically beating the other Tower by 36 meters but when the Chrysler Building first appeared on the skyline many thought it was an eyesore and yet today it's held up as one of the world's greatest examples of Art Deco architecture it's an undeniably iconic Landmark one of the emblems of New York well the Chrysler Building everybody loves the Chrysler Building it's such a a wacky skyscraper everything about it is an expression of the moment in the 1920s recognizability iconicity is something that has value in and of itself when you say you know I work in the Chrysler Building people know where you work Walter Chrysler had wanted his skyscraper to represent opulence and luxury but that didn't go over well as the Roaring Twenties came to a screeching halt with the crash at the New York Stock Exchange and the onset of the Great Depression the city where this worldwide economic crisis began had at the same time built a 319 meter Monument to capitalism unemployment rates were at their Peak nearly a third of New York City's population was out of work the extravagance of the twenties was over despite all the effort that had gone into making the Chrysler Building the world's tallest skyscraper it only held the title for 11 months until the Empire State Building completed astonishingly quickly in 1930 then the Great Depression in the second world war conspired to create a 40-year period without any record-breaking skyscrapers in New York the city's Focus was elsewhere and that chapter of its history is recorded in a period of absent high-rises when the skyscraper did finally make a comeback it had to be seriously we thought by the 1960s New York was a different city there were protests strikes and violence it was a time of radical change and unrest it was a time for something new ornamentalism and detail weren't right for buildings it became all about Simplicity and function in an attempt to revitalize the then struggling Lower Manhattan Japanese American architect mineral yamasaki was selected to design the World Trade Center in 1962. he put forward an idea for two enormous Twin Towers a pair of gray monoliths that were almost an extreme iteration of modernism they had Sleek straight lines were aggressively vertical and had none of the step backs or details of New York City's Art Deco skyscrapers these are buildings born out of a very different New York 110 stories times two buildings 220 Acres of office space that's as many square feet as exist in many downtowns of of second-tier cities yamasaki's fear of heights meant the towers had relatively narrow Windows just 45 centimeters wide they only covered 30 of each building making them look like solid metal slabs from a distance now at the time it wasn't economically feasible to build a skyscraper more than 80 stories at all because of the space that its elevator shafts would take up on the floor plate the higher you build the more people you have living or working up the building and the more elevators you need particularly in structures like this that don't taper and have a huge floor plates even at their Summits that all means more elevator Banks eating up lettable floor space elevators don't pay rent to get around this yamasaki and his team designed Sky lobbies on the 44th and 78th floors of each tower that would break up the elevated Journey crucially that meant that different elevators could use the same shaft and reduced the overall number of shafts needed on the floor plate it enabled the buildings to rise 110 stories above the city but also created a mini commute for anyone with an office above a skylopy floor that wasn't all Structural Engineering also had to advance to make these towers possible the support columns for the towers were both at the central core like a traditional skyscraper and around the outside of the buildings this essentially made each Tower a sort of box within a box joined by horizontal trusses at each level this meant there were no support columns within the actual floor plates allowing for vast open Office Space the World Trade Center is a a real anomaly in the history of the skyscraper in New York not just because they were the tallest buildings in the world they were all so exceptional is because they were built by government the towers finally opened their doors in 1973 to a public who'd grown weary of them the project cost the equivalent of 4.5 billion US dollars in today's money and had reportedly come at the expense of some public transportation facilities some residents of lower Manhattan were still angry at having to be relocated and critics said the towers looked like filing cabinets all the boxes that the Empire State and Chrysler Building were delivered in but over the next decade they steadily became embraced as American icons helped by films like King Kong Superman and Manhattan as well as Philippe petites heart-stopping tightrope walk between them in 1974. the Twin Towers became synonymous with the city itself foreign big hair Big Ideas big buildings the 80s were about risk excess and Glitz it was a time when subtlety was thrown out the window if you were going to do something you had to be bold architecture was swinging away from the restrained clean lines of the 60s to something more extravagant this was an era of experimentation of clashing Styles and ideas that wouldn't ordinarily work together New York was an altogether different beast in the 1980s too the Wall Street boom and falling unemployment spurred on the real estate market though at the same time the city was experiencing record crime and soaring murder rates this was a place of contradictions of division of Glamor alongside poverty and violence but of extreme wealth and opportunity too rising from all of it was a new skyscraper on Fifth Avenue that would kind of come to embody the ethos of the era enter Trump Tower at 202 meters it was the tallest all-glass structure in the city wrapped in bronze with Interiors made of pink white veined marble mirrors and Brass the building is unmistakably 80s it contains some of New York's most prestigious residential commercial and Retail spaces as well as an 18 meter high waterfall and a rumored gold toilet some may call it Gordy Others May call it pure luxury and that may be precisely the point the Trump Tower something of the old had to be sacrificed and the bonwit teller store took the hit opened in 1929 the iconic 12-story