Call to Arms Against MoMA/Hines
Coalition for Responsible Midtown Development
Campaign to Reduce MoMA/Hines
Our coalition seeks to protect the Special Midtown Preservation Subdistrict from the massive and inappropriate development now proposed by the Museum of Modern Art, St. Thomas Church, the University Club, the Folk Art Museum and Hines Interests of Dallas, Texas.
Four years of havoc and danger await us as MoMA/Hines want to build the tallest building on the smallest lot in the world. The proposed building is 1250’ tall — the height of the Empire State Building — on a site of less than half an acre. The immensity of the proposed tower can be seen in the rendering attached at the back of this paper.
MoMA originally proposed a building one-third the size in March 2007. That was a substantial, 285 foot high, 25-story, 250,000 square foot building that has been scrapped in favor of an 82-story skyscraper, shoe-horned onto a 17,000 square foot lot.
The consequences for our neighborhood will be severe. At 1250 feet, the building will literally overhang, and figuratively overwhelm, our homes and many of the places where we work. The area between West 53rd Street and Central Park South from 5th Avenue to 7th Avenue will often find themselves in shadow. The tower will blot out your view and sun if you live at Museum Tower or the Rockefeller Apartments. And for any of us who live in the area, it will be a constant presence, drawing attention to itself, impacting our light and air, diminishing the setting of many historic buildings, burdening our neighborhood.
This is only possible because Hines proposes to acquire so-called development rights from St. Thomas Church and the University Club and pile these onto the 17,000 square foot site next to the Folk Art Museum. (The rights being transferred from St. Thomas Church alone are equal in bulk to ten churches stacked on top of each other on a tiny lot.) And less than 9% of this skyscraper is dedicated to museum space. The rest is to be hotel and condominiums. All in all, the Tower would be GROSSLY out of scale and context for the neighborhood.
Our neighborhood is zoned preservation to protect our quality of life. This will be destroyed by this Tower proposed for the middle of the block on a narrow street. Skyscrapers like this are to be located on avenues and wide streets. This 82-story mistake will overwhelm the landmark buildings that surround the development site from the CBS Building to the Rockefeller Apartments to the landmarked townhouses at 5, 7. 9. 11, 13 and 15 West 54 Street.
The proposal is twice as tall as the next nearest skyscraper, Museum Tower, a tower that MoMA sponsored in the 1980’s which already casts a shadow over the previously mentioned buildings and the Sculpture Garden (although MoMA’s environ-mental impact statement at the time said it wouldn’t). Now MoMA says they won’t be adding traffic, even though our traffic congestion is already so bad that the City prohibits further curb cuts for driveways on West 53rd Street. And MoMA delivery trucks and visitor buses are already among the worst offenders on our blocks. Despite years of complaints, MoMA refuses to insist that its delivery trucks use their loading docks. Now they want to add another dock.
As to noise pollution, MoMA acknowledges that our area is already very noisy, but fails to take responsibility for any of it. Their attitude appears to be one of indifference—that their mega-project won’t have any impact on noise. These findings strain credibility.
MoMA says they needn’t plan for more pedestrian visitors; in fact they ask the City to waive the required pedestrian circulation area of the new building. But, visits to the museum have dramatically increased since the last expansion, so much so that MoMA posts workers and stanchions on the sidewalk to control crowds. Any new movie theater in town must house its spillover in the lobby, but MoMA appears exempt from this requirement.
In each of its last expansions, MoMA has visually sealed itself off from its residential neighbors, leaving us only the problems, and none of the benefits. In 1980 we received shadows cast by the midblock, 50+ story Museum Tower. In the 2004 addition, the sculpture court was sealed off by a corrugated, metal wall where a lower, open brick one had been. The Tanaguchi buildings offer blank, black walls to the neighbor-hood, and to cap it off, three loading docks now face the preservation area.
MoMA/Hines’ original deal would have taken two years to build. Now they will need nearly four years. The last expansion of nearly the same size took six years by the time they finally finished the education building. Given the massive disturbance to our businesses and residences already suffered in this decade, must the half the next decade be ruined by lane closures, traffic congestion, air pollution, and construction dangers from cranes and falling glass? MoMA’s architect for the proposed Tower has already been cited for falling glass in his Berlin project.
The burdens of such overdevelopment far outweigh the windfall profits that would go to the already pristine St. Thomas Church and profitable University Club. Those landmarks are already well-maintained by their wealthy members. Why do the rights of those landmarks outweigh the other landmarks on our block, like CBS, the townhouses mentioned above, the Rockefeller Apartments or the Warwick Hotel, which is eligible for listing the Federal and State Registers of Historic Places?
Our coalition is working closely with other groups, including Community Board 5, The Society for the Architecture of the City, The Municipal Arts Society, Landmark West, The Historic Districts Council and The Warwick Hotel. We are residents and business people vitally interested in its protection of this unique, mixed-use neighborhood with a distinctly low rise profile that makes it so attractive to residents, tourists, business people who work here.
