Angular white columns. Tile is duplicated dizzy. Row of palm trees. The atrium at 60 Wall Street, which is also one of New York’s most distinctive subway entrances, makes some feel “It’s like going back in time.”
In a city where the typical subway exit puts passengers on a filthy sidewalk, to ride the escalator up from the dingy train station and up the brightly lit white corridors is a real thing. transport. But now there is a plan to tear down this eye-catching extravagance, designed in the 1980s, and create a sleeker, more modern design.
Something about the removal of the atrium, the flashiest and most colorful place, inspires reflection: In a city that is both filled with history and constantly reinvents itself, what is worth it? conserve? And are the designs of the 80s really historically significant?
Rock Herzog, 38, who runs the hugely popular Twitter account, said: “It’s like people are embarrassed about the 80s. Decorating cocaine, where images of the atria appear over time. “For me, it was like an attempt to get past the ‘American Psycho’ era of New York City.”
Liz Waytkus of Docomomo US – the American branch of Docomomo International, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving modern buildings – wants to see the space protected. “I’ve had someone say to me, ‘Why are you trying to break 60 Wall Street?’ They think it’s disgusting,” said Ms. Waytkus, who serves as the organization’s chief executive officer.
She admits that it’s sometimes difficult for people to “remove the subjectivity of, you know, your own personal taste” and look at the work as a whole – design, details and references.
“There are a lot of buildings from the 80s in New York City. I don’t think there’s a bunch of ’80s buildings that need to be marked. But this is obviously very high on that list,” she said.
Impressive space, crafted from Carrara white marble and green granite and completed in 1989, not just a subway entrance. It’s a privately owned public space inside a 47-story skyscraper – 60 Wall Street – that was once the headquarters of JP Morgan & Company and later became the main New York office for Deutsche Bank.
In September last year, Deutsche Bank vacated the space, moving its staff to a downtown address. Now 60 Wall Street is mostly empty, looking for a new tenant. To attract a client, real estate trust fund Paramount Group, which owns the building, wanted to give it an update.
For those who work in the building, the atrium is more than just a postmodern sight. It is also a place for gossip and gossip.
“It’s the dated kind. But at the same time, it’s a great meeting place,” said Ajay Chawdhry, former vice president of Deutsche Bank. “It has character.”
During his time there, he used the skylight daily for quick coffee meetings. Even after leaving his job to work at various banks, he continues to use the atrium as a meeting place.
Although the building is not a landmark, it was originally built with the condition that its design has what the city calls a “harmonious relationship” with 55 Wall Street, National Historic Landmark across the street. The exterior and interior columns of 60 Wall Street repeat what’s 55 Wall Street.
For now, the future of space remains unclear. Proposed plans to modify the interior and exterior of 60 Wall Street are being reviewed by the New York City Landmarks Conservation Commission. Also under consideration is a request to review the building, and the atrium, a landmark. But being “under consideration” does not prevent construction – or demolition.
Architects of 60 Wall Street, Kevin Roche, giving extremely detailed notes about the building. Writing by hand in 1984, he envisioned that its atrium – complete with rock-falling water, green mounds and plenty of seating – would be “light, bright and cheerful.” He also planned for “a pocket of serenity and quiet – away from the hectic daily rhythm of life in the county.”
Mr. Roche, who in 1966 founded Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates, with his partner, John Dinkeloo, imagined that there would be a music program for visitors at lunchtime and hoped that an art museum would offer rotating sculpture exhibits. The two met while working under a famous architect Eero Saarinen before setting up their own company together. After Mr. Dinkeloo’s death in 1981, Mr. Roche assumed the sole leadership role of the company; in 1982, he was awarded Pritzker Architecture Prize for his “remarkable work”.
Mr. Roche, who passed away in 2019, also designed Ambassador Grill at One United Nations Plaza, which received the interior design honors in 2017, and he is the architect of atrium at Ford Foundation on East 42nd Street, which was named a New York City landmark in the 1990s.
The new plan for 60 Wall Street, produced by architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates and commissioned by Paramount Corporation, completely reimagines the concept of an oasis.
The company’s “redesigned ground floor experience” will be airy, light-filled, and “column-free,” with triple-height windows, 100-foot green walls and skylights, making it look like a no-brainer. like a Mediterranean spa and like a Singapore Airport. The thinking is that these changes could be “accommodate a wide range of top tenants. “
Ms. Waytkus said one of the problems is that the space is not well maintained. The shops have closed, the waterfalls have stopped flowing, and the original living old trees have been replaced with plastic palm trees. “It just needs a little refresh,” she said.
But from the very beginning, there were detractors at the ear. In 1990, the New York Times architecture critic Paul Goldberger describe it as “A mix of white marble, lots of trellis, mirrors and marble lattice,” and writes that “the overall effect is quirky, almost feminine, like an ice cream parlor blown up to scale.” monumental scale.”
However, there are still people born in the 80s or children in the 80s who love the particular style of the Eustachian tube as it is now and can only see what will be lost.
“It feels like an 80s vision of New York, which I, as a Kansan, just love to see in movies. It’s like a small slice of that, somehow still intact,” said Gavin Snider, 36, an artist in Brooklyn who has created an impressive piece of work. ink and crayon sketch of the atrium in 2019. He moved to New York in 2015 and often stops at the atrium for a quiet getaway.
Ms Waytkus agrees: “It’s amazing. It’s dazzling. It will evoke a response. It is not a passive design”.
“At the same time, it’s quiet,” she said. “It’s a little piece of ‘Miami Vice’ right on Wall Street.”
Will the atrium become another memory, living only on Cocaine Decor’s Twitter feed or in classic Instagram accounts like Luxurydeptstore and Asthetic80sdream?
“They were like, we want to make it a place where people want to meet. But why wouldn’t people want to meet in a giant ice cream parlor? ” asked Mx. Herzog, who liked to use sexist honorifics. “Is it timeless preservation?”
Reached by phone recently, Mr. Goldberger, 71, who has called the space “cluttered” and likened it to an ice cream parlor, admitted he was “a bit cranky”.
“I would rather see it saved than turned into just another modern office lobby,” he said. “As time went on, I realized it was one of the few important interiors from that time.”
Ms. Waytkus and her colleagues agree. “Hopefully we won’t lose it,” she said.