Limestone Granite Emporium was designed by Warren and Wetmore the same Architects as Grand Central Donald Trump had his eyes on the site for years and when he acquired it in 1979 planned to demolish the building to make way for his own skyscraper he hired architects duskuts who later told New York Magazine of Trump's vision for the site it has to flash to be good preservationists wanted to save a pair of four meter Art Deco sculptures and a large nickel plated Grill over the store's entrance both were promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art but were ultimately destroyed when the effort to preserve them was found to be causing construction delays and it wasn't the only controversy surrounding the building of this particular skyscraper in many ways Trump Tower embodies The Runaway Ambitions of this time the 1980s were the era of Reaganomics real estate booms and stock market highs and lows capitalism growth and success no matter the cost in later years the towers taken on new meaning both as a place for supporters of and protesters against the former presidents it's perhaps more divisive now than it was when it was first constructed and what was a landmark of decadence is now a symbol of division what a building represents what it means as a symbol can change over the years or even in a single day the world changed on 9 11. New York and its tall buildings were thrown into an identity crisis how do you build a skyscraper after 9 11 does the world even want skyscrapers anymore for a time at the start of the 2000s no one really knew the answer to those questions some said American cities should stop building skyscrapers altogether fearing they'd create a magnet for future terrorism architect David Childs even said that many of his clients would not want to build such visible symbols such iconic and tall buildings ever again gigantic trauma for New York City and you know a setback in every way not not the least widespread emotionally across the New York Region so much of the reaction was death of the skyscraper will there ever be another skyscraper one of the very few prominent skyscrapers to actually be built during this era was the Hearst Tower Rising a relatively modest 182 meters above the city while the rest of the world was trying to figure out the future of high-rises Foster and partners set about completing one from the past The Firm made a conscious and active choice to push forward with construction despite the post-9 11 climate they successfully combined modern architecture with the past before both at the British Museum and the reichstag now they were taking that technique to new heights constructing a vertical extension on top of the existing Hearst Tower was moderately easier than it would have been with most other buildings the historic structure was intended to support at least seven additional stories with some accounts putting that as high as 20. it also had six elevator shafts double or triple the normal number for a place that size the facade of this building is more than just an eye-catching design its diagonal grid pattern in fact comes from its supporting trusses but despite that Striking Effects the Hearst Tower is something of a forgotten skyscraper in this city probably most well known for being the first to emerge here after 9 11. in time the city's high-rise Hiatus began to fade and engineers and developers started to find themselves in a race for space [Music] what happened after 9 11 yes the predictions of of New York's demise and the demise of the skyscraper were were far exaggerated as the 2000s wore on and rolled into the early 2010s the reimagined World Trade Center began to emerge in lower Manhattan filling the painful void that had been left in the skyline formed by a potent mix of emotion politics and compromise the tallest new skyscraper to rise from the site sought to evoke the silhouette of the former twin towers as if they had merged together it reached a symbolic height of 1776 feet nodding to the year of American independence and looked down to a pair of sunken waterfalls on the footprints of the buildings that had once stood there the sound of crashing water drowning out the city and creating a space for reflection New York was beginning to move on but it would never forget in a way the rebuilding of Ground Zero started the Turning of a page and gave a kind of gentle permission to the city to start building tool again as it turned out the skyscraper wasn't over it had just been reinvented gone are the domineering office Towers architecture is now an asset there's not much space left to build on in Manhattan so as the 2010s progressed developers started getting even more inventive constructing skyscrapers over live Rail Yards and pushing the limits of engineering the 1920s may have had Jazz and Gatsby but the 2020s has a new billionaire class the one percent of the one percent never before has there been so much wealth for so few and those people need somewhere to put all that money welcome to billionaires row foreign to develop these small sites remaining on 57th Street with buildings tall enough to offer Central Park views and enough floor space to make a return developers here spent years acquiring the air rights for properties around their lots that enabled them to combine those rights onto their sites and build their Towers taller helpfully preventing some nearby buildings blocking their views and it's all given rise to this 111 West 57th Street the world's thinnest skyscraper Rising 435 meters above the city but with a width of just 18 meters the structure offers Ultra Luxury Apartments and tries to hark back to the past the classic stepped form has returned as well as terracotta a material not really seen on Towers since the days of art deco this remarkable Pencil Thin structure and its neighbors were all born out of the latest Force shaping New York extreme wealth these buildings are no longer simply property their assets the luxury apartments they offer are less home or safety deposit box in the sky many are bought and left empty sometimes deliberately to retain their value in mid-2021 properties in the area were half empty love them or hate them the super slender Towers now stand as immovable markers of this latest chapter in New York's history they rise in a time of growing billionaire backlash and in a world that feels like it's changing faster and more unpredictably than ever before [Music] so what does the future hold for New York well that's something that's always captured our imaginations oh my God it's the future the far future as unknowable as it is may still contain flying cars and impossible super scrapers but the immediate future is a little easier to predict the skyscrapers of the 2030s are actually being planned today and we've got a preview remarkably we're about to see The Return of the mega office building much like the Chrysler and Empire State New York's about to witness its next skyscraper boom there are at least four new super tools being constructed collectively adding some 11 million square feet of new real estate to this island and it's all because of one little decision made in 2017. the rezoning of midtown east now please don't tune out just because we said rezoning this is actually very interesting stuff we promise you see midtown east has a problem it's one of the highest profile business addresses in the world there's over 60 million square feet of office space a quarter of million jobs and numerous Fortune 500 companies but it's also extremely old the average age of its buildings goes back more than 70 years so so Midtown and especially the The Zone around Grand Central the Glorious uh Chrysler Building had had fallen on harder times in the 21st century it was not completely wired for all of the necessity of larger digital businesses and the spaces of the floor plates were smaller so the historical fabric that already existed in Midtown uh was beginning to need to be refreshed in response a dramatic rezoning or rewriting of the rules was approved by the city council enabling far greater and denser Office Buildings in exchange for that great identity developers would have to contribute to a new District Improvement fund to create a Transit and pedestrian Network part of that is due to improve the subway in and around Grand Central now we know what you're thinking and many of the skyscrapers coming up out of this rezoning were in fact designed before 2020 and therefore meant for a very different world covid-19 can be characterized as a pandemic the office as we know it is over the possibility of a recession is looming large as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates in the hopes of driving down inflation the last couple of years haven't exactly paved the way for a great office tower comeback but that's kind of reminiscent of the birth of the Empire State Building which found itself adding hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial real estate into Manhattan during the Great Depression we may be at a time where there is a dramatic shift in the work patterns and maybe and perhaps even the occupancy of buildings but I don't think we're at the end of cities I think cities are our future and they must be our future 270 Park Avenue is one of the first new skyscrapers to enjoy the benefits of great identity the 423 meter super tool is designed like a series of dominoes just a bit taller than the Twin Towers were in 1973 the building returns to the iconic stepped form of classic New York skyscrapers a move that makes its dominating presence a little easy to take but 175 Park Avenue or projects Commodore as it's also known doesn't pull back from making an impact this immense skyscraper is rising just across the road from the Chrysler Building and at 480 meters we'll completely block out the New York icon the famous structure from the start of our story now superseded consumed by that Relentless race for the skies that it helped start almost a century ago the Chrysler Building may only have been the world's tallest for less than a year it may have been disliked when it was first constructed but the Chrysler Building is New York it's bold and it's Brash it's a product of fierce competition it's an advertisement a capitalist monument and a spectacular piece of art it's an eyesore and one of the most beautiful structures ever constructs it what happens if you cover it up New York is like all cities uh it's resilient because because cities are important to civilization and to economies but you know that that value of of a kind of embodied energy and investment in the City by history gives New York an advantage which is continuing it could be lost the way Rome lost its advantage in 300 uh it could be lost by other cities but New York still persists because it is a place of invention and energy you can tell a lot about a city and its people by the buildings that dominate its Skyline whether that's the church Depot the mega office building the half empty luxury apartment Tower or a true icon each stands as a monument of its era our buildings tell us something fundamental about who we are and what we prioritize that's the case all over the world but nowhere is it clearer than in New York City we may dislike new buildings when they first appear but the fact is the city doesn't belong to one person one time or even one building it's constantly changing constantly evolving exactly as it should be New York is never finished [Music] this video is made possible by bluebeam you can learn more about that at the link below there's also the chance to dive deeper on this and other topics on our Channel over on the world's best construction podcasts available now wherever you get your podcasts and as always if you enjoyed this video and you want to get more from the definitive video channel for construction make sure you're subscribed to the b1m foreign [Music]

Channel: The B1M

Views: 2,577,155

Keywords: B1M, TheB1M, Construction, architecture, engineering, The B1M, Fred Mills, building, Chrysler Building, New York, modernism, Joseph Campbell, Carol Willis, 40 Wall Street, William Van Alen, art deco, World Trade Center, Empire State Building, twin towers, Minoru Yamasaki, Trump Tower, David Childs, Foster + Partners, Manhattan, 111W57, Midtown East, 270 Park Avenue, Hearst Tower, WTC, NYC, USA, manhattan

Id: Yy8tDcdUUJY

Length: 27min 31sec (1651 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 14 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Olegovich]

Enjoyed this video. As an Architect, I feel like this sub needs more posts like this

[u/higmy6]

The B1M is always a good watch

[u/Bwahehe]

Thanks. Surprisingly fun watch. Gonna be interesting to see how these office businesses do post pandemic.