Milford Plaza

At 8th Ave. & 44th St.  Not a great building, but they've cleaned it up without (so far) removing all its old-school signs; unfortunately the big M on top is gone, at least for now.

NYC Scaffold Spectacular

Above, Greene St. & Washington Pl.  Just below l-r: (1) 5th Ave. & 11th St., (2) Lexington Ave. & 71st St., (3) Upper West Side from the bottom of Central Park.  Further below l-r: (1) the Sheraton at 52nd St. near 7th Ave., (2) next to the Puck Building at Jersey & Mulberry Sts., (3) 7th Ave. & 18th St., (4) 6th Ave. & 13th St.




Just above l-r: (1) 57th St. between 2nd & 3rd Aves., (2) Roebling & N 11th Sts. in Williamsburg, (3) Seton Shrine on State St.  Below, 10th Ave. at 23rd St.

Park Row Scaffold

Atop the Park Row Building.

Scaffold Mountain

At 68th St. & 2nd Ave.

Surrogate's Courthouse 2

Earlier, statues like new teeth buried in braces

Just above, the scaffolding's come down and, after their whitening, the statues have sunk back into their surroundings on Surrogate's Courthouse at Chambers & Centre Sts.

Earlier, from the Municipal Building across Centre St.

Scaffold Light

The surface of this building at the southwest corner of Broadway & 12th St. is just dirty enough to have defeated my attempts to capture its detail.  Then I had a lucky breakthrough a few days ago, thanks to the sun and the scaffold across the street.

Racquet Club Scaffold

Bright day scaffolding on the Racquet and Tennis Club, at Park Ave & 52nd St.

Village Tower Scaffolding 2

Closeups of scaffolding on the tower of Jefferson Market Courthouse at 6th Ave. & 10th St. in Greenwich Village.

Majestic 8th Ave Scaffolding

Scaffolding on the 36th St. side of 519 8th Ave; the building's unveiled 8th Ave. face is below left.  There's scaffolding on the building just south, too, but I decided it's not up to my majestic standard.

Ghost Church on 14th

Under the ghostly plastic, on 14th St. near First Ave., Immaculate Conception Church is being refurbished.  It was built in 1896 as Grace Chapel & Hospital, a mission of Grace Church at 10th & Broadway.

At the dedication Bishop Henry Codman Potter said there were so many immigrants that the neighborhood had "as much work to perform as in uncivilized quarters of the globe."  The complex's architects "favored the later French Gothic, and let loose both barrels..."  [ NY Times via Forgotten New York ]

Original Plan

The church, which was converted from Episcopalian to Catholic use in 1943, now has a grade school.  You have to feel for institutions in the Internet Age -- student reviews complain that recess is terrible at Immaculate Conception.  But even in the early 1900s, a concert organist rated the church's organ "Very poor and cheap both tonally and mechanically.  Terrible." 

(Btw, the history of the Ferris & Stuart organ at that last link, though not at this church, is pretty interesting.)

Full Frontal Scaffolds

(Speaking of scaffolding...)  Frontal above, anyway.  The naked toothpick lattice gives all three of these a gauzy, web-like thickness, then the working planks bring another level of order.

Above, an older photo from Adams St. north of Tillary in Brooklyn.  Below left -- a little too subtle for my camera -- at 13th St. and 4th Ave. in Manhattan.  And below right, wrapping a big box of living units rising where they used to park the Brooklyn Brewery trucks at Berry and N. 13th in Williamsburg.


[ Scaffolding - Urban Shed Competition ]

Urban Shed Competition

Something Is Going On Up There; 38th St. off Sixth Ave.
I got excited when saw a blurb about the Urban Shed Competition: I thought I'd finally be able to share my plans for a stylish shed with room for the moonshine still, an outhouse, and other stuff you either don't want indoors or don't want the Sheriff's boys to find in your possession.

But when I visited the Urban Shed website, I find out they're serious, and want suggestions on how to paint a Happy Face on the unbridled development required by Bloomberg's core constituency: the Masterds* of the Universe and the greedy developers who build condos for them and their legions of wannabe Masterds (who binge crawl all over the LES, East Village, and soon Williamsburg, doing their best to eject their soul along with their stomach contents and thus attain Masterdhood).

The point of the competition is to design a new system of scaffolding and "sidewalk sheds" (like the one to the left, at 2nd Ave. and 12th St.) -- a ridiculous idea, because the current scaffolds nearly always look better than the naked buildings, and the ad hoc, zigzagging sheds are some of the most interesting pedestrian passages in New York City.  (And most exciting: pedicab drivers could sell thrill rides through these twisting labyrinths, swerving around groaning cranes and whooshing I-beams, welding sparks and hungover construction workers.)

Not only is there no need for new scaffolding & sheds, but we get the insult of the Urban Shed website, a detailed propaganda exercise selling the idea that a jury headed by Dept. of Building officials, in a competition supported by the players who've brought us all these years of Masterdization, will somehow come up with something good for the city.

High Above Lexington at 48th
It's a little irritating for a creative type like me to see the respected architects and designers on the jury.  I know that's the way of the world -- rich people buy the art and develop the buildings that keep artists and architects afloat -- but the idea of tarting up passageways around construction sites -- usually the most interesting sights on our increasingly drab and uniform blocks -- just to make the Masterds, the developers, and their friends in office more comfortable is a bit too much.  I accept my place as an artist in the economy, a lapdog to wealth if lucky enough to sell work; but I draw the line at whimpering and licking its face like a neurotic toy poodle.

If the competition could come up with something guaranteed to withstand a semi-truck sideswiping a scaffold, I might be impressed.  As it is, I can almost guarantee the results of this needless exercise: A design that somehow complements the slick blandness of new construction, and is smooth enough in spots to sell to Cemusa as ad space.

Like the case of the "urban shed" that wraps the still-dead escalators at the Union Square subway entrance, right -- courtesy of a sweetheart development deal that cheats the public -- the perceived ugliness of the sheds is not the problem.  The sheds distract from the problem.  To turn urban sheds into something that fits in with the Cemusa newsstands, bus stops and "bike shelter" ad platforms that, thanks to Bloomberg, now bring that slick plastic corporate flavor to every corner of the city, just adds to the problem.

[ Union Square Subway Shed: A Tale of Two Entrances ]
[ Urban Shed Competition ]

* Excuse me, I just read about Quentin Tarantino's new movie "Inglourious Basterds"