The essential and so-far missing element if we are to protect our neighborhood from this monstrous proposal is a coordinated, high-powered campaign to fight back, using not only our own energies but retaining attorneys, lobbyists and other consultants who can help stop the MoMA/Hines Tower.
To this end, our coalition is launching a campaign to activate the entire neighborhood and initiate a major fund raising effort that will allow us to obtain professional assistance to combat this plan. These funds will enable Midtown residents to promote alternatives as well as to obtain counsel to protect the character of the threatened area.
To kick off the campaign, we will hold an informational meeting and fundraising cocktail party on Tuesday, July 21, starting at 6PM at 45 West 54th Street. We have already received significant pledges in the $5,000 range. But we want to build a $200,000 war chest and need everyone’s help. We hope you will join us. If you are unable to attend, we hope you still be willing to help financially. All contributions to support the effort:
Please send your tax-deductible donations payable to: West 54-55 Street Block Association, c/o Missy Van Buren Brown, Treasurer, 17 West 54 Street, NY, NY 10019 Memo: Reduce MoMA/Hines
This is what some have said about the project:
Ada Louise Huxtable:
I am so weary of these stupid alliances between developers and cultural institutions in which the cultural institution is given a block of space and the developers overbuild the rest and make an enormous profit. The Museum of Modern Art has become a real estate operation. I admit a certain amount of nostalgia: I remember a street that was once one of the best streets in New York, 53rd Street. Watching it change over the years, I can’t help but view their new Nouvel tower as the last destructive nail. (NY Times, 11/7/08)
Tom Wolfe:
[It’s] the MONSTER of 54th . . . (8/28/08 letter to the West 54-55th Street Block Association)
Assemblyman Richard Gottfried:
The Verre Tower is a frightening example of how zoning provisions like this can work and it highlights the need for reform . . .The Verre Tower site is not on a wide avenue or a wide crosstown street; it is midblock on a narrow mixed –use street with its back on a residential street. . . .Non-for-profit organizations and cultural institutions are increasingly trying to make use of their air rights to build residential or commercial towers that undermine landmark historic districts, and zoning regulations. This trend should be resisted by community boards and cite agencies, especially the Landmarks Commission. (Letter to Commissioner of Landmarks Preservation Commission , 2008)
State Senator Liz Krueger:
[The project] would be grossly out of scale [and] would overwhelm the area’s infrastructure and services. . .the materials, design, scale and location of bulk in the proposed building would not relate to the adjacent landmark buildings.
James Russell, American Architecture Critic, Bloomberg News
Architect Jean Nouvel has designed an implausibly thin obelisk that would rise in crooked facets almost as high as the Empire State Building. Thank New York zoning laws for this chic behemoth, which could cast some of Midtown’s most prized and densely built blocks into darkness. Someday such abuse may become illegal. …[I]t’s time to stop the abuse of this zoning device in the latest race for the sky. (1/9/09 http://www.bloomberg.com/)
Jerry Speyer, MoMA Trustee, chair, real estate developer
The museum is not in the real estate business, but in the business of showing art, collecting art and educating people about art. . .
The Society for the Architecture of the City
Some years ago The New Yorker had a cartoon about seat belts. It showed a husband and wife, belted into their car, stalled on a railroad track, about to be hit by a train. The wife was saying, “Seat belts do save lives. This just isn’t one of those times.” Similarly, Section 74-711—and section 74-79 do save buildings. . . [But] the likelihood of [St Thomas Church and the University Club] falling into disrepair appears remote. In certain circumstances, the rewards of landmarking can be exponentially greater than perhaps the founders intended. (4/8/08 testimony to Landmarks Preservation Commission)
Historic Districts Council:
[T]here is no harmonious relation…between the proposed and the University Club and St. Thomas, [adding that] there is really no way a building so tall could do anything but tower over, eclipse and distract from its neighbors. Both individual landmarks,…are hardly the dilapidated, abandoned buildings 74-711 and 74-79 were created to help. The statement also noted that while the two landmark buildings are willing to suffer whatever side effects there may be from the construction it should be remembered that there are other individual landmarks just across the street that will not enjoy such benefits…as well as many historic, non-designated low and mid-rise buildings, [that] will endure all of the pain, and none of the gain.
The New York Landmarks Conservancy:
[B]oth landmarks are for the most part already in sound, first-class condition, it [is] troubling that a portion of the proposed building will impinge on a City Planning Commission’s Special Midtown Preservation Subdistrict that was specifically put in place to restrict over-development on the side streets surrounding MOMA.
Municipal Art Society
[T]he design of the proposed building is certainly handsome, [but] we believe there will be shadow impacts on historic resources, especially on the low-rise landmarks and light-sensitive open spaces like MOMA’s sculpture garden.
MoMA is subsidized by the city–although even the people who work there seem unaware of the fact–and the institution shows blatant disregard for the citizenry on which it depends, beginning with the fence that looks like the Berlin Wall. We all should be able ot enjoy the sculpture garden from the outside. This Tower is the last straw. It is a commercial project under the guise of a museum expnansion, which is totally uncalled for and desecrates the neighborhood.