Justin Davidson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York magazine architecture critic, spoke to us at the start of his new four-part 92U course, New York City Form & Function: Skyline, Street, Apartment, Office, in which he brings insights into our iconic city from four distinct perspectives.
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What prompted you to examine New York City from the four elements that are the subject of this 92U course?
I essentially think of my job as continuing to find new ways to explore what makes the city work – what makes New York “New York.” I’m always asking, “Why is it like that?” Skyline, Street, Apartment and Office are elements of New York City that I’ve studied and written about. There is a great deal of explanation behind every piece of the city we look at. Some of that explanation is financial, some historic, some social, some technical. The city is so dense and so many aspects of it are interconnected. My goal is to understand – and help others understand – why something is the way it is when we look at New York City.
When you zero in on one of these elements, what do you hope is revealed or more deeply understood? For example, what is something we learn when we look at the apartment and its place in the context of the city?
The apartment is the quintessentially New York condition. There are plenty of single-family houses and townhouses in the city, but the apartment has a particular place in the mental geography of New York. This is where the apartment became a social phenomenon. The apartment had to be developed, because of the city’s density. And because it had to be, it became something desirable, which it wasn’t initially. The apartment ran counter to the way Americans thought people should live. But eventually it became not only accepted, but the standard and something fashionable. Soon, people who in another era would have lived in grand palaces or mansions, were living in apartments. It was no longer a compromise but an object of desire. That kind of transition is fascinating to me. I’m also fascinated by the way things are interconnected.
Can you give us an example of that interconnectivity?
Take the technology of the elevator. It helps us develop tall buildings, including office buildings. And once we have tall office buildings, not everyone can live close to their workplace anymore, so public transit becomes necessary. And because of that, the city develops outward. So even though the elevator and the office building are a densifying, concentrating force, they also promote the outward development of the city.
This particular interaction between the technical and the sociological and the implications of it all was sparked in 1853 at New York’s Crystal Palace when – at America’s first World’s Fair – Elisha Otis demonstrated the safety break on an elevator. He cut the cord with an axe in front of a group of spectators and showed them that the cab wouldn’t plummet. It turned the elevator from something used in a grain silo to something that actually carried people. It was a moment that really transformed New York.
The pandemic changed our cities, opening our vision for them to new possibilities and urging a reconsideration of how we design and use our spaces. What do you see as the New York City of the future from the perspectives this class explores?
Let’s look at the street. We need streets that are designed for today and not for 50 years ago – and we need them right away. First, and for multiple reasons, we need drastically fewer cars, and we need to make less space for them and more for many other uses. What we need to understand about streets is how complex they are, and how many jobs we ask them to do. If you think of the many ways you use the street: pushing a child in a stroller, standing to talk with a friend, looking in shop windows, waiting for a bus – and also relying on its underground conduits that carry data and electricity and water – where else do you have something required to do such disparate jobs? We need to rethink the way streets are organized so they work better, considering everything from equity to efficiency to climate change and many other things, all without changing their social character and while keeping them the personality center of New York.
In addition to being New York’s architecture critic, you are its classical music critic. Is there a piece of music – classical or popular – that, for you, captures the essence of New York City’s skyline? Street? Apartment? Office?
Hmm …
Skyline: Aaron Copland’s “Quiet City”
… It’s a nocturne that captures the moodiness of the city at night, with the tower’s shadows silhouetted against the sky.
Street: Steve Reich’s “City Life”
… Reich uses recorded street noises as raw material, then interprets them musically.
Apartment: Leonard Bernstein’s “I Can Cook, Too” (On the Town)
… It’s a raunchy ode to domesticity from the last person you'd think would sing a housewife song!
Office: Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter”
… When it came out in the 1950s it sounded so modern - imagine using an office machine in the symphony! Now it’s retro. If you played it for school kids I wonder how many would even recognize that clacking sound. Then again, I sometimes wonder whether they’ll grow up even knowing what an office was.
Finally, living or spending time in New York City, we are told to “Look all ways before crossing.” Taking that to the extreme, what is it you’d encourage people to see as they engage with the city, and what do you hope this course might open their eyes to?
What I would really like people to see is the past and the future in whatever they are looking at. When we “look all ways,” we look up and down, left and right. But what I would also like people to see is backward in time and forward into the imagination. Because every corner of New York has a story about why it is the way it is – it wasn’t always that way, and it won’t always remain that way.
Justin Davidson’s 92U course, New York City Form & Function: Skyline, Street, Apartment, Office continues through November 23